The downtown clubs: the Commercial Club and its circle

1892 — 1918

The organizing: Fort Wayne's first great city club was a business club. Two dates stand in the record for its founding, and both are printed here. The National Register nomination for the Randall Building states that Perry A. Randall organized the Fort Wayne Commercial Club, forerunner of the Chamber of Commerce, in 1892, and served as its first president. The News-Sentinel's Cityscapes history and the History Center's own account date the Commercial Club's organization to July 8, 1899; the club's rooms were in the Odd Fellows' IOOF Building at Wayne and Calhoun, and in 1910 it merged with a second downtown organization, the Wayne Club. The 1892 date may mark Randall's first organizing and 1899 the durable incorporation — the sources do not say — but by the century's turn the Commercial Club was the room where Fort Wayne's business leadership met itself.

What it did: The Polk city directories of the 1910s credited the club, in their booster summaries, with the new Anthony Hotel — "to the members of which the city is indebted" for a hotel costing over $500,000 in grounds, building, and furnishings — and printed its membership as a civic statistic: 500 members in the 1912 directory, 875 in 1913, 839 in 1915, 800 in 1918. Griswold's 1917 history catches the club at work: Edward C. Miller elected its president, and the Commercial Club cooperating with the school authorities and Indiana University to establish the university's extension branch in Fort Wayne in June 1917. In June 1918, by the History Center's account, the club was reorganized into a modern chamber of commerce — Cityscapes puts a Chamber's organization a year earlier, in 1917 — and the Chamber built its own home at Wayne and Ewing in 1926–1928. The club died into the Chamber; the function never left downtown.

The University Club: Beside the Commercial Club stood a smaller, more social experiment. Griswold's 1917 volume records the University Club's organization with its officers — president Edward G. Hoffman, vice-president Dr. Albert E. Bulson Jr., secretary Harry W. Muller, treasurer J. Ewing Bond — and its home: the Leopold Freiburger residence at 327 West Berry Street, leased for a term of years as the club house. Griswold judged that "the organization has been a power for good in the community." The same pages list the era's lesser lights — the One Hundred Per Cent Club, organized in 1916 by young business men under president Gordon L. Eby — evidence of how completely the club form had captured the city's ambitions by the eve of the war.

Sources:

1. National Register of Historic Places nomination, Randall Building (listed 1990) — Perry A. Randall organized the Fort Wayne Commercial Club in 1892 and served as its first president.
2. News-Sentinel, Cityscapes, "The IOOF Building" (26 September 1982) — the Commercial Club organized July 8, 1899; the 1910 merger with the Wayne Club; the Chamber organized by 1917; ground broken for the Chamber's home in 1926.
3. The History Center, Fort Wayne chamber history (via the Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana) — the Commercial Club established 1899, serving until June 1918, when it was reorganized into a modern chamber of commerce.
4. R. L. Polk & Co., Fort Wayne city directories, 1912, 1913, 1915, 1918 — the Commercial Club's membership as printed (500, 875, 839, 800) and the Anthony Hotel credit.
5. B. J. Griswold, The Pictorial History of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Vol. I (1917) — the University Club's officers and the Freiburger residence lease; the One Hundred Per Cent Club (1916); Edward C. Miller's election; the June 1917 university extension cooperation.