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1908 – demolished 1974
Founded: Proposed by dry-goods merchant Ernest Rurode and built by the Fort Wayne Hotel Company, a group of the city's leading businessmen who had determined the city needed a modern first-class hotel. Three years and $500,000 in the building; completed in 1908 at Berry and Harrison streets, to designs by Charles Weatherhogg. Nine stories, 263 rooms.
What it did: For more than sixty years the city's leading meeting place — its Chatterbox Room and ballrooms were Fort Wayne's convention and society floor.
Course: The Keenan hotel family leased the house; James F. Keenan arrived in 1909 and managed it until 1947, when F. Harold Van Orman assumed the lease — the name had changed to the Van Orman Hotel in the mid-1940s. By its last years it was again known as the Anthony.
Fate: The Van Orman closed in September 1969. The empty Anthony was used for fire-training exercises, condemned 3 May 1973, and imploded on Sunday morning, 13 January 1974 — 294 explosive charges, nine seconds.
Sources:
- News-Sentinel, Cityscapes, "Anthony's tale," 23 January 1982 — Rurode's proposal; the $500,000 cost; the Van Orman renaming and 1969 closing; condemnation and the 1974 implosion.
- ACGSI, "Hotel Keenan" — the Keenan lease of the Anthony; James F. Keenan's management, 1909–1947, and Van Orman's assumption of the lease.