Northside

Northside is not a subdivision but an umbrella: the Northside Neighborhood Association's ground northeast of downtown — 816 acres between the St. Joseph River on the north and west, the Maumee River on the south, and Addison Avenue, Crescent Avenue, East Drive, Florida Drive, and Morton Street on the east — takes in Lakeside, the Driving Park and Forest Park plats, North Anthony Boulevard, Kensington, Northwood, and more. There is no single plat date or developer to report for Northside itself, and none is invented here. Its founding story is a fight. North of State Boulevard stood the campus of the Indiana School for Feeble-Minded Youth, opened there in 1890 and renamed the Fort Wayne State School in 1931. When the state school operation moved out and the state proposed a Regional Correctional Center on the nearly 60-acre campus, the surrounding residents organized — the "Corrections Center Opponents," twelve named members, formed November 30, 1974 with councilman Don Schmidt's help — and won. The park won the land instead: Northside Park was acquired by the Park Department in 1978, with ball fields, a pool, tennis courts, and one original brick building kept as a community building.

The opponents' organizing meeting, on February 17, 1975 at Riverside School, founded the Northside Neighborhood Association. Described in 2025 as Fort Wayne's largest geographic neighborhood association, it marked its fiftieth anniversary on September 28, 2025, at Lakeside Park, the day after its Home and Garden Tour. Its component National Register districts — Lakeside, Driving Park–Seven States, North Anthony Boulevard, and Northwood (2026) — have their own entries in this section; North Side High School, at 475 East State Boulevard, is the area's anchor institution.

Sources: Northside Neighborhood Association history (NeighborhoodLink); ACGSI, Indiana School for Feeble Minded Youth page; Whatzup, September 24, 2025; City of Fort Wayne, Northwood listing release, September 30, 2026.