Fort Wayne Arts, Media and Sports History

Fort Wayne, Indiana · topic

Fort Wayne Arts, Media and Sports History

Teams, music, stage, comedy, screen, press, books, fashion and honors.

Allen County War Memorial Coliseum interior, Fort Wayne, Indiana — home ice of the Fort Wayne Komets, with retired-number banners at upper left Zach Klein · CC BY 2.0 · source file

Fort Wayne Team Histories: The Komets, the Daisies, the TinCaps and the Zollner PistonsTeam Histories · the clubs wholeEvery Fort Wayne team with a documented history of its own, told at the depth its record carries — the Komets first, then the Daisies and the Wizards/TinCaps line, then the older clubs back to 1862.

Fort Wayne Sports History: Teams, Leagues and BallparksSports · the full recordEvery team, league, park and title in the city's record, from the first professional game ever played to the clubs on the field today.

Racing in Fort Wayne: Speedways, Tracks and the Soap Box DerbyRacing · The speed recordFort Wayne has raced on almost everything it has built. Its first track was a trotting course on the north edge of town, and within ten years automobiles were racing on it before crowds of sixteen thousand. Its…15 entry pages

Fort Wayne Music History: Singing Societies, Bands and the Philharmonic16 entry pages

Fort Wayne Arts: Arts United, Civic Theatre and the Arts Campus20 entry pages

Fort Wayne Theaters: The Clyde, the Majestic and the Movie HousesCross-reference: The Emboyd — opened May 14, 1928, by W. Clyde Quimby, renamed the Embassy on its sale to Alliance Amusement in 1952, a movie palace until the theatre went dark in the early 1970s, and saved from…17 entry pages

Fort Wayne Comedy: Comedians, Stages, Comedy Clubs and Humor in PrintComedy · The Performers, the Rooms, and the CraftComedy is the subject this history was missing, and its Fort Wayne record is heavier at the top than anywhere else. The city produced the defining screen comedienne of the 1930s — Carole Lombard, born on Rockhill…21 entry pages

Fort Wayne in Film: The City on ScreenFort Wayne on film: the shape of the record11 entry pages

Film and Television Producers From Fort WayneThe producers: five screen names, one studio, and no mogul11 entry pages

Fort Wayne Photographers: The People Who Pictured the CityPhotographers · The people who made Fort Wayne's picture of itselfAlmost everything Fort Wayne knows about how it looked before living memory comes through the cameras of its working photographers. They were tradesmen, mostly, with rooms over Columbia and Calhoun Street stores, and…22 entry pages

Fort Wayne Newspapers and Broadcasting: A Media HistoryNewspapers & Media — the Press as an InstitutionFort Wayne has been a newspaper town since 1833, when its first press was set up on West Columbia Street for a village of about three hundred people, and a broadcasting town since the 1920s, when a station above an…19 entry pages

Fort Wayne Authors and Books: Edith Hamilton, Ross Lockridge Jr. and MoreAuthors & Books · the literary recordFort Wayne has never been a literary capital, and this record does not pretend otherwise. What it has is a short shelf of genuine consequence: a classicist raised on a three-block family estate downtown whose Mythology…13 entry pages

Fort Wayne Fashion History: Hosiery, Department Stores and Vera BradleyFashion · What Fort Wayne made, sold, and woreFort Wayne dressed America twice. In the 1890s its knitting mills took a garment that Americans had bought from Europe for generations — the full-fashioned stocking — and sold it back to the country under a Fort Wayne…9 entry pages

National Awards and Honors: Fort Wayne's Pulitzers, MacArthurs and MoreAwards and Honors: The National LedgerEvery city keeps an informal account of the honors its people have won, and the account tends to grow in the telling. This section keeps the account the strict way: an honor is entered here only when the body that gives…13 entry pages

Fort Wayne Halls of Fame: Inductees and HonorsHalls of Fame · The halls seated here, and Fort Wayne's names in the halls elsewhereFort Wayne keeps two halls of fame of its own, both born of its two oldest sporting institutions: the Komets' hall, established in 1988 inside the Coliseum's hockey club, and the baseball hall founded in 1961 by the…10 entry pages

Fort Wayne Artists: Painters, Sculptors and PrintmakersThe Artists · The makers Fort Wayne kept, and the ones it sent outFort Wayne never had an art colony and never tried to. What it had, from 1836 on, was a working trade: a portrait painter who could make a living at the head of the Maumee, a school on West Berry Street that taught…14 entry pages

Fort Wayne Sports Players: The Athletes the Record Ties to the CitySports Players · The names Fort Wayne can claim, and how it claims themEvery city keeps a list like this one in its head, and most lists are built on rumour: a star once passed through, a birthplace half remembered, a grandfather who swore he played beside a great one. This section builds…16 entry pages

Fort Wayne Culture: The Arts United City and Its Cultural InstitutionsCulture · How Fort Wayne decided what it wasFort Wayne's culture was never an accident of talent. The talent was always here: a community theatre in 1927, a children's theatre in 1934, an orchestra twice-born, a German men's chorus that has sung since 1869. What…13 entry pages

Kids and Family Entertainment in Fort Wayne: Playgrounds, Theatres and Family FixturesKids & Family Entertainment · Where Fort Wayne took its childrenBefore Fort Wayne had attractions, it had an argument: that children needed somewhere safe and supervised to play, and that providing it was a public duty. The argument was won by clubwomen with a six-acre playground in…17 entry pages

Fort Wayne Influencers and Digital Creators: The Online-First RecordInfluencers & Digital Creators · The audience Fort Wayne built onlineEvery earlier media leg in this record ran on plant: a press, a transmitter, a studio somebody had to buy. The digital layer ran on a bedroom and a login. Fort Wayne's part in it is bigger than the city's size suggests…10 entry pages

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Using this page? Copy a credit line. Last updated November 10, 2026.

Source: Fort Wayne Arts, Media and Sports History, Moosed History by Project Moosed, https://history.projectmoosed.com/usa/midwest/indiana/fort-wayne/topics/arts-media-sports/

@misc{moosed-arts-media-sports,
  title        = {{Fort Wayne Arts, Media and Sports History}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://history.projectmoosed.com/usa/midwest/indiana/fort-wayne/topics/arts-media-sports/}},
  organization = {Project Moosed},
  note         = {Moosed History. Last updated 2026-11-10. Accessed 2026-11-10},
  year         = {2026}
}