Grieger Chevrolet: the manager who went into business for himself

1923 — early 1970s

The founding: Clarence A. Grieger (30 April 1894 — March 1970) came up through the service side of the trade: the newspaper record has him first as a shop foreman at the Terre Haute Cadillac service station, then as the local manager of the Steinhart company's Lafayette branch — a man already being asked to address a club on the automobile trade by 1920 — before he resigned in the spring of 1923, after four years at Steinhart. The Lafayette Journal and Courier of 4 April 1923 carried the item under the headline "Auto House To Lose Manager," reporting that he was going in business soon. The business was his own Chevrolet house in Fort Wayne, and the house dated itself from that year for the rest of its life: its advertising was still saying "since 1923" in a Fort Wayne Civic Theatre program in April 1966.

The ground: Grieger's city was South Clinton Street at the Pennsylvania elevation, the official address 1500 South Clinton. The main lot and dealership stood on the north side of the elevation, and over the years the family came to own property for three blocks around it, including part of the ground where the downtown post office was later built. Its used-car lot sat by the old Baker Street passenger station at 130 E. Baker St., photographed on 30 December 1960 with the rows of used cars in front of the former station. The showroom building itself outlived the dealership — it served afterward as a Wolf & Dessauer warehouse, and its site is now The Rescue Mission's.

The civic footprint: The house appears in the record the way a half-century dealer does, in the city's small print. In July 1938 C. A. Grieger, identified simply as a Chevrolet dealer, was assisting at the weigh-in for the News-Sentinel's Soap Box Derby. In June 1967 the Common Council's Ordinance S-67-06-13 approved the city's purchase of a 1967 Chevrolet Biscayne station wagon from Grieger Chevrolet for $1,994.76, for the Electrical Engineering Department. And a 1970 Chevrolet Nova's paper trail, preserved by the collector who owns the car now, begins with its purchase new at Grieger Chevrolet — the house still selling in the last year of its founder's life.

The depot: Grieger's most durable purchase was not a car. In August 1957 the firm bought the old Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad depot — the brick passenger station built on the eve of the Civil War, where Abraham Lincoln had caught an eastbound train at 1:12 in the morning of 23 February 1860 — from the Pennsylvania Railroad for about $50,000. The Journal Gazette announced it on 8 August 1957 as "Landmark Sold To Auto Agency"; Richard W. Grieger, the founder's son, made the announcement for the C. A. Grieger agency. The firm used the ancient station for storage and its lot for used cars. The depot was razed in 1966, in the piecemeal selling-off of the Pennsy Shops complex the News-Sentinel's Cityscapes column later chronicled; the last of the complex came down before the new postal facility rose on part of the Grieger ground in the late 1970s.

The second generation and the end: Richard W. Grieger was associated with the house for thirty years before his death on 13 November 2008, at 87 — the son carrying the name a full generation past the founder. Clarence Grieger died in March 1970, and the house wound down in the years that followed; the record does not fix its last year of trading, and none is invented here. What followed it on its own ground is part of the next Chevrolet story in this section: DeHaven Chevrolet moved to the Grieger location very briefly, and adjusted its jingle to sing the 1500 South Clinton Street address, before its own longer history carried it elsewhere.

Sources:

1. Allen County Genealogical Society, Grieger Chevrolet page (the 1966 program advertisement; the Allen County Public Library photo records, including the 30 December 1960 lot photograph and record SJW0013; the True Fort Wayne Indiana History discussions of the property and the DeHaven tenancy).
2. Lafayette Journal and Courier, 4 April 1923.
3. Journal Gazette, 8 August 1957 (the depot purchase, from the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection text at archive.org).
4. News-Sentinel, Cityscapes: The Pennsy Shops, 26 December 1981.
5. Fort Wayne Ordinance S-67-06-13 (6 June 1967).
6. Richard W. Grieger obituary (died 13 November 2008); Clarence A. Grieger, Social Security Death Index via ACGSI.