Posted April 11, 200916 yr Boxing the Compass An Overview of Fort Wayne - April 8, 2009 All photos copyright © 2009 by Robert E Pence Thanks to Stephen L. Parker of Around Fort Wayne for inviting me to accompany him to the open-air deck on the 23rd level at the top of Fort Wayne's historic, beautiful, Art Deco Lincoln Tower. A vintage postcard view of the tower at night. The 312-foot tower was designed by local architect A.M. Strauss with Cleveland, Ohio, firm Walker & Weeks, and was completed in 1930. It was Indiana's tallest building until 1962, and Fort Wayne's tallest until construction of the present National City Center in 1970. It was acquired and extensively refurbished in 1998 by Tippmann Properties and is home to Tower Bank. Starting looking North, we'll move clockwise for an overview of downtown Fort Wayne. North 1986 I wonder why there are no pigeons on the courthouse dome in the 1986 photos, and in 2009 any time of day, any time of year, it's covered with hundreds of them. The black pattern on the top of the dome resulted from an attempt to seal leaks. A contractor had used silicone caulk to seal the dome, apparently unaware that silicone caulk does not hold up under exposure to direct sunlight, and the caulk failed. Sometime around 1990 the dome was overlaid with copper panels shown in the later photos. Allen County Courthouse and Plaza. In the middle distance, the former site of the New York Central Fourth Street Yard. More recently it was a scrap-metal recycling facility, and has been considered for purchase by the city for redevelopment. The circular paths mark Headwaters Park, a former light-industrial and warehouse area in the flood plain, cleared to provide space for floodwater. In the foreground, the Old Fort. In the distance, Memorial Coliseum. Northeast On the left, Freimann Square. Going east from there, the 1973 Arts United Center designed by Louis Kahn, the Art Museum, and across the railroad the two towers are Three Rivers Apartments 1986 The complex with the red tile roofs, partially obscured by Three Rivers North, is the water purification plant. 1986 Events pavilion in Headwaters Park. The excavating machinery on the right is being used to mitigate soil contamination from a plant that once produced gas from coal on the site. East The Romanesque sandstone building is the former City Hall, designed by Fort Wayne architects Wing & Mahurin. It now houses The History Center. Across the street is the GTE building; the brick cladding conceals a handsome WWI-era brick building. The building in the lower right is Renaissance Square, built by Wolf & Dessaur department store about 1960, and then stripped to columns and floors and reconstructed as a modern office building with a five-story atrium in the 1980s. It housed the corporate offices of Lincoln Financial Corporation before the move to Philadelphia, and until recently, the Lincoln Museum. 1986 The brick house with the carriage barn, beyond the History Center, is the McCulloch-Weatherhogg house. To the immediate south of the carriage barn and facing on Lafayette Street, the small old brick house was the home of Alexander Rankin, pastor of First Presbyterian Church at its founding in 1837. Alexander was the brother of Ohio abolitionist John Rankin, and it's thought that Alexander probably harbored fugitive slaves in his house. Southeast The building with the parking garage with helix ramp was built around 1960 or 1961 for Indiana Bank. Now it's home to offices of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne and South Bend and the Cathedral Museum. The building with the columns is the Masonic Temple, and the YMCA is immediately on its east. Farther east, the garishly painted tower is a hotel. It was built as a Sheraton and was closed for some years following a fire, and then reopened as a Holiday Inn, which it is no longer. The church in the upper right is St. Paul's Lutheran, Missouri Synod. It's the site of the meeting that organized the Missouri Synod. On the left in the center distance, the modernist church is Wayne Street Methodist. 1986 Just beyond St. Paul's Lutheran is Anthis Career Center, a vocational high school. It formerly was Central High School. The large, flat-roofed building beyond that is the U.S. Post Office, and beyond that is the elevated right-of-way of the former Pennsylvania and Wabash Railroads, now CSX and Norfolk Southern, respectively. South Tallest building in Fort Wayne and tallest reinforced concrete building in Indiana, 442-foot One Summit Square was designed by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo & Associates and completed in 1982. Principal tenants are Indiana Michigan Power Company and regional headquarters of JP Morgan Chase. 1986 Southwest 1986 The large gray building in the center is the Grand Wayne Center, Fort Wayne's convention center. It extends to the left and connects with the Hilton Hotel on Calhoun Street. On the right, a corner and the main entrance of the Allen County Public Library can be seen, and in the center distance is Parkview Field, Fort Wayne's new downtown ballpark and home to the Tin Caps. The Allen County Public Library is in the center, and on the right is First Presbyterian Church's fourth building, built 1956. Beyond the library, the stone church is Trinity English Lutheran. Its original congregation bought First Presbyterian's original 1837 building in 1846, and the present building's bell tower holds the bell from that first building. 1986 In the large brick factory complex General Electric once employed thousands of people manufacturing motors and transformers, before the company's much-lauded-until-recently former CEO decided in the 1980s that the company's assets and resources could be better utilized speculating in financial abstractions. Wayne Street at Harrison Street. The storefront next to the alley houses the Double Dragon. I think the food's pretty good, especially the spicy stuff. JK O'Donnel's Irish Pub is a relative newcomer downtown and very popular, and across the street from it is Toscani's Pizzeria, another place I like. The brick four-storey building on the corner was once Patterson-Fletcher, a department store that carried good-quality clothing. 1986 West Looking west on Berry Street, the building in the middle right with the nice cornices was home to Fort Wayne National Bank prior to construction of what is now National City Building. The most distant brick building on the right side of Berry Street is St. Joseph's Hospital, known throughout the area for its burn center. 1986 Looking down at Berry & Calhoun Streets. 1986 Northwest National City Center was completed in 1970 for Fort Wayne National Bank and designed by Kelly Marshall Architects. On Emporis I found five other buildings designed by that firm, and only one, in Lafayette, Indiana, doesn't look like a carbon copy of all the others. 1986 The street running west from Calhoun Street, just a short block this side of the railroad, is Columbia Street. From here the street into the 1960s continued eastward all the way to the Columbia Street Bridge; its former right of way now is occupied by the City-County Building, Arts United Center, Museum of Art, and main fire station. The canopied platforms on the railroad elevation behind Columbia Street are where passenger trains on the Nickel Plate Railroad once stopped. Top of the tower in back-and-white from 1986 Street Level A short walk north on Calhoun Street, starting at Wayne Street Approaching Berry Street Beauty ... ... and at Main Street, the Beast The parking garage matches. Riegel's is a long-time Fort Wayne retailer. Prior to the late sixties, they were on the corner across the street, where the City-County Building stands now. In the wee hours of the morning, when you really need a friend ... The building on the right replaced an older building where baking powder was invented, and where a young Thomas Edison once roomed while working as a railroad telegrapher. There was no official explanation for the collapse of the original building, which was being extensively reworked for conversion to a pub/restaurant. After the debris was removed it appeared that excavation to deepen the basement had gone lower than the level of the foundation footers. Nothing was holding the bottom of the foundation wall against the pressure of the soil on the outside, and it had pushed inward letting everything come down in a heap. The collapse occurred moments after the 9pm bus lineup passed by.
April 11, 200916 yr Double wow!! Wonderful photos. Always a fan of the bird's eye perspective. Great descriptions too.
April 11, 200916 yr Nice. Thanks for the tour. Fort Wayne looks very clean. Is the building in the last photo buckling? Looks like there ae some structural issues.
April 12, 200916 yr Fantastic tour. The city seems to have a much larger CBD than I would have expected given the population. Also extremely clean looking, without too much bad 60s architecture, and appears fairly dense. What a pleasant surprise. Thanks! Very comprehensive...of course! The courthouse is nothing short of amazing. I recall the photo essay you did some years back. It puts many state capitols to shame.
April 12, 200916 yr Nice. Thanks for the tour. Fort Wayne looks very clean. Is the building in the last photo buckling? Looks like there ae some structural issues. Downtown really is quite well-kept. That building has looked like that for as long as I can remember. It probably took a hundred years to get that way, and I suspect that trying to straighten it out would threaten its stability. It's probably being held up by the buildings on either side. I don't think any of those buildings have occupancy permits for the upper floors because they're firetraps. They're probably all (except the biggest one, the brown brick with the white trim) timber-framed on the inside with wood floors, and none of them have sprinkler systems. Night clubs, etc., come and go quickly in that block because Fort Wayne doesn't have enough tourist business to support that as an entertainment district and local folks get tired of the same-old, same-old after a little while. I think the way to bring life back to that area would be to save the facades and put new buildings behind them. Given current economic trends, though, that's not likely to happen for a long time, if ever. ... The courthouse is nothing short of amazing. I recall the photo essay you did some years back. It puts many state capitols to shame. Thanks. The courthouse interior photos are still on my web site here.
April 12, 200916 yr ah nice. interesting to see what the roof of the courthouse looks like. also, looking back on the new ballpark (especially just after your thread on that).
April 12, 200916 yr Nice! "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
April 24, 200916 yr Wonderful thread! Now, if Ohio can just annex Ft Wayne, that would be awesome. Truly one of the midwest's best mid-sized cities.
April 24, 200916 yr Great detail, Rob! Almost as if it came from a lifelong resident! "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
April 24, 200916 yr Wonderful thread! Now, if Ohio can just annex Ft Wayne, that would be awesome. Truly one of the midwest's best mid-sized cities. I've been promoting that for some time, but no one pays me any attention. I think the Maumee Valley watershed, including the St. Joseph and St. Marys Rivers and their tributaries, either should be joined to Ohio or reconstituted as its own autonomous district. Fort Wayne, at the headwaters of the Maumee, should be the seat of government, and Toledo as a lake port should be the shipping commerce center. Great detail, Rob! Almost as if it came from a lifelong resident! I almost qualify, although I lived on a farm in Wells County (next county to the south) from about 8 until my late teens. I've lived in Fort Wayne longer than most forumers have been alive, so I guess that's one way of defining "lifelong."
May 15, 200916 yr Updated the exterior views of the tower and added some 1986 photos from the top, for comparison.
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