Allen County Courthouse
715 S. Calhoun St, Fort Wayne, INDesigned by Fort Wayne, Indiana architect, Brentwood S. Tolan, the Allen County Courthouse stands as a monument to the progressivism and civic pride of early twentieth century America and is the embodiment of Beaux-Arts architecture popular in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. When the Allen County Courthouse was commissioned in 1896, the county commissioners wanted their new building to represent the prosperity and forward-thinking attitude of their thriving county. Though they fully expected the new courthouse to outshine any other in Indiana, the building, at its dedication in 1902, was celebrated as the finest county courthouse in the world and was also considered to be second in splendor to the Library of Congress Reading Room in Washington, D.C.
Local significance of the building:Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.