The New International Encyclopædia/Fort Wayne (Indiana)

FORT WAYNE. A city and railroad centre, the county-seat of Allen County, Ind., 150 miles east by south of Chicago, Ill., at the junction of the Saint Joseph's and Saint Mary's rivers, which here unite in the Maumee, and on the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago, the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, the Grand Rapids and Indiana, the New York, Chicago and Saint Louis, the Wabash, the Lake Erie and Western, and the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton railroads (Map: Indiana, D 1). It occupies an area of nearly 10 square miles on a plateau at an elevation of 775 feet, and has a United States Government building, a court-house that cost over $1,000,000, Saint Joseph's and Hope hospitals, Indiana School for Feeble-Minded Youth, orphan asylums, a public-library building, for the erection of which Andrew Carnegie gave $75,000, three public parks, and monuments to Anthony Wayne and Henry W. Lawton. It is also the seat of Concordia College (Lutheran), opened in 1839. The city is in an agricultural district and has important manufacturing interests. The industrial plants include shops of the Pennsylvania and the Wabash railroads, foundries and machine-shops, wheel-works, flouring-mills, electric-light works, knitting-mills, oil-tank works, packing houses, shirt and waist factories, etc.

Fort Wayne is governed by a mayor, who holds office for four years, and a unicameral council. Of the municipal officials, the boards of health, public works, and public safety are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council. The annual income of the city, including revenues of water-works, amounts to about $650,000, expenditures to $475,000, the principal items of expense being $30,000 for the police department (including amounts for police courts, jails, etc.), $50,000 for the fire department, and $100,000 for schools. The water-works, which are owned by the city, are operated at a yearly cost of about $40,000. Fort Wayne is built on the site of the principal village of the Miami Indians and near the site of the old French Fort Miami. In October, 1790, General Harmar burned the village. In 1794 Gen. Anthony Wayne built a fort here which, in September of 1812, was closely besieged by the Indians. A village gradually grew up and was chartered as a city in 1839, though growth of the place was very slow until after the completion of the Wabash and Erie Canal in 1840, and of several railroads between 1850 and 1860. Population, in 1850, 4282; in 1870, 17,718; in 1890, 35,393; in 1900, 45,115.