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Real-estate developer; Forest Park addition and boulevard
On the record
Curdes emigrated at sixteen and reached Fort Wayne about 1879–80, working at the White Fruit House, K. B. Miller & Company and the Sieman Brothers bookstore before joining the Packard Organ Company in 1881, where he stayed until the panic curtailment of 1893. He entered real estate that year and went independent in 1895, handling 19 lots in Ewing's Grove addition, 100 lots in Industrial Park, 60 lots in the Swinney addition and control of 744 lots in the Forest Park addition, developing Forest Park Boulevard, the 105-acre Driving Park addition and Weisser Park. His sons Arnold G. W. Curdes and Walter L. Curdes joined the firm. He married Clara J. Harris on 18 June 1885. He is the father of the Arnold G. W. Curdes whose own sketch follows his in Griswold, and an earlier generation of the family than Louis Curdes, the Second World War fighter ace profiled elsewhere in this history.
Sources: Griswold, Pictorial History, Vol. II (1917), biographical sketch and portrait, read first-hand. No second source reached for this profile.