The Randall Hotel: a tannery that became "the best $2 hotel in Indiana"

1828 — 1963

From hides to guests: The Randall's building began in 1828 as a tannery at the foot of Columbia Street — built, in Michael Hawfield's account, by Absalom Halcomb and Isaac Marquis, its basement vats soaking hides in urine and oak bark; the genealogical society's timeline names the 1828 tannery on the site as Jacob Fry's. James Robinson, who operated the tannery from 1856, made a hotel of it with his son in 1870 — the Robinson Hotel — and in 1876 the name became the Grand Hotel (the house also carried the name Hotel Brunswick in its chain of names). In 1889 Perry A. Randall, a prominent local attorney, bought it for $45,000 and gave it the name it kept.

In its heyday, between 1890 and 1930, the Randall was a five-story brick house of 83 rooms fronting Harrison Street at the end of Columbia, with a 35-foot veranda, and it boasted a telephone, running water, and steam heat in every room — "the best $2 hotel in Indiana." Winifred J. Randall, who ran it for decades after her husband's death on February 1, 1916, remembered the trade it served: guests who "ate at one meal almost as much as the ordinary person eats in a day," a house "packed with guests," and an era when "the Wayne Hotel and the Randall Hotel were the leading hotels" and the eastern trade patronized them — before "the building of the Anthony, the Keenan and the Indiana" drew that trade away. In the Depression the Randall became increasingly a residence rather than a hotel. It stood until Winifred Randall's death in 1963, when it closed and was razed; an auction of its contents followed on May 15, 1964. Two concrete pillars on the west side of Harrison at the end of Columbia Street are all that remain. A tourism claim repeated on the genealogical society's places page — that the Randall "was Fort Wayne's first hotel in 1823" — fails against the record the same page cites: the site was a tannery in 1828 and a hotel only from 1870, and the town's first licensed taverns date to 1824.

Sources:

1. Michael Hawfield, "The Randall: Best $2 hotel in the state," Cityscapes, News-Sentinel, March 21, 1994 — the tannery origin, the 1870 and 1876 names, the 1889 purchase price, the 83 rooms and amenities, and the 1963 end.
2. The History Center, Notes & Queries blog / Facebook post of May 15, 2019 — the name chain (Robinson House, Hotel Grand, Hotel Brunswick, Randall), the residential turn of the 1930s, and the May 15, 1964 contents auction.
3. Winifred J. Randall, As I Remember (1960) — "The Randall Hotel" and William P. Buckles, "More About the Randall Hotel Neighborhood": the packed house, the eastern trade, and the Wayne-and-Randall pairing.
4. ACGSI, Named Places: Randall Hotel — the tannery timeline and the repeated "first hotel in 1823" claim, printed here to be corrected.