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By 1879 / plant 1887 – sold 1946
Founded: Fred Eckart's slaughterhouse and meat market at 1825 West Main Street. The News-Sentinel Cityscapes history (5 December 1982) dates the huge plant's opening to 1887, at a building cost of $25,000 — but the same piece quotes a Fort Wayne Gazette story of 8 February 1879 already calling the operation "mammoth." The two dates stand in conflict: a substantial Eckart packing business existed by 1879, and the West Main plant followed in 1887 on the paper's dating.
What it did: Slaughtering and meat packing — one of the two packing houses (with Peter Eckrich's) that made Fort Wayne a pork-packing town.
Course and fate: The plant was bought in 1940 by the Kuhner Packing Company of Muncie and sold in 1946 to the Marhoefer Packing Company. The Eckart stockyard burned in 1949.
Sources:
- News-Sentinel, Cityscapes, 5 December 1982 — plant date and cost; the 1879 Gazette quotation; the 1940 and 1946 sales; the 1949 stockyard fire.