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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 King Jr. Bridge, and runs through downtown as a one-way pair — Lafayette Street and Spy Run Avenue northbound, Clinton Street southbound — before the two directions reunite on North Clinton and leave by Lima Road. The Brookview-Irvington Park National Register nomination describes North Clinton plainly as the district's eastern edge and the carrier of U.S. 27, "the primary south-bound arterial roadway of the city." North Clinton is also an old road in its own right: it fronts the Brookview and Irvington Park plats, passes the State School ground, and climbs the moraine on the line of the early St. Joe gravel road country.
Downtown, Clinton is the courthouse-and-civic street: it passes the Allen County Courthouse, the Rousseau Centre and Freimann Square, and at its north end, at the St. Marys River, it meets the North River ground — the former rail yards and OmniSource site whose redevelopment as a mixed-use district is the largest open development project on any corridor in this section. The Southeast Strategy Update reaches up the highway to meet it, directing that the recommendations of the Front Door Fort Wayne plan be incorporated for the U.S. 27/Clinton/Lafayette corridor — the highway's own name for its downtown face being the city's front door.
Sources: AARoads Wiki, U.S. Route 27 in Indiana (Lafayette/Clinton one-way pair; Decatur Road; Lima Road terminus); National Register nomination, Brookview-Irvington Park Historic District (North Clinton as U.S. 27 arterial); City of Fort Wayne, Southeast Strategy Update (adopted January 2021), US27/Clinton/Lafayette focus; Indiana Brownfields Program, North River report (2026).