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1890 — present
The lodge as clubhouse: The Private Clubs section tells the Elks' Fort Wayne story — Fort Wayne Lodge No. 155 of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, instituted February 12, 1890, and builder of the Hillegas Road country club — and the fraternal frame of the Eagles and the Moose; what belongs here is the layer those entries pass over. By 1915 the Elks had their own building at the corner of West Berry and Maiden Lane, meeting Thursday evenings a block from the Masonic Temple — the Elks were the order that most openly traded ritual for sociability, and their downtown home stood accordingly between the temples and the saloons. The Fraternal Order of Eagles' Aerie No. 248 met Wednesdays at Harrison and Berry in 1915, in the hall that also housed half the city's other societies. The Loyal Order of Moose, the youngest of the three, fills the 1915 directory page with named officers — James E. Ford, "dictator," in the order's cheerful vocabulary — meeting Tuesday nights in the Lau Block, with a Junior Order of Moose No. 12 for the next generation and a Mooseheart Legion meeting monthly. All three orders survive in Fort Wayne today, the Elks and Eagles still keeping their lodges, which puts them in the small company of this section's orders that never left.
Sources:
- R. L. Polk & Co., Fort Wayne city directory, 1915 — the Elks' building at Berry and Maiden Lane; Aerie No. 248; the Moose lodge, its officers, Junior Order No. 12 and Mooseheart Legion.
- Private Clubs section of this history — Elks No. 155's institution, the Trentman Building years, the Hillegas Road country club, and the orders' survival.