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Corridors · each area's great road
Fort Wayne grew along its roads the way it first grew along its rivers and its canal: outward, in lines. Every part of the city has one street that did the work of a main street for that part of town — the road the stores fronted, the streetcar ran down, the highway signs pointed along, and the city's plans now name when they talk about revival. Each area of the city has a corridor, like Waynedale. This is those corridors, one by one — where each came from, what it carried, what it became, and what the city has formally planned for it. The neighborhoods behind the storefronts are treated in the Neighborhoods section; the buildings as architecture are treated in the Architecture section; the firms themselves are in Business. What follows is the arteries.
Waynedale's corridor — Bluffton Road and Old Trail Road
THE SOUTHWEST · OLD TRAIL ROAD / BLUFFTON ROAD (STATE ROAD 1)
Waynedale's corridor is really two roads laid one over the other. The older is Old Trail Road. A City preservation account describes Old Trail as beginning as a Native American and pioneer trail, later a nineteenth-century…
Calhoun Street — the south side's spine
DOWNTOWN TO THE SOUTH CITY LIMITS · SOUTH CALHOUN STREET
Calhoun Street is one of the original streets of the 1824 town plat, the east–west dividing line of the city's address system, and — in Randy Harter's street-name account — named for John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, vice…
South Anthony Boulevard and Rudisill Boulevard — the southeast cross
THE SOUTHEAST · SOUTH ANTHONY BOULEVARD × EAST–WEST RUDISILL BOULEVARD
Two planned boulevards cross in southeast Fort Wayne, and the crossing is the area's center of gravity. Rudisill Boulevard is the older and grander: a three-mile east–west road developed by the Board of Park Commissioners…
East State Boulevard — the trolley corridor
THE NORTHEAST · EAST STATE BOULEVARD / EAST STATE VILLAGE
East State began as a country road — the Hicksville State Road — and its first landmark was an institution set deliberately out in the country on it: the Indiana School for Feeble-Minded Youth, opened in 1890 on a 60-acre site…
North Anthony Boulevard — the planned boulevard
THE NORTHEAST · NORTH ANTHONY BOULEVARD (FORMERLY WALTON AVENUE)
North Anthony is the corridor Fort Wayne planned on paper before it built a house: a nearly mile-long residential boulevard in the northeast quadrant, between Lake Avenue and Vance Avenue, that exists because George Kessler drew…
Broadway — the electric corridor
THE NEAR SOUTHWEST · BROADWAY, MAIN STREET TO RUDISILL
Broadway is the corridor the electric age built. The Jenney Electric Company came to Fort Wayne in 1881, started in a cramped brick building at Wells and Superior, and by 1886 had moved to a new plant on Broadway by the…
Wells Street and Spy Run Avenue — the road to Chicago
THE NORTH · WELLS STREET / SPY RUN AVENUE
The north corridor is the oldest road out of Fort Wayne. In 1803 Captain William Wells was instructed to mark a path from the fort toward Chicago — the Fort Dearborn Trail — and the line became Wells Street. The street's own…
Goshen Road and Goshen Avenue — Five Points
THE NORTHWEST · GOSHEN ROAD (U.S. 33) / GOSHEN AVENUE
The Goshen road is the northwest line: the road from Fort Wayne toward Goshen and Elkhart, old State Road 2's country and, in the numbered era, U.S. 33. Its city stretch, Goshen Avenue, is remembered for one junction. Where…
Lima Road and Coldwater Road — the north retail corridors
THE NORTH · LIMA ROAD (U.S. 27 / STATE ROAD 3) AND COLDWATER ROAD
Lima Road is Fort Wayne's plank road made good. Local historian Samuel Hanna's generation built plank roads out of the new city — Input Fort Wayne's transportation history names Lima Road among them, "early highways leading to…
Clinton Street — the federal highway downtown
DOWNTOWN AND THE NORTH · CLINTON STREET / NORTH CLINTON (U.S. 27)
Clinton Street is the corridor that carries the highway through the middle of the city instead of around it. U.S. 27 enters Fort Wayne from the south on Decatur Road and Lafayette Street, crosses the Maumee on the Martin Luther…
Illinois Road and Jefferson Boulevard — U.S. 24's path through the west side
THE WEST AND SOUTHWEST · ILLINOIS ROAD (FORMER SR 14) / WEST JEFFERSON BOULEVARD
For most of the twentieth century, crossing Indiana meant crossing Fort Wayne on these two streets. U.S. 24 came up from Huntington on Upper Huntington Road, became Jefferson Boulevard at the west edge of town — picking up State…
Coliseum Boulevard — the bypass that became a main street
THE NORTH · COLISEUM BOULEVARD (STATE ROAD 930, FORMER U.S. 30)
Coliseum Boulevard is the proof of this section's rule: build a road around a city and the city will move out to meet it. Fort Wayne's first bypass was built at the start of the 1950s — the sources differ on the year: the city's…
Decatur Road and the Lincoln Highway — the highway-era paths
THE SOUTH AND THROUGH DOWNTOWN · DECATUR ROAD (U.S. 27/U.S. 33) AND THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY ROUTES
Two named highways of the auto-trail era still structure the south and east sides. Decatur Road is the southeast diagonal: the road from Fort Wayne to Decatur, in the trail era the path of the Ohio-Indiana-Michigan Way, the…
Hessen Cassel Road — the far-south corridor
THE FAR SOUTHEAST · HESSEN CASSEL ROAD / SOUTH ANTHONY'S SOUTHERN REACH
Hessen Cassel is the corridor at the city's far southeastern edge, where South Anthony Boulevard's commercial line runs out into the older settlement country along the Decatur Road diagonal. The name belongs to the German…
Fairfield Avenue — and the South Calhoun/Fairfield pair
THE NEAR SOUTH · FAIRFIELD AVENUE, PAIRED WITH SOUTH CALHOUN
Fairfield Avenue is South Calhoun's twin: the second north–south spine of the near south side, one half-mile west, and the two streets divide the south side's work between them — Calhoun the commercial main street, Fairfield the…
The ring — I-69 and I-469, and what the interstates did to the corridors
THE WHOLE CITY · INTERSTATE 69 (1962– ) AND INTERSTATE 469 (1989–1995)
Every corridor in this section was re-priced by two roads that touch none of their storefronts. Interstate 69 was built around Fort Wayne's west and north sides from 1962 to 1971 — and, unusually, was never planned through…
