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Brentwood S. Tolan, born November 23, 1855, trained in Fort Wayne under his father Thomas J. Tolan and became the architect of the Allen County Courthouse — the building that defines downtown Fort Wayne. Its cornerstone was laid on November 17, 1897, and it was dedicated on September 23, 1902, at a cost of $817,553.59. The courthouse, with Tolan's own bust of Chief Little Turtle set into its Main Street side in 1902, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2003.
Tolan's courthouse work extended across the region — the Whitley, Delaware and La Porte county courthouses in Indiana are his — and his Fort Wayne commissions included the Fort Wayne Opera House, the Masonic Temple and the Old National Bank Building, the latter buildings since demolished. ARCH, Fort Wayne's architecture-preservation organization, credits him with more than forty buildings and with plans for twenty-three jails. He died on June 30, 1923.
Sources: ARCH, Inc. (Fort Wayne); National Historic Landmark nomination, Allen County Courthouse; The Historical Marker Database (HMdb), Allen County Courthouse marker; Input Fort Wayne, November 11, 2020 (Little Turtle bust).