Barr Street: the public market, 1837 to today

1837 — present

The oldest public space in Fort Wayne: The city's farm market began as a gift with a condition. In 1837 Samuel Hanna — the town's leading pioneer, and, fittingly, a founder of the farmers' Agricultural Society four years later — donated land on Barr Street to the town for a public market, designated for that use in perpetuity; the street itself carried the name of John T. Barr, co-purchaser of the original town plat. Within six months a small frame market house, 30 by 60 feet, stood on the ground, patterned after the Philadelphia market, its stalls renting for $5 a year. The market was the young town's provisioning system and an early proof of surplus: only a community whose farms produced beyond their own tables needed a central place to sell. The City of Fort Wayne ran the market from the beginning, through a "Market Master" who controlled the vendors and oversaw weights and measures; among the market masters was Peter Kiser, whom tradition holds to have been one of the first Germans to settle in Fort Wayne. The market flourished and grew: in 1855 a new brick market house rose partly in Barr Street itself, two stories with city offices above, built for $2,800, its covered stalls renting at $40 a year. What the county shipped beyond its own table — the canal and rail export trade — is treated in its own section of this history (see Exports); Barr Street was the other end of the farm economy, the county feeding the city face to face. When the new City Hall went up in 1893 the old market house was removed, and in 1910 the city built the market's grandest form: a covered concrete complex by the Fort Wayne architects Mahurin & Mahurin, pavilions running two blocks from City Hall to Washington Boulevard, joined by double iron arches over Wayne Street with lion-head water troughs for the horses — its cost carried as $20,000 in the News-Sentinel's 1993 history of the market and as $200,000 in the History Center's collection record, a discrepancy the sources have never reconciled. In its heyday the market ran six days a week, day and night, with 120 stalls drawing thousands of shoppers daily, and farmers came from as far as Ohio. Supermarkets and the move to the suburbs undid it: the northern pavilion was demolished in 1957, the southern in 1958, and in 1966 the city ended its 129 years of operating the market — but the Barr Street Market Association, formed that year, kept renting stalls, and the market never quite closed. In 1988 the Allen County–Fort Wayne Historical Society — today's History Center — assumed ownership of the ground Hanna had given, and in 2005 the History Center and the Young Leaders of Northeast Indiana (YLNI), an organization founded in 2004 whose first project was the market's revival, began the partnership that runs it still: a Saturday market in season on the original ground, which the History Center counts at 1,500 to 2,000 visitors a week. A second, separate market — the Ft. Wayne Farmers Market — began in the fall of 2012 at Parkview Field, trading there outdoors in summer and indoors in winter; Input Fort Wayne has reported the two markets' announced plan to join forces as a Fort Wayne Public Market at the Electric Works campus. The market Hanna endowed in 1837 remains what he made it: the oldest public space in Fort Wayne, still doing its first job.

Sources:

1. The History Center, Fort Wayne, "Barr Street Market: Trading Under the Trees" (Notes & Queries, from Tom Castaldi's Along the Heritage Trail, May 2006) — the 1837 Hanna donation, the frame house and $5 stalls, the Market Master and Peter Kiser, the 1855 building, the 1893 removal, the 1910 complex, the six-day heyday with 120 stalls, the 1958 pavilion removal, the 1966 city exit, and the 1988 Historical Society ownership.
2. News-Sentinel, "Barr Street Market full of history" (November 29, 1993) — the market 147 years on; the 1855 contract and $2,800 brick house with stalls at $40 a year; the 1910 embellishment at a stated cost of $20,000; the Barr Street Market Association operating since 1966; the 1993 plaza widening then under way.
3. The History Center, collection record "Badge, Identification: City Market Weighmaster Badge" — the 1910 pavilion at a stated cost of $200,000 (the conflict with the News-Sentinel's $20,000 is carried in the entry), farmers drawn from as far as Ohio, the 1957–58 destruction, the 1988 acquisition, and 1,500–2,000 visitors weekly today; the weighmaster's badge of Patrick Ryan, 1894–95.
4. The Barr Street Market historical marker (Indiana Historical Bureau series; text as transcribed at HMdb) — the donation "for use as a public market in perpetuity" and the market as the oldest in Fort Wayne.
5. History Center / YLNI market histories as compiled by ACGSI, "Barr Street Market" — the 1910 complex extending two blocks from City Hall to Washington Boulevard, the 1957 and 1958 pavilion demolitions, and the History Center–YLNI partnership since 2005.
6. Input Fort Wayne, "The case for a public market at Electric Works" — the YLNI revival of 2004, the Ft. Wayne Farmers Market's beginning in the fall of 2012 at Parkview Field under Lisa Haagan, and the announced Fort Wayne Public Market plan at Electric Works.