The Lincoln Museum — the museum Fort Wayne lost

1931 to 2008

Founding: In February 1928 Arthur F. Hall, president of the Lincoln National Life Insurance Company, created the Lincoln Historical Research Foundation to collect the record of the president his company was named for. In February 1931 the foundation dedicated the Lincoln Museum and Library. Under its longtime historian Louis A. Warren — the institution was long known as the Louis A. Warren Lincoln Library and Museum — the collection grew for decades inside the company's Fort Wayne headquarters into what was billed as the world's largest private collection of Lincoln material: some 230,000 items, among them 350 documents signed by Lincoln, about 5,000 nineteenth-century photographs, 7,000 prints, 18,000 rare books and pamphlets, 200,000 clippings, a signed Emancipation Proclamation, and one of the thirteen signed copies of the Thirteenth Amendment. The collection itself, and its library home today, are told in the Libraries record; this entry is the museum.

The Berry Street years: In October 1995 the museum opened in a purpose-built downtown home at 200 East Berry Street, in the Renaissance Square building, built at a cost of 6 million dollars. It drew about 40,000 visitors a year. But the trend ran against it: the number of child visitors fell from about 12,000 in 1996 to 7,500 in 2006, and overall attendance held at roughly 40,000 where larger-city museums drew six figures.

The closing: On 3 March 2008 Lincoln Financial Foundation announced the museum would close; it shut its doors to the public on 30 June 2008, weeks into the local run-up to the Lincoln bicentennial, to immediate and vocal local anger. The foundation put the collection's value at 20 million dollars. An Indiana consortium — the state, the city, the Indiana State Museum, the Allen County Public Library, and private partners — outbid consortia from Washington and Springfield, Illinois, and in December 2008 the collection was donated to the people of Indiana. The three-dimensional artifacts went to the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis; the books, documents, photographs, and papers stayed in Fort Wayne at the Allen County Public Library, where the Rolland Center for Lincoln Research, opened in January 2022, again puts the collection on public display. The museum building's 79 signature display pieces — Lincoln's cane, Mary Todd Lincoln's shawl, the children's toys — left Fort Wayne with the state split, and the city's seventy-seven-year museum was over.

Sources:

1. Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, "History" (lincolncollection.org) — the foundation created February 1928, the museum and library dedicated February 1931, the December 2008 donation to Indiana and the two-institution split.
2. The Journal Gazette, 4 March 2008, via the Authentic Campaigner and Lincoln Highway News — the closing announced for 30 June 2008, attendance of about 40,000, child visitors 12,000 in 1996 against 7,500 in 2006, the 20-million-dollar valuation.
3. Ian Rolland and panelists, "Securing Lincoln's Indiana Legacy," Indiana Magazine of History 105 (December 2009) — the 6-million-dollar museum opened October 1995, the decades housed in corporate headquarters, the Indiana proposal chosen over Springfield and Gettysburg.
4. Indianapolis Business Journal, 12 December 2008 — the gift to the Indiana consortium over the Smithsonian-backed Washington bid and the Springfield bid.