Some new photos from Fort Wayne

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This is one of the huge abandoned factory buildings at the General Electric complex on Broadway in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The company closed the last of its operations in Fort Wayne at the beginning of 2015, though most of the buildings, including this one, had sat empty for 20 years prior to that.​

One of the billboards in front of the GE building features a famous quote from John Wayne, an American actor famous for playing cowboys, old-west lawmen, and other tough-guy characters:

​
"Don't much like quitters, son."​
 
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General Electric began demolition of one of the buildings at the company's huge factory complex on Broadway in downtown Fort Wayne at the end of March, 2015.​

This building, on the east side of Broadway on the northern edge of McCulloch Park, housed offices for the engineering and design staff. I was surprised that they began with this structure, since it looked, from the outside, to be in better condition than many of the others at the facility. GE said that it was demolished because it had problems with mold in the walls.​

I made this photograph at the beginning of the demolition process. Instead of imploding the building, it was disassembled slowly over a period of a few weeks. They began by removing the building's windows, then each floor was removed, from the top down.​
 
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The long-vacant Boom Boom's Saloon building was demolished on November 10, 2015. This photograph was made the next evening at sunset. The building was on Fairfield Avenue, just north of Taylor Street, in Fort Wayne, Indiana.​

When I was young, Boom Boom's was probably the sleaziest bar in Fort Wayne. A strip club, it was also a notorious center of crime and violence. It closed in 2000 after the Fort Wayne Police Department asked the State of Indiana to revoke the bar's liquor license.​

It is unusual for the police to do that here, but the FWPD was being called to Boom Boom's numerous times a day for drunken brawls, stabbings, shootings, and drug dealing!​


Here's a photo of the building that I made a few years ago.

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Chriscrawfordphoto said:
We simply can't afford to send him somewhere else. Its all about the money, and we just plain don't have any. I make barely enough to live after paying my medical bills and student loans. Mack is going to Purdue's Fort Wayne campus, which has a very good computer science program, and thanks to the scholarship he was given, it is costing us nothing. He'll graduate with $0 in student loans with a degree that will get him a high paying job. He'll have to leave Fort Wayne to find a job, and he's fine with that. He doesn't like it here anymore than I do, and he is the only reason I'm here, so I'll leave too after he graduates.
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Chris,

What you've done is admirable. I've lived in a lot of places in the US, spanning Hawaii the the Midwest, and now in the West. I've realized that family trumps everything else. I left a great job in the Midwest (St. Louis) to be close to family. Best thing I could have done. You'll never regret doing what you're doing for your son. When he's done with college, you can go where your heart takes you, but for now you're surely doing the right thing. Your son will be infinitely better off for what you're doing; what can be more fulfilling than that?

Keep documenting Ft. Wayne so eloquently; your images are of value.

Dale
 
Dale D said:
Chris,

What you've done is admirable. I've lived in a lot of places in the US, spanning Hawaii the the Midwest, and now in the West. I've realized that family trumps everything else. I left a great job in the Midwest (St. Louis) to be close to family. Best thing I could have done. You'll never regret doing what you're doing for your son. When he's done with college, you can go where your heart takes you, but for now you're surely doing the right thing. Your son will be infinitely better off for what you're doing; what can be more fulfilling than that?

Keep documenting Ft. Wayne so eloquently; your images are of value.

Dale
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Thanks, Dale. Mack has definitely been worth being here for. I'm very proud of him. Here's a photo I made of him back in July.

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Here's another photograph of the demolition of the building at the former GE factory on Broadway in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The building was demolished one floor at a time, beginning at the top.
 
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A house, decorated for Halloween, on West Main Street in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This is one of two houses in this working-class neighborhood that I photographed on Halloween day in 2015.

There did not seem to be many houses anywhere in the city with decorations for the holiday, unlike previous years.
 
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This old building has been home to a number of bars over the years. About a year before I made this photograph, it became Skeletunes Lounge. Yes, that is a life-size skeleton riding a bicycle over the front door!​

Skeletunes is on the corner of West Main Street and Cherry Street in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I photographed it on Halloween, but the skeleton is always up there on his bike. The building looks like it is about to fall over, because the side walls are leaning.​
 
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Here is one of the photographs that I made during the snowstorm yesterday, the first snow of the year. This creepy sign hangs from a speed limit sign post on Ardmore Avenue in Fort Wayne, Indiana.


A few months ago, I photographed another handwritten sign in the same place, with the same handwriting, that said: "You are my every thought!" This one says: "Who needs love? Who wants romance? I want to eat your underpants!"

Here is the earlier sign, photographed in July:

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Hmm, an interesting anonymous poet, for sure! It would be an interesting series of photos, if the poet keeps it up.

~Joe
 
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Here is another photograph from yesterday's big snowstorm in Fort Wayne.

The tree is located in a field on the west side of Lindenwood Avenue, across the street from the University of Saint Francis football field, in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

It is one of the most beautiful trees that I have seen in Indiana. I have wanted to photograph it for several years, but never found the right light for it until now.
For a number of years, there has been a large sign near the road proclaiming that the land where the tree stands is the future home of an athletic field for the University of Saint Francis. I hope the plans include preserving this wonderful tree.​
 
JoeV said:
Hmm, an interesting anonymous poet, for sure! It would be an interesting series of photos, if the poet keeps it up.

~Joe
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Thanks, it will be interesting to see if more signs appear over time. I drive past this spot every day on my way to work, so I will see if something else appears.
 
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This statue of the Virgin Mary stands inside a large broken tree stump in front of a house on Lavina Street, west of Van Buren Street in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I photographed it on Halloween day, when the house was decorated with plywood cut-out jack-o-lanterns.
 
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This rock, shaped like a frog and painted to look like one, sits in front of a house on Woodheath Avenue, the street I grew up on, in Fort Wayne, Indiana.​

It is a miniature copy of the famous Frog Rock, a large chunk of limestone that sits by the entrance to the Hanson Limestone quarry on Ardmore Avenue, on the western edge of the neighborhood.​

Decades ago, someone noticed that the big rock outside the quarry looked like a frog, and it was painted to look like a green frog. The Frog Rock, which originally sat behind the quarry on Sandpoint Road, became a well-known landmark in the Waynedale area of Fort Wayne.​

The owners of this house on Woodheath paid tribute to the original Frog Rock with this little one, which is only about 2 feet long. I think its funny that they put a fly on its nose!​

Here's the original Frog Rock:

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The Frog in its original location behind the quarry.


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The Frog, with new paint, in its current location next to the main entrance to the quarry.
 
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This is the front door of a small, old house on Sinclair Street, a couple of blocks west of Saint Marys Avenue, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This neighborhood on Fort Wayne's northwest side is a working-class area with a lot of small, but generally well maintained, older homes.
 
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After having Thanksgiving dinner with my family at my parents' house, I walked the neighborhood with my camera.

A lot of people already had their Christmas decorations on display. This nativity scene was in front of a large bush in the front yard of a house on Woodheath Avenue in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
 
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The Rock is a bar on Broadway, just north of Taylor Street, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. During the summer, there are usually several motorcycles parked on the sidewalk in front of the building.​

I made this photograph in the early evening, but in December the sun sets before 6pm in northern Indiana. The woman coming out through the door is getting ready to light up a cigarette.​
 
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