The fraternal layer: Masons, Elks, Eagles, Moose

1865 — the 1920s

A wider door: Beneath the wealthy clubs stood a much larger club world, organized by lodge rather than by fortune. Fort Wayne's city directories list its "secret and benevolent societies" by the dozen. The Masons were the oldest layer — Wayne Lodge No. 25, F. & A. M., heads the 1891–92 directory's Masonic list, meeting in a hall at Clinton and Wayne; the fraternity crowned its presence in 1923–1925 with the Masonic Temple on East Washington Boulevard, the building treated in the Architecture section. The B'nai B'rith Lodge — organized April 15, 1865 in the 1915 and 1923 directories, March 1864 in an 1873–74 directory, a conflict the record carries unsettled — met in the Bass Block — the organized social presence of the city's Jewish community two generations before the country-club question arose anywhere in America.

The Elks and their country club: Fort Wayne Lodge No. 155 of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks was instituted on February 12, 1890, and the 1891–92 directory already shows it meeting Wednesday evenings in the Trentman Building. The Elks built what no other lodge in the city attempted: a country club of their own, on Hillegas Road, with a golf course built in 1928 and opened in 1929, a pool, and bowling. For six years in the 1950s that lodge course hosted the PGA Tour, as the Orchard Ridge entry below describes. The lodge's golf era ended in time; in 2007 two Elks members founded Coyote Creek Golf Club to preserve the course, and the lodge — still active — lists its meetings at the Hillegas Road property today.

Eagles and Moose: The Fraternal Order of Eagles' Fort Wayne Aerie No. 248 appears in the 1915 directory meeting Wednesdays at Harrison and Berry, and by 1918 in its own Eagles' Hall at 522 West Main Street; the aerie still operates in Fort Wayne, and a second Fort Wayne aerie, No. 3512, appears in state records by the late 1990s. The Loyal Order of Moose's Fort Wayne lodge fills the same 1915 directory page, meeting Tuesday nights in the Lau Block with its officers named in print. These were workingmen's and tradesmen's clubs — the dues were modest, the funerals and sick benefits were the point — but they taught the whole city the grammar of club life that the country clubs spoke in a richer dialect.

Sources:

1. R. L. Polk & Co., Fort Wayne city directories, 1891–92, 1915, and 1918 — the "Secret and Benevolent Societies" listings: Wayne Lodge No. 25; B'nai B'rith Lodge (organized April 15, 1865); B.P.O.E. No. 155 in the Trentman Building; Aerie No. 248 at Harrison and Berry, then Eagles' Hall, 522 W. Main; the Moose lodge in the Lau Block.
2. B.P.O. Elks, lodge directory (elks.org), Fort Wayne Lodge #155 — "Instituted February 12th, 1890"; the lodge's present meeting place on Hillegas Road.
3. Coyote Creek Golf Club, club history (coyotecreekbargrill.com) — the course as the former Fort Wayne Elks Lodge #155 Country Club; Coyote Creek founded in 2007 by two Elks members to preserve it.
4. Indiana Alcohol & Tobacco Commission, Allen County local board schedule, April 2026 — Fraternal Order of Eagles, Fort Wayne Aerie #248, 437 E. Berry St., fraternal club permit renewal.