The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
.jpg){kind=link}
1921-1949
The gift: In 1921 John B. Franke, president of the Perfection Biscuit Company, donated 80 acres to establish the park that bears his name, the largest gift of play space in the city's history; the 80 acres have grown to about 339, and Franke Park became the system's family headquarters, the ground where the zoo, the theatre and the day camp would all eventually stand. The gift belongs in this section because of what the city put on it for children, in sequence.
The program: The parks history gives the sequence its dates. In 1945 the Jefferson Recreation Center opened with programming for youth, the system's first dedicated youth center in this record. In 1946 the Franke Park Day Camp was initiated, the park board's own summer answer to the Y camp across the county line: a day in the woods, under the supervised-play doctrine the department had run since 1908, for children whose families could not send them away. In 1949 the park's open-air stage arrived as a gift in the same spirit as the ground itself: the Foellinger Theatre, constructed by Helene Foellinger in memory of her father Oscar G. Foellinger, the News-Sentinel's publisher, which put summer performance in front of family audiences on the grass.
The pointer: One more piece of Franke ground belongs to this section only as a signpost. In 1952 Fred B. Shoaff donated 54.36 acres adjoining the park, the Bird and Wildlife Sanctuary opened to the public on it, and that sanctuary land later developed into the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo, officially opened in 1965. The zoo is the city's most famous children's attraction and it is not retold here: it stands at full size in THE ZOO, whose leg owns it. This section records only that the zoo grew out of the same Franke Park ground, and the same gift culture, as the day camp and the theatre around it.
Sources:
- Fort Wayne Board of Park Commissioners, Franke Park showcase paper, March 2022 (the 1921 gift of 80 acres; the growth to 339.4 acres; the 1949 Foellinger Theatre gift; the Shoaff donation and the zoo's 1965 opening).
- History of the Fort Wayne Parks and Recreation Department thru 2019 (the Jefferson Recreation Center, 1945; the Franke Park Day Camp initiated, 1946).