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 came first and came early: the Landing and the Chief Richardville House, 1965, under Indiana's first preservation ordinance. The federal register followed: Old City Hall listed June 4, 1973; the Embassy Theatre and Indiana Hotel in 1975; the Allen County Courthouse on May 28, 1976. The residential districts that define the city's preservation map arrived across four decades — the West End (West Central) on November 15, 1984, with its local district the same year; Williams–Woodland Park on March 14, 1991; South Wayne on September 4, 1992; the Landing's federal listing on September 16, 1993; Forest Park Boulevard in 2007; Southwood Park, with its 1,889 contributing buildings, on December 22, 2009; and the Fort Wayne Park and Boulevard System itself on December 28, 2010. The register is still growing: Beechwood in 2021, the Electric Works district in 2023, Shawnee Place in 2024, and Kirkwood Park and the Pennsylvania Produce Terminal in 2025. The federal government's highest tier came twice: the Courthouse was designated a National Historic Landmark on July 31, 2003 — after the Courthouse Preservation Trust's restoration campaign, begun in 1994 at $8.6 million, returned the building for its centennial rededication on September 23, 2002 — and the Chief Richardville House on March 2, 2012.

The counts, printed as their sources state them: the National Park Service's list, complete through September 18, 2026, holds 83 properties and districts in Allen County, with four more listed and later removed. The City of Fort Wayne's own count in 2021 was 17 National Register districts and 40 single-property listings within the city; the Historic Preservation Commission's 2025 accounting credits itself a role in 26 district listings and 42 single-site listings, alongside the 90 local historic districts it has overseen. The local single-site layer has its own landmark cases: Old City Hall's designation in 1997, the Huxford House's in 2014, and the John D. Haynes House — Frank Lloyd Wright's Fort Wayne Usonian — declared a single-site local district in April 2008 at its out-of-state owner's own request, a designation the owner then asked the board to rescind in 2010; the board refused, and the City Council later denied removal again, with Indiana Landmarks and ARCH in support of keeping it. Designation, the episode establishes, binds in both directions.

Sources:

1. National Register of Historic Places listings in Allen County (National Park Service, complete through September 18, 2026), via Architecture — the 83 listings, the removals, and the listing dates used here.
2. City of Fort Wayne, "10 Things to Know About Historic Preservation in Fort Wayne" (2021 counts), via the Allen County Genealogical Society; and "Fort Wayne Celebrates 60 Years" (May 2025) — the city's and the Commission's counts.
3. Architecture — the Courthouse restoration and National Historic Landmark designation, and the Haynes House designation fight, cross-referenced and not retold.
4. Neighborhoods — the district listing dates and contributing counts, cross-referenced.