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Shawnee Place, in the Fairfield neighborhood south of downtown, was platted and developed about 1911 by Wildwood Builders — the firm of attorney Lee J. Ninde, his wife Joel Roberts Ninde, and designer Grace Crosby. It was the firm's first venture, and its plan is unlike anything else in the city: a two-block boulevard, Shawnee Drive, with a parked median, narrow east-west footpaths, and a central fountain whose concrete basin survives as a planter. By 1916 most of its homes were complete. The district, roughly bounded by Killea Street, Kinnaird Avenue, Webster Street, and Hoagland Avenue, holds about 245 homes and features built between about 1903 and 1940, plus one Italianate house of about 1872 that recalls the area's country-estate era. Many of the houses were designed by Ninde and Crosby themselves, whom the Indiana preservation office describes as two of the earliest women architects and developers in Indiana.
A smaller Shawnee Place Local Historic District was established in 1998. The larger National Register district was listed on August 27, 2024, after a nomination prepared by Jill Downs with the Fairfield Neighborhood Association, the Fort Wayne Historic Preservation Commission, and the state preservation office. No source found for this section states where the name Shawnee Place came from, and none is offered here. The district's buildings are treated in the Architecture section.
Sources: Indiana DNR Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology, National Register summary, August 2024 (Ref. 100010747); City of Fort Wayne release, September 6, 2024; Packard Area plan, April 2005; Visit Fort Wayne, "Historical Neighborhoods of Fort Wayne."