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Heritage · How Fort Wayne kept, lost, and celebrated its past
Fort Wayne began protecting its past earlier than it is usually given credit for, and it did so for the most practical of reasons: the wreckers were already at work. In 1965, with the oldest commercial block in the city eyed for a parking lot, Fort Wayne adopted what the city itself describes as the first local preservation ordinance in Indiana, and made the Landing and the Chief Richardville House its first local historic districts. A decade later a bicentennial committee's leftover energy became ARCH, the volunteer-born preservation organization that has watched the city's buildings ever since — listing the endangered, handing out the awards, moving houses that stood in the way of demolition, and occasionally buying the endangered building itself. Between those poles this section keeps the heritage record: the ordinances and the commission, the rescues and the eleventh hours, the losses the city still argues about, the register listings as a chronology of designations rather than of buildings, and the anniversary years — including the centennial the city forgot to hold on time, and the sesquicentennial that wartime swallowed whole.
The first fight: saving the Landing, 1963–1965
1963 — 1965
A student survey starts it: In the fall of 1963 the senior class of the University of Notre Dame's School of Architecture made the first architectural survey of the 100 block of West Columbia Street — the canal-era commercial row…
The other Columbia Street: the clearance of 1966
1966 — 1971
What the ordinance did not save: The 1965 ordinance protected one block. The rest of Columbia Street — for a century the city's commercial spine — went the other way. The city's own preservation history calls the demolition of…
The law of keeping: the ordinances and the Commission
1965 — 2025
From a mayor's commission to a code chapter: The 1965 ordinance created the Mayor's Commission on the Preservation and Restoration of Historical Landmarks, the body that survives today as the Fort Wayne Historic Preservation…
ARCH: the organization, 1975 to its fiftieth year
1975 — present
A bicentennial committee that refused to disband: ARCH Inc. — the name, its founders insist, was never meant to stand for anything, though "Architecture and Community Heritage" came to be used as the tagline — was incorporated as…
ARCH with its hands on: houses moved, houses held
1975 — present
Preservation by ownership: ARCH's distinctive method, from its early years, was to put the organization's own name on the deed. The Operation Preservation revolving fund, created with the Junior League, was used to move two…
The moved houses
1980 — and the revolving-fund moves
When the ground is lost, move the house: Fort Wayne's documented house moves are few, and the record names them unevenly. ARCH's own history records the two revolving-fund moves of its early years without naming the houses — the…
The thirty-year watch: the Merchant Huxford House
c. 1854 — designated 2014
The endangered list's longest resident: The Dr. Merchant W. Huxford House at 520 Tennessee Avenue is a Greek Revival house of about 1854 — the Historic Preservation Commission's designation report dates it c. 1854; ARCH's own…
Save the Embassy: two days to spare
1971 — 1975
The fight the building's entry cannot hold: The Embassy Theatre's architecture and stage history are told in the Architecture section; what belongs here is the campaign. When the Indiana Hotel closed in 1971, the plan on the…
The vacant city hall: a million-dollar second life
1971 — 1980
Saved by being needed: Old City Hall was not rescued from a wrecking ball; it was rescued from vacancy, which in Fort Wayne has been the slower demolition. On March 11, 1971, Mayor Harold Zeis proclaimed the new City-County…
Two eleventh hours: the bridge and the station
1988 — 1996
The bridge that left the list: ARCH's history names the Wells Street Bridge as the early success "moved off" its Most Endangered List: the 1884 iron bridge over the St. Marys — the first iron bridge built over the city's rivers …
The ledger of losses
1962 — 2025
What the arguing is about: The Architecture section keeps the demolition ledger entry by entry; the heritage record is which losses the city still argues about, and they cluster. The year 1974 took both grand hotels in a single…
The factory that almost fell: Electric Works
2015 — 2025
Demolition was the discussed option: When General Electric closed its Broadway campus in 2015 — a complex that had employed some 20,000 people at its height — the end, at first, looked like the standard one. In October 2015…
Brookside: preservation by stewardship
1944 — 2013
Brookside stands at 2701 Spring Street, on a low hill above its own artificial lake, and it is the most documented haunted house in Fort Wayne precisely because almost everything about it except the ghost is a matter of hard…
The designation record: districts, landmarks, and the counts
1965 — 2026
A chronology of decisions, not buildings: The Architecture section treats the districts as places; the heritage record is the sequence of designations itself, because each one was a decision somebody had to win. Local designation…
The birthday the city forgot: the centennial of 1895
1895
A year late, and grand anyway: General Anthony Wayne's men raised the first Fort Wayne in October 1794, which made the city's centennial due in October 1894. It was held in 1895. The News-Sentinel's Kevin Leininger, retelling it…
The quiet anniversaries: 1940, 1944, 1966, 1976
1940 — 1976
Sesquicentennials, observed and not: The 150-year marks came in wartime's shadow, and the record shows the difference. In 1940 the sesquicentennial that Fort Wayne did observe was scholarly: a Harmar Sesquicentennial Symposium…
The bicentennial year: 1994
1994
Two hundred years, marked in trails and stone: Fort Wayne celebrated the bicentennial of Wayne's fort in 1994, a century after the party it had nearly forgotten — and the year's most permanent product was a way of walking through…
Time capsules: the messages the city sent itself
1960 — 2025
Buried in 1960, addressed to 1994: Fort Wayne's best-documented capsule was a broadcaster's. On March 31, 1960 — the thirty-fifth anniversary of its sign-on — WOWO buried a time capsule in East Swinney Park and marked the spot…
Markers and trails: heritage on the street
1948 — present
The state's short list, the street's long one: The Indiana Historical Bureau's own county list carries eight state historical markers for Allen County, and their dates draw the program's local arc: Site of Fort Miamis (1948)…