Felix Schanz: the glass plates

1881 — 1935

The most influential Fort Wayne photographer of his generation: Felix Schanz was born on 15 April 1861 in Alsace-Lorraine, a son of Casper and Catherine (Hauter) Schanz. His father died while he was young; educated in Germany, he went to work at fourteen in England and Holland, and in 1879, facing conscription into the army, he immigrated to New York. He worked as a railroad fireman and in the studio of C. H. Anderson before coming to Fort Wayne in 1881, where he worked first for the Centlivre Brewing Company and then in Frank R. Barrows's studio. The directory of 1885–86 lists him at 16 West Berry, next door to Barrows. In November 1886 he bought James Hover's studio at 60 Calhoun Street, above the Eckart meat market, and in 1889 he moved to a ground-floor studio at 112 Calhoun, renumbered 922 Calhoun in 1902, where he remained until 1913. There he opened the Schanz Studio anew at 309–311 West Washington — "a new and very modern studio," in Beatty's account, with the most technologically advanced photographic equipment in the city, a room equipped for motion pictures and large enough for vehicles to be driven in and photographed.

Schanz is best known for a series of glass-plate photographs of sites across the city, which are now part of the History Center collection; his postcards of Fort Wayne's 1916 centennial celebration carry the printed credit "F. Schanz, Photographer, 112 Calhoun St." and survive in the History Center's digital collections. The studio was later run by his son Paul and his daughter Elfrieda. He received many awards, and at his death he was one of only five photographers ever to receive the Distinguished Service Award of the International Photographers' Association. His standing in the trade is written in his workforce: Charles David Hoff, who began as a staff photographer at the Schanz Studio, stayed seventeen years before opening Hoff's Studio about 1924, and Charles W. Miner served his Fort Wayne apprenticeship in Schanz's rooms too. Schanz died in Fort Wayne on 14 March 1935. The glass plates outlived the studio: they are among the principal sources from which the city's appearance in its great building decades is now known.

Sources:

1. John D. Beatty, Directory of Fort Wayne Photographers 1843–1930 — entries for Felix Schanz and Charles David Hoff, citing Old Fort News, vol. 57, no. 1 (1994), the News-Sentinel, 14 March 1935, Griswold, Builders of Greater Fort Wayne, pp. 506 and 757–758, Griswold, Pictorial History, 2: 500–502, and Fort Wayne Illustrated (1897).
2. Indiana Memory, History Center Digital Collections — the 1916 Fort Wayne Centennial Celebration postcards credited "F. Schanz, 112 Calhoun St., Ft. Wayne, Ind."