What the hotels were for: drummers, banquets, and the meeting trade

1851 — 1985

Fort Wayne's hotels were never mainly for tourists. They were machinery for commerce, and each generation of them was built for the traveler of its day: the canal and stage passenger, then the drummer with his sample cases, then the convention delegate.

The first of the line was the Hedekin House. Michael Hedekin built it in 1843, the year the Wabash and Erie Canal was completed, and opened it with a grand military ball. Its first landlord, Calvin Anderson, took charge in 1846 and kept a house notable for having no bar and selling no liquor. By 1851 the house held the offices of two stage lines, and its hall was civic space: on April 15, 1861, three days after the firing on Fort Sumter, Mayor Franklin P. Randall called a mass meeting at Hedekin Hall to organize the city's answer to the war. The dining room fed the canal and stage traffic.

Francis S. Aveline built the Aveline at the southeast corner of Calhoun and Berry in 1863. It sheltered, by the Lindenwood historian Arthur Paulison's account, a procession of national figures: Blaine, McKinley, Bryan, Taggart, Tom Marshall, Beveridge and Fairbanks. Its end is the darkest page in the city's hotel record. In the early morning of Sunday, May 3, 1908, fire started in the elevator shaft of the six-story house and was discovered at 3:30 a.m. by the night clerk, Ralph Hipkins, who ran the upper floors waking guests until the flames drove him back. The register burned, so the roll of the dead was never certain. The next day's wire reports counted eleven known dead and feared more; Paulison's later count is twelve dead of sixty-one guests. The identified dead were, in the Dubuque Times Journal's flat summary of May 4, 1908, traveling salesmen almost to a man: J. E. Ellis of Chicago, for Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company; W. A. Pitcher, for a Fort Wayne house; J. W. Devinney of Camden, New Jersey, for Crawford and Lehman of Philadelphia; and the rest like them. The railroad era's customer died in the railroad era's hotel.

The Randall, at Harrison and Columbia on the Landing, came up from humbler stock. Its site began as a tannery in 1828 (Michael Hawfield's News-Sentinel history names its builders as Absalom Halcomb and Isaac Marquis; ARCH Fort Wayne's Landing tour names a Jacob Fry tannery on the spot), and the building passed through hotel lives as the Robinson House, the Hotel Grand and the Hotel Brunswick before the attorney Perry A. Randall bought it in 1889 for $45,000 and gave it his name. Reopened in late 1890, the eighty-three-room house advertised a telephone, running water and steam heat in every room and called itself the best two-dollar hotel in Indiana. Perry Randall died on February 1, 1916, and his widow Winifred ran the place for nearly half a century. She was a figure in her own right, the first woman in the United States to operate a lumber business, and in 1960 the Public Library published "As I remember...", the book of guest reminiscences she had spent years typing out from returning visitors, which preserves firsthand accounts of the early taverns, the canal days and the Hedekin House itself. By the Depression the Randall was becoming a residence rather than a hotel. It stood until Winifred Randall's death in 1963. Hawfield and ARCH both date the razing to 1963; a History Center note instead dates a closure and auction of the hotel to May 15, 1964, and the discrepancy stands in the record. Even its relic is disputed: Hawfield wrote that two concrete pillars on Harrison Street are all that remain of the Randall, while ARCH's tour corrects that the pillars belonged to the Wayne Hotel.

The meeting trade got its palace in 1908. The Anthony, at Berry and Harrison, took three years and $500,000 to build: nine stories, 263 rooms, proposed by the dry goods merchant Ernest Rurode and designed by Charles Weatherhogg. James F. Keenan, of a hotel-keeping family, arrived in 1909 and managed it until 1947. Renamed the Van Orman in the mid-1940s, it closed in September 1969, was bought by the adjacent Fort Wayne National Bank, and was condemned on May 3, 1973, sixty-five years to the day after the Aveline fire. On January 13, 1974, 294 explosive charges brought it down in nine seconds. Keenan had meanwhile built a rival three blocks away: the Keenan Hotel at Washington and Harrison, formally dedicated November 24, 1923, with 300 rooms and a cost of about $1,000,000, also to Weatherhogg's design. The Journal Gazette's account gives its guest register Presidents Truman and Kennedy. About $2 million was spent refurbishing it in 1973; on October 20, 1974, it too was blasted down. In one year the city dynamited the two houses that had held its banquets for half a century, and the sites went to parking and redevelopment.

The answer, when it came, joined the two functions the old houses had served separately. The Grand Wayne Convention Center opened on January 18, 1985, after five years of planning and construction and a $12 million investment, with a 250-room Hilton attached, 1,500 guests at the gala, Lieutenant Governor John Mutz cutting the ribbon and Tony Bennett singing in the Anthony Wayne Ballroom. An estimated 250,000 guests came through in its first year. The convention center's own anniversary history prices the 2003 to 2005 expansion at $26 million, reopening in May 2005 with 225,000 square feet; Wikipedia's account of the same project gives $42 million for the renovation and expansion, and the two figures are both of record. What the houses sold, besides beds, was the city's front parlor, which is why their loss was a civic event and not merely a business failure, and why the replacement was a convention center with a hotel attached rather than either one alone.

Sources:

1. Winifred J. Randall and others, "As I remember..." (Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County, 1960), from the Winifred J. Randall Collections: Hedekin House built 1843 by Michael Hedekin, opening military ball, Calvin Anderson landlord from 1846, no bar, mass meeting at Hedekin Hall April 15, 1861.
2. History of Allen County, Indiana (1880), as carried in this history's existing record: the Hedekin House holding two stage lines' offices in 1851.
3. Arthur M. Paulison, "Pioneers Resting in Historic Lindenwood" (Lindenwood Historical Foundation, 1989): Francis S. Aveline, the hotel at Calhoun and Berry 1863 to 1908, fire of May 3, 1908, twelve of sixty-one guests dead, the dignitaries it sheltered.
4. Dubuque Times Journal, May 4, 1908, and the Abbeville Press and Banner, May 27, 1908 (wire reports): eleven known dead on May 4, the identified dead named as traveling salesmen, fire discovered 3:30 a.m. by night clerk Ralph Hipkins in the elevator shaft, register destroyed.
5. Michael Hawfield, "The Randall: Best $2 Hotel in the State," News-Sentinel Cityscapes, March 21, 1994: tannery origins 1828, Perry Randall's 1889 purchase, Winifred Randall's management and 1963 death, the pillars.
6. ARCH Fort Wayne, "The Landing" heritage trail tour (archfw.org, accessed 2026): Jacob Fry tannery, Robinson and Grand Hotel sequence, Randall razed 1963, pillars corrected to the Wayne Hotel.
7. Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana (ACGSI), "R Named Places in Allen County" and "Hotel Keenan" place pages (acgsi.org, accessed 2026): Randall name sequence and 1889 purchase, the History Center's May 15, 1964 closure and auction note, Keenan dedication November 24, 1923, 300 rooms, cost about $1,000,000, Weatherhogg design, Keenan family management of the Anthony from 1909 to 1947.
8. Kevin Leininger, "Anthony's Tale," News-Sentinel Cityscapes, January 23, 1982: the Anthony's nine stories, 263 rooms, $500,000 and three years to build, Ernest Rurode, Weatherhogg, Van Orman renaming, September 1969 closing, condemnation May 3, 1973, demolition January 13, 1974 with 294 charges in nine seconds, Keenan demolition October 20, 1974 and its $2 million refurbishment.
9. Corey McMaken, "1974: Explosive Demolitions of Van Orman, Keenan Hotels," Journal Gazette, July 25, 2019, as collected by ACGSI: the Keenan's register of presidential guests.
10. Grand Wayne Convention Center, "GWCC Celebrates 40 Years!" (grandwayne.com, January 21, 2025): opening January 18, 1985, $12 million, five years of planning and construction, gala of 1,500 with John Mutz and Tony Bennett, 250,000 first-year guests, attached 250-room Hilton, $26 million expansion reopened May 2005 at 225,000 square feet.
11. "Grand Wayne Convention Center," Wikipedia (accessed 2026): the $42 million figure for the 2003 to 2005 renovation and expansion, printed against the center's own $26 million.