Historic South Wayne and the South Calhoun Corridor

South Wayne began as a separate community south of the city, in the square half-mile bounded roughly by Creighton Avenue on the north, Rudisill Boulevard on the south, Hoagland Avenue on the east, and the St. Marys River on the west. Part of the ground was an 80-acre tract operated as the county farm between 1848 and 1853. In the 1860s Judge Lindley M. Ninde built a country estate called "Wildwood" on Fairfield Avenue, where Lutheran Park stands today. The anchor that turned a loose suburban settlement into a town was industry: Isaac T. Packard, whose Chicago organ factory burned in the Great Fire of 1871, rebuilt on Fairfield Avenue as the Fort Wayne Organ Company, later the Packard Piano Company. By the early 1870s the community was already being called South Wayne.

South Wayne fought to stay independent. A first incorporation petition came in 1872; a second movement, led by William J. Vesey and Henry Ninde, carried the fight through a lengthy court battle with Fort Wayne, which wanted to annex the area, and after the Indiana Supreme Court ruled for the community, South Wayne incorporated as a town in 1889. The independence lasted five years: Fort Wayne annexed South Wayne on August 14, 1894, bringing streetcar lines, utilities, and a new school with it. The housing that defines the district today came after annexation — the National Register district, a 17-acre core bounded by West Wildwood Avenue, South Wayne Avenue, Packard Avenue, and Beaver Avenue, takes in several additions platted between about 1895 and 1910, and about 80 percent of its homes were built between about 1910 and 1920, another 15 percent between 1920 and 1930. The South Wayne Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 4, 1992, with 133 contributing buildings. South Calhoun Street, the old commercial spine on the neighborhood's east side, carries the district's stores and churches, and the Historic South Wayne Neighborhood Association remains the area's civic voice. One caution belongs here in the text: "South Calhoun Place," which appears in the city's southeast-quadrant neighborhood lists east of Calhoun Street, is a different name from Historic South Wayne, which lies west of Calhoun — no plat, association history, or district record for South Calhoun Place was found, and the two are not merged in this section. The district's buildings are treated in the Architecture section.

Sources: Historic South Wayne Neighborhood Association history page (Laura Thayer's 1992 city-compiled history); National Register nomination, South Wayne Historic District (Ref. 92001146); Michael Hawfield, "South Wayne area was once a city unto itself," News-Sentinel, February 21, 1994; ACGSI South Wayne place file; Packard Area Planning Alliance plan, April 2005.