The band era: brass in the parks

1878 — today

Everybody had a band: Before radio, the loudest public music in Fort Wayne was brass, and it was organized. The 1878 city directory's "Bands of Music" listing names the Fort Wayne City Band (brass and string), Leifels' Band, the St. Cecilia Brass and String Band, and St. Mary's Brass Band — a municipal band, a commercial band, and parish bands, in a city of some thirty thousand. The pattern held for generations: church, lodge, factory, and city bands supplied the sound for parades, picnics, political rallies, and Sunday park concerts, and the parks were built for it. McCulloch Park downtown — given to the city by Hugh McCulloch in 1886 and long known as G.E. Park — had a bandstand that, in the Parks Department's words, "has made this park a gathering place for the community since the early 1900s"; its renovation was rededicated in June 2009 with Fort Wayne Area Community Band music, in a ceremony that deliberately joined the old bandstand tradition to its modern bearer. That bearer is the direct heir of the band era: the Fort Wayne Area Community Band, founded in November 1979 when IPFW instrumental director Dr. William Schlacks put a notice in the News-Sentinel inviting lapsed players to take their horns out of closets. Thirty-five musicians came to the first rehearsal at Neff Hall; Schlacks conducted for the band's first seven years. The band — about a hundred players at its modern size — plays free summer concerts at the Foellinger Theatre and a winter series at Purdue Fort Wayne, the community-band form of the same civic music the City Band and the parish bands made a century before.

Sources:

1. Fort Wayne city directory, 1878 (R. L. Polk & Co.), "Bands of Music" — the Fort Wayne City Band, Leifels' Band, St. Cecilia Brass and String Band, and St. Mary's Brass Band, with their leaders.
2. The Waynedale News, "McCulloch Bandstand Rededicated" (June 17, 2009) — Parks Director Al Moll on the bandstand as a gathering place since the early 1900s, the $71,723 bandstand renovation, and the Fort Wayne Area Community Band's part in the rededication.
3. Fort Wayne Area Community Band, "Our History" (fwacb.org), and Whatzup, "Band Kids Get Second Wind" (2018) — the November 1979 founding, the thirty-five first-rehearsal players, Dr. William Schlacks's seven years as conductor, the Foellinger summer concerts and Rhinehart Music Center winter series.