The Journal-Gazette Building

by Tom Castaldi

Across the street from Freimann Square, south of the grand statue of Mad Anthony Wayne astride his great war horse, and east of the Allen County Courthouse Green, stands the Journal-Gazette Building at Main and Clinton streets. An Italianate style, it was originally constructed in 1871 for industrialist John Bass.

When Clinton Street was widened by twenty feet, this structure was extensively remodeled in 1927 by local architect Charles Weatherhogg, and in 1982 the building was again renovated. The Journal-Gazette Building has been the home of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, a newspaper that traces its beginnings to the Civil War era.

          The Fort Wayne Gazette was established in 1863 as a pro-Lincoln newspaper that supported the administration's policy in conducting the war. Throughout the nineteenth century the newspaper was owned by numerous publishers who vigorously supported the Republican Party.

A separate paper taking the name Fort Wayne Journal began in 1868 as a weekly rival to the Gazette in its support of the Republican Party.  In 1880, however, Democrat state senator Thomas Foster purchased the Journal and changed it to a Democrat newspaper.  On June 14^th, 1899, the Journal bought the Gazette, creating the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette as the community's leading morning publication. 

The newspaper leased the south end of the original building in 1908, and in 1927 it purchased and remodeled the property as the Journal-Gazette Building.  It was Lewis Ellingham, a first generation English immigrant, who served as the publisher of the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette from 1916 to 1934 and guided the newspaper into its new facilities at the corner of Main and Clinton streets.

In 1950, the Journal-Gazette and the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel entered into a joint operating agreement to share common printing and other business activities.  The newspapers' operations moved to a new facility on West Main Street in 1958. Executive offices of the Journal Gazette Company remained in the remodeled space of the old building.  Publisher Richard Inskeep renovated and restored the old building to its original grandeur in 1982, and it earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places late that year.

Fort Wayne's Worst Train Wreck

by Nancy McCammon-Hansen

There’s nothing like an accident to bring out the gawkers and that certainly was true when Fort Wayne’s worst train wreck within the city limits occurred on August 13, 1911.

A speeding Pennsylvania Railroad passenger train, trying to make up for lost time, crashed into a freight train in Swinney Park. Three railroad workers were killed and 35 passengers and other crew members injured. (Some reports say four were killed and 30 injured.) The train was reportedly going about 50 miles an hour, traveling from Chicago to New York, when it left the track at a switch around 6:30 p.m. and crashed into the freight train. Two engines were pulling the passenger train and as they left the rails, they sideswiped the engine of the freight train.

“The baggage car, smoker, buffet, and two sleepers turned over in the ditch. Most of the injured were seated in the diner and smoker when the accident occurred,” according to the website www.historictornadoes.com/disasters/train-wrecks-accidents. Fortunately for the passengers, the train was composed of all-steel cars that survived the crash far better than “old-fashioned wood construction”. The engines of the passenger train were thrown down an embankment and the freight train’s engine “reared up over the trucks of the fliers (sic) engine”.

The information on the historictornadoes.com website was transcribed from The Washington Post District of Columbia 1911-08-14.

Other information in this blog post comes from Scott M. Bushnell’s book “Historic Photos of Fort Wayne”, which is for sale in our gift shop.

The photos come from postcards in the History Center’s collection.