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Famous Locations — the Confluence, the Fort Sites, the First Game, and the Places the World Knows
Some places in Fort Wayne are known far beyond the city: the ground where three rivers meet and a Miami capital stood, the field where professional baseball began, the grave of Johnny Appleseed, the house of Chief Richardville, the corner where the gas pump was born. This chapter walks those sites one by one — where each is, why it is famous, what happened there, and what stands there now. The buildings themselves, as architecture, are treated in Architecture and the Built City; the institutions that run the museums are in the Museums chapter; the games belong to Sports. What follows is the fame of the ground itself.
The Confluence of the Three Rivers
Fort Wayne exists because of one piece of geography. The St. Marys River, flowing northeast out of Ohio, and the St. Joseph River, flowing southwest out of Michigan, meet in the middle of the city and form the Maumee, which runs…
Kekionga — the Miami Town in Lakeside
On the east bank of the St. Joseph River, in what is now the Lakeside neighborhood, stood Kekionga, the principal town of the Miami nation and, in the eighteenth century, one of the most important Native places in the Old…
The Fort Sites in Sequence — French, British and American Footprints
Five forts, under three flags, stood at or near the confluence between the 1680s and 1819, and the modern city still marks where they stood. The French built first: Fort Miami — Fort St. Philippe des Miamis — was established by…
The Old Fort Replica — 1201 Spy Run Avenue
On the east bank of the St. Marys River at 1201 Spy Run Avenue, under a quarter of a mile from where the original stood, rises a full-scale wooden reconstruction of the 1815–16 Fort Wayne — the third and last of the American…
Camp Allen — the Ground of the First Professional Baseball Game
On May 4, 1871, on a ball ground laid out on the Camp Allen Civil War camp site west of downtown, the Fort Wayne Kekiongas defeated the Cleveland Forest Citys 2–0 in the first game played in the National Association of…
Johnny Appleseed's Grave and Johnny Appleseed Memorial Park
On a mound in the old Archer family burying ground, on the north side of the city along the St. Joseph River, stands the marked grave of John Chapman — Johnny Appleseed — who died in Fort Wayne in March 1845. The grave as a…
The Chief Richardville House — 5705 Bluffton Road
At 5705 Bluffton Road, on the city's southwest side, stands the house Jean Baptiste de Richardville built in 1827 — the oldest documented house in Fort Wayne and one of only two National Historic Landmarks in Allen County.…
The Famous Downtown Addresses — Courthouse Square, the Lincoln Bank Tower and the Embassy Theatre
Three downtown buildings are famous as places in a way that exceeds their architecture, which is treated in full in the Architecture chapter; they are entered here briefly, for their stories. The first is the Allen County…
The Bowser Site — the First Gas Pump and the "First Filling Station" Claim
Fort Wayne's claim on the automobile age begins at a grocery store. On September 5, 1885, Sylvester F. Bowser sold his first pump — a pump for dispensing kerosene — to Jake Gumper's grocery store in Fort Wayne, and from that sale…
The Allen County War Memorial Coliseum — 4000 Parnell Avenue
The Allen County War Memorial Coliseum, at 4000 Parnell Avenue on the city's north side, is famous first for what it memorializes: it was proposed in 1944 by the Junior Chamber of Commerce as a living memorial to Allen County's…
Parkview Field — 1301 Ewing Street
Parkview Field, at 1301 Ewing Street downtown, is the modern landmark that proved Fort Wayne's downtown revival had an engine. The ballpark was built as the keystone of the Harrison Square project — a development of roughly $120…
Headwaters Park — 333 South Clinton Street
Headwaters Park occupies the flood-prone ground at the confluence itself, 333 South Clinton Street — the land where the St. Joseph and St. Marys meet to form the Maumee, across from the Old Fort grounds. For most of the twentieth…
Promenade Park and the Riverfront
Promenade Park, at 202 West Superior Street, on both banks of the St. Marys River at the Wells Street Bridge, is the first phase of Riverfront Fort Wayne — the project that turned the city back to face its rivers. The $25 million…
The Landing — Columbia Street
The Landing is Columbia Street, a single block of nineteenth-century commercial buildings just west of the downtown core — and it is famous for being first: Columbia Street was Fort Wayne's first commercial street, the trading…
Electric Works — the General Electric Broadway Campus
Electric Works is the reborn General Electric Broadway campus, the vast factory complex southwest of downtown where GE employed generations of Fort Wayne families — at its height one of the largest employers in the city — and…
Lindenwood Cemetery — 2324 West Main Street
Lindenwood Cemetery, at 2324 West Main Street, is Fort Wayne's famous burying ground — famous, unusually, for its landscape. On July 5, 1859, the cemetery's trustees bought 175 acres for $7,627.50 and had the ground laid out by…
Catholic Cemetery — 3500 Lake Avenue
The Catholic Cemetery, at 3500 Lake Avenue on the city's east side, is Fort Wayne's second famous burying ground and the resting place of its Catholic generations. Bishop Joseph Dwenger bought 120 acres in 1872 along what was…
Fort Wayne on Screen — In the Company of Men (1997)
Fort Wayne's signature screen credit is a famous one. Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men — his feature debut, and one of the defining American independent films of the 1990s — was shot entirely in Fort Wayne in June 1996, for a…
The Vanished Famous — the Anthony and Keenan Hotels, and the Festival Grounds
Two of Fort Wayne's most famous addresses no longer exist, and both were hotels. The Anthony Hotel, at 128 West Berry Street at Harrison, opened in February 1908 — nine stories and 263 rooms, the grand hotel of the city's…