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1879 — 1901
A studio opposite the Cathedral: William Salzmann was born in Germany in October 1834 and immigrated to New York in 1868. In Fort Wayne he opened a studio at 150 Calhoun Street in 1879 that catered to the city's large German population; in 1883 he moved to 164 Calhoun, opposite the Cathedral, which established him as a favorite of local Catholics. His best-known photograph is an image of the Centlivre Brewery from 1897 — fittingly, the city's great German brewery taken by its German studio photographer — and a picture of his own studio appeared in Fort Wayne Illustrated the same year. He appears in the directories into the first years of the new century, then moved with his wife Wilhelmina to Detroit, to live with a daughter. He died at Dearborn, Michigan, on 17 December 1915, an inmate of St. Joseph's Retreat, a convalescent home. His Calhoun Street rooms, opposite the Cathedral, passed to the Stanton Portrait Company in 1893 — one studio address serving the same parish trade under two names.
Sources:
- John D. Beatty, Directory of Fort Wayne Photographers 1843–1930 — entries for William Salzmann and Merritt C. Stanton, citing Fort Wayne city directories, 1879–1901, the 1900 federal census, the Journal-Gazette, 15 January 1907, Fort Wayne Illustrated (1897), and Michigan death records.