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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 Road 14's concurrency at Illinois Road — crossed the St. Marys River in Swinney Park, and split downtown into the one-way pair of Jefferson Boulevard eastbound and Washington Boulevard westbound before leaving for New Haven and Ohio. Illinois Road, west of the Jefferson split, carried SR 14 toward Rochester and was signed in its day as old U.S. 24. The corridor's commercial shape followed the highway: Jefferson west of downtown is the city's classic auto-era boulevard, and at its I-69 end stands Time Corners, which the News-Sentinel's 1960s history remembers passing "from an almost rural market" into "an urban retail center" as the postwar city spilled west along the highway.
The through traffic is gone and the corridor is a city street again, twice planned. U.S. 24 was pulled out of downtown in the early 1980s onto I-69 and Coliseum Boulevard, and in 1998 onto I-69 and the I-469 beltway for good; SR 14 was truncated at I-69 in 1995. What replaced the highway is retail and reinvestment: Jefferson Pointe, the open-air lifestyle center at 4130 West Jefferson, anchors the I-69 end of the boulevard; the Southwest Extended annexation of 2006 (12.86 square miles, 22,587 residents, county court figure) folded the corridor's suburban ground into the city; and the Illinois Road corridor is in a City road-and-trail improvement program with construction running through fall 2027. Jefferson Boulevard east of I-69 keeps the older form — park-front, institutional and residential — the highway become a boulevard again.
Sources: U.S. Route 24 in Indiana (route history: Upper Huntington Road/Jefferson Boulevard; Illinois Road SR 14 concurrency; early-1980s and 1998 reroutes); AARoads, Fort Wayne routes (SR 14 truncation 1995; Illinois Road as old U.S. 24); News-Sentinel, "Reforms brought new look to city" (1960s history; Time Corners); City of Fort Wayne, Engage — Illinois Road Trail and Road Improvement (construction through fall 2027).