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Late 19th century — early 20th century
The Randall's pair: The other leading house of the drummer era stood at 118 West Columbia Street, in the Landing. Winifred Randall's memoir names it directly: in the years before the towers, "the Wayne Hotel and the Randall Hotel were the leading hotels" of Fort Wayne, and the eastern trade — the traveling salesmen who worked the city from the trains — patronized them. The History Center's Columbia Street photograph collection holds the Wayne Hotel's image among the street's documented buildings. Beyond the address, the pairing, and the photographs, the house's own record — its builder, its opening year, its end — was not pulled from the directories, and this entry prints no more than the record reached supports. It is kept here because the memoir's ranking is itself a fact of the trade: before 1908, the Wayne and the Randall were the city's two first addresses.
Sources:
- Winifred J. Randall, As I Remember (1960) — the Wayne Hotel and Randall Hotel as "the leading hotels," and the eastern trade's patronage.
- Indiana Memory / History Center digital collections — photograph record, "Wayne Hotel, 118 W. Columbia Street, Fort Wayne, Indiana."