Fort Wayne, Ind.- The City of Fort Wayne is celebrating National Historic Preservation Month by highlighting the City’s historic neighborhoods, buildings and landscapes throughout the month of May.
To promote and commemorate the month, the City’s Community Development Division will share facts and photos about unique historic districts across the City via social media posts on the Fort Wayne Neighborhoods Facebook page and on Twitter, @FWNeighborhoods. The division is also encouraging residents to join the celebration by sharing photos that depict Fort Wayne’s rich history on social media along with the hashtag #PreserveFW22.
Among the Historic Preservation Month partners are ARCH, Inc., and Visit Fort Wayne. ARCH will host Karen Richards May 21 at 11 a.m. at the History Center for a “Fun and Free” lecture. The topic will be “Urban Farmhouses.” Richards will explore the history and architecture of houses that were the homes of farm families, or were country estates, before neighborhoods were developed and the city grew around them. Several of these houses are Fort Wayne single-site local historic districts.
The Historic Preservation staff has produced a number of walking tour brochures of historic districts throughout the city, including brochures for The Landing, and for historic buildings in the downtown area. These brochures are available at Visit Fort Wayne, the Community Development office, and may be downloaded from the City’s Historic Preservation website.
“Historic Preservation is good business for Fort Wayne and the surrounding area,” said Creager Smith, Historic Preservation Planner for the City of Fort Wayne. “Electric Works put Fort Wayne in the national spotlight for large preservation projects. The National Trust Community Investment Corporation, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, made the largest Historic Tax Credit investment in the company’s history; a total of $48.2 million toward Electric Works.”
For more information about Electric Works, click here.
The City’s Historic Preservation staff and the Historic Preservation Commission work to strengthen the City’s historic resources through preservation and heritage development. The Historic Preservation program offers a range of assistance to help property owners and neighborhoods recognize historic properties by listing them as Local Historic Districts or in the National Register of Historic Places. Technical assistance is also available to assist property owners in maintaining or recapturing the historic character of their properties.