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Tannery · West end of Columbia Street · Building later the Robinson / Grand / Brunswick / Randall Hotel
On the record
Two independent News-Sentinel accounts agree: the city history (“Absalom Holcomb and Isaac Marquis opened a tannery a year later [than the 1827 gristmill] at the west end of Columbia Street”) and Michael Hawfield’s Cityscapes history of the Randall Hotel (“The Randall Hotel began in 1828 as a tannery. Built by Absalom Halcomb and Isaac Marquis…”). Opened 1828.
Spelling conflict flagged: the city history spells the first founder Holcomb, Cityscapes spells him Halcomb; the Wayne Lodge record (Dawson’s Charcoal Sketches) independently places an Absalom Holcomb in Fort Wayne in this exact period — elected Master of Wayne Lodge No. 25 on 7 June 1830 — which supports “Holcomb” as the man’s spelling but does not itself mention the tannery.
What it did: tanning — animal hides made into leather. Hawfield’s description of the works: “a simple brick building with great vats in the basement where the hides of animals were thrown to soak in a urine and oak bark solution. The smell of the place was terrible, but the process was effective.”
Course and fate: tannery operation ended by conversion — the building became a hotel; the tannery’s own end date is not established, the conversion is documented. Hawfield: the tannery was “later (1856) operated by James Robinson” (whether Robinson still tanned there or held the building is not stated — 1856 is not printed here as a tanning date). In 1870 James Robinson and his son James made a hotel out of the tannery and called it the Robinson Hotel; leased 1873 to J. H. Buckles for $7,000; renamed the Grand Hotel in 1876; leased 1888 to a new manager as the Brunswick (lasted a year); bought in 1889 by attorney Perry A. Randall for $45,000 and renamed the Randall Hotel, formally opened 1890. The building stood until 1963 as the landmark building of Columbia Street. When Holcomb & Marquis itself ceased — and whether either man tanned elsewhere — is not established on sources in hand; the 1858–59 Williams’ directory is the owed route.
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- § 05 — business
Sources: News-Sentinel city history; News-Sentinel Cityscapes, Michael Hawfield, “The Randall: Best $2 hotel in the state” (21 Mar 1994); Wayne Lodge No. 25, Dawson’s Charcoal Sketches. Sources as cited in the profile.