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1864–1901, floor instance
John A. Shoaff (b. 1836, Juniata, Perry County, Pennsylvania; d. Fort Wayne, 30 October 1921) appears first in the 1864–65 directory with Shoaff's Art Gallery at the northwest corner of Calhoun and Main. By 1866–67 he had moved to the Keystone Block, southwest corner of Calhoun and Columbia; Beatty records that "this address later became known as the Shoaff Building at 7 West Columbia, a building that he built and owned." The Shoaff Building later carried the Gettel Building and Courtside Building names, across Berry Street from the courthouse. Shoaff worked the address for three decades, in 1874–75 as Shoaff & Berst with Conrad Berst, and in 1872 he bought the Dille & Poston solar-camera patent (see art-63-3). One conflict prints whole: Shoaff's obituary called him the city's first photographer; Beatty flags the claim as an error — Keith, Hubbell, Telliga and McDonald all precede him by a decade or more.
Frank Rufus Barrows (b. Sturgis, Michigan, August 1854; d. Eugene, Oregon, 29 July 1920) arrived in 1880, worked as Clayton & Barrows at 18 W. Berry, and was sole proprietor 1881–1888; he moved to 62 Calhoun in 1889–90 and to 21–23 W. Berry in 1893–94, remaining at 23 W. Berry until 1900. His gallery there was advertised in the directories as Barrows' Art Gallery, "the finest and best appointed Gallery in the State." Tested, the superlative is the studio's own directory advertising, carried in Beatty's directory and in the Indiana Album's record of the firm — a trade claim made by the claimant, not an independent verdict, and it prints here at that strength. The substance behind the puff was real: Barrows' studio made many of the photographs in Fort Wayne Illustrated (1897), his brother Charles V. Barrows worked next door 1888–1891, and when the Parrot Studio bought out the Barrows studio in 1901 it acquired a business that had itself taken in Shoaff's negatives and trade in 1892 — the floor's negative archive passing hand to hand with the buildings. No building raised as a photographer's studio, and no gallery of any name, is recorded on Clay or Harris township ground in this period.