The History Center

Museum opened 1927 — Old City Hall from 1980

Homes: The society's museum opened in 1927 in the Old Swinney Homestead, which remained its headquarters for more than half a century. (The society had occupied the homestead from 1924; the museum opening itself is dated 1927 in the History Center's own retrospectives.) In October 1980 the society closed the Swinney museum and reopened in the Old City Hall building at 302 East Berry Street — the 1893 Richardsonian Romanesque city hall designed by John F. Wing and Marshall S. Mahurin, which had housed the city's courts, mayor's office, jail, and police until 1971. The museum was rechristened The History Center — dated 2001 in one History Center account carried by ACGSI and 2002 in another; the record does not settle the year. The restored Shields Room, the former city council chamber, is its signature gallery.

Collection: The collection has grown past anything the Relic Room held. Its size is best given as a dated series: more than 26,000 artifacts, photographs, and documents in the society's earlier published figure; over 28,000 artifacts, 20,000 photographs, and over 750 linear feet of archival material in 2022; and more than 32,000 artifacts, photographs, and documents on the center's own site today — by its account one of the largest anthologies of locally relevant historic material in the Midwest, spanning the glacial period to the early twenty-first century. The center also holds the 1893 building itself as, in its words, the largest item in the collection. Its best-attended program is the Festival of Gingerbread, held in the Shields Room each holiday season — dated to 1985 in the center's own materials and to 1986 in one press account; it draws on the order of 10,000 to 13,000 visitors a year.

Sources:

1. ACGSI, The History Center places page, quoting History Center posts — museum opened in the Old Swinney Homestead in 1927, remained until 1980, relocated to Old City Hall in October 1980, renamed the History Center in 2002; collection figures of 2022.
2. The History Center, "About" (fwhistorycenter.org) — collection of more than 32,000 artifacts, photographs, and documents; the 1893 building by Wing and Mahurin; renamed per the account carried at ACGSI, "rechistened" in 2001.
3. Visit Indiana and Input Fort Wayne — the Festival of Gingerbread, since 1985, in the Shields Room; Whatzup (2025) dating the festival's start to 1986 and calling the 2025 edition the 40th annual.