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 it. Before the plan the road was Walton Avenue, the eastern edge of the Forest Park Addition (platted 1906), and it ended at State Street, then Pfeiffer Avenue. Charles Mulford Robinson's 1909 beautification report and Kessler's 1911–1912 park-and-boulevard plan made it the eastern border boulevard of the city; the boulevard portion was completed beginning in 1912, the Sanborn map of 1918 already shows the new name, and the district filled from about 1918 to 1930 — 296 contributing buildings of Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival and Bungalow/Craftsman houses behind uniform setbacks, on a 100-foot boulevard planted with London plane trees. The National Register listed the North Anthony Boulevard Historic District on September 30, 2014; the wider Fort Wayne Park and Boulevard System district (listed 2010) had already taken in the Anthony right-of-way to Vance Avenue.

As a corridor it has always been the residential exception to this section's commercial rule: its commerce collects at its ends and crossings — the Lake Avenue node at its foot and the Crescent Avenue stretch — while the boulevard itself carries the houses. Its modern planning sits inside Historic Northeast 2035 (adopted May 2024), which calls for a North Anthony Boulevard corridor improvement plan and traffic-calming work on the boulevard, and inside the same plan's East State work at the boulevard's northern crossings. The North Anthony Neighborhood Association is one of the three associations that asked the City for that plan — the corridor's residents planning the corridor, which is how the boulevard began.

Sources: National Register nomination, North Anthony Boulevard Historic District (Ref. 14000800, listed Sept. 30, 2014) and William C. and Clara Hagerman House nomination (Walton Avenue; 1918 Sanborn); City of Fort Wayne, Historic Northeast 2035 (adopted May 2024) and implementation page.