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 Commission. The modern framework dates to 1984, when an updated preservation ordinance — Ordinance G-10-84 — created Chapter 151 of the municipal code, "Historic Preservation and Protection Districts," and with it the Historic Preservation Review Board that hears designations and certificates of appropriateness. The West Central local district, designated under the new chapter in 1984 and expanded by ordinance in 1985, was its first great test.

Fort Wayne is a Certified Local Government, the federal-state status that ties its preservation program into the National Register process. The Commission's own ledger, as the city published it for the ordinance's sixtieth anniversary in May 2025, is the scale of the thing: the Commission "has overseen the creation of 90 local historic districts" and "has also played a role in 26 historic district listings and 42 single-site listings in the National Register of Historic Places." Exterior work in a local district runs through the certificate-of-appropriateness review; the city's preservation staff, planners Don Orban and Creager Smith in the city's telling, carry the program day to day. The counts are the city's own, dated to 2025, and are printed here as such; the Register's own listings are counted separately in the designation record below.

Sources:

1. City of Fort Wayne, "Fort Wayne Celebrates 60 Years of Commitment to Historic Preservation" (May 1, 2025) — the 1965 ordinance as Indiana's first, the Mayor's Commission's descent to the present Commission, and the 90 / 26 / 42 counts.
2. Fort Wayne Ordinance G-10-84, creating Chapter 151 (now Chapter 151 of the Code of Ordinances), and Ordinance G-85-06-12 (West Central expansion, 1985) — the 1984 framework and the Review Board.
3. City of Fort Wayne, "What is a Local Historic District?" — Certified Local Government status, the certificate-of-appropriateness process, and the preservation staff.