In some respects, a community is defined by the people in it and by the places they go to have fun.

Over the years, those places come and go, leaving behind the fond memories that woven together tell a unique story.

Simply put, you can learn a lot about a city by the things that aren't there anymore.

But you don't have to be a detective or research far and wide to discover those old parts.

You just have to ask because those places may be lost, but they're definitely not forgotten.

Fort Wayne Lost (But Not Forgotten) was made possible by the financial support of viewers like you.

I suppose the thing you hear most often is the fact that downtown Fort Wayne just isn't the same as it used to be.

Believe it or not, there was a time when there were no malls and downtown was the place to shop.

That's right.

And you used to actually dress up to go shopping, gloves, hat, the whole bit.

Oh, yeah.

And service was a big deal.

They treated you like royalty, even if you were just looking.

And some places would even deliver your packages to your home if you wanted.

I remember the Grand Leader.

We went there a lot.

I got a coat there when I was a kid that I thought was absolutely glamorous.

Fake fur collars, I recall and didn't Grand Leader turn into Stillman's eventually.

Yeah, I think it did.

That was a nice store.

There was also a Stillman's at Southgate.

Remember Patterson?

Fletcher?

Nice men's and women's clothing.

You know, I think I got my first sport coat there.

It was blue.

Isn't it funny what you remember?

I have a picture in my head of a place called the Bon-Ton, but I can't for the life of me, remember what it was.

I do remember the Boston Department store.

I bought a lot of stuff there when I was in high school and buying my own clothes.

Must've had stuff in my price range.

Mom always took us to M & N to buy our school shoes.

It was two stores in one, and I swear they used an X-ray machine to figure out our size.

They really did.

Oh, man.

Remember Fishman's?

What great dresses.

Oh, and Hutners Paris.

I bought my prom dress there.

Lots of chiffon.

I still have it.

Of course, if you couldn't find what you were looking for at Murphy's, then you couldn't find it anywhere.

Sheet music, toys, curlers, cold cream, stationery handkerchiefs, aprons.

Those old kind of stale chocolate and vanilla sandwich cookies.

Everything you could ever want.

Boy, just talking about it.

I can smell the donuts.

Oh, and don't forget the hot dogs with lots of mustard, onions and coleslaw.

They had a lunch counter.

It seems to me both Walgreens and Meyer drug had lunch counters, too.

I can still see them making a Coke.

First the syrup then the fizzy water.

That was way before diet drinks.

My mom always said that shopping downtown started to die when Sears opened a store on Rudisill.

I suspect it had more to do with Southgate and Northcrest, but it sure was nice going from store to store all in one place with plenty of places to park and somewhat protected from the weather.

Howard's remember Howard's, I guess you could call it a specialty gift shop because it had things in there you couldn't find anywhere else in town.

It was almost an adventure going in there because you never knew what to expect.

Hey, nobody's even mentioned Wolf & Dessauer's Well, that was why you went downtown in the first place.

What a wonderful store.

It was another world, really.

More like you'd find in a big city.

I practically lived there.

Very elegant.

They had models that would walk around showing the clothes.

I remember my charge plate was metal and had a leather sleeve.

My first escalator ride was at W and Ds.

I'll never forget I was scared to death.

I was going to get sucked down into the basement with the rest of the steps.

But then Mom took me to the coffee shop and bought me a hot fudge sundae, and I was fine.

It was just a great store.

That's all I have to say.

I still miss it.

Of course, Wolf and Ds knew how to celebrate Christmas.

Boy, did they.

Oh, and the windows.

The windows were so great.

They were animated characters.

They moved, you know, children, adults, elves, all sorts of animals.

All that was so cute.

Skating, decorating, trees, singing, baking cookies, dancing, jumping rope, swinging, dancing in the snow.

It really made Christmas magical.

It sounds corny, but it was great.

And of course, there was Santa upstairs and a little train called the Wonderland Express.

You could ride on.

I know it's sounding corny it again, but trust me, that place at Christmas was probably the highlight of my entire childhood.

That and the tea room.

Wow.

I ate there once on my best friend's birthday.

What a treat.

We had some sort of fancy sherbet dish with a china statue on top holding an umbrella.

And that's really all I remember.

But it sure impressed me.

I may still have that little statue somewhere.

I'll have to check.

Remember when W and Ds burned?

Wolf and Dessauer had had four different locations downtown.

Its final store opened in 1959, taking up a full block at the corner of Clinton and Wayne Street.

In February 1962, one of Wolf and D's warehouses caught on fire and nearly took the whole block with it.

The fire was spectacular and attracted thousands of people downtown to watch the excitement.

From then on, it was known as the great W&D fire, and it was declared the most devastating fire in Fort Wayne's history, taking hundreds of firefighters over 3 million gallons of water to contain and causing over $2 million in damages.

I took several pictures with my brownie because it was just so, well, pretty.

Of course, my film was black and white, so mostly the just see gray smoke, no flames.

But I saw it firsthand.

It was quite a sight.

The next day, I went and watched them demolish what was left.

That hole there for years and years and years.

I remember seeing that big hole every time I rode the bus to my piano lesson.

We rode the bus a lot.

Back then, people, at least in my neighborhood, only had one family car, so the bus was pretty handy.

We always took it downtown when we went shopping.

I vividly remember studying the advertising inside along the top of the bus, and I also remember the windows always fogged up in the winter.

I had a fascination with the motorman on the streetcars.

I loved watching them.

They had a sort of rhythm.

They wore clean pressed uniform and a hat and set on a wooden stool.

That was probably pretty uncomfortable.

They were always very friendly to me and would explain just exactly what they were doing when I ask.

I couldn't wait to grow up so I could be a motorman on the streetcar, except the streetcars went away.

Darn it.

I swear I saw streetcar tracks showing through the asphalt on a little side road downtown the other day.

I used to see them all the time.

Brick streets, too.

I know you could buy a ride on the streetcar for maybe $0.07, and you could buy a weekly pass for a buck.

Transfer corner was the corner of Main and Calhoun Streets.

That's where we always caught up with each other.

It was over by the courthouse and it was always a busy place.

Then there were electric trolleys, which were basically busses tethered to an electric cable overhead.

But we call it everything a streetcar used to take the streetcar to Bluffton to visit my grandparents.

Actually, that was more than likely the interurban.

It ran until about 1941, taking passengers to towns around the area like Bluffton and Indianapolis.

I loved writing later, but when I got older, I would just ride the interurban somewhere and back on a Saturday.

I can still hear the sounds and smell the smells.

My best friend got to ride on Fort Wayne to the last interurban run to Muncie with his dad.

That would have been fun, but sad too, you know.

But then everyone had cars, so they just didn't use it anymore.

Or they took the train.

The train traffic in Fort Wayne was phenomenal.

You hear train whistles all the time and you were constantly waiting at railroad crossings.

But that was just something you came to expect.

Eventually, they elevated most of the crossings and now when people have to wait 10 minutes for a train, it's a real imposition.

I guess it just depends on what you're used to.

I was never lucky enough to take the train, but I took the bus to Indianapolis a lot.

It left from the Greyhound bus terminal right downtown.

That station was so unusual.

It was blue and the walls sort of curved on the front facing Jefferson Boulevard.

The busses pulled in from the back and parked at an angle along the west side of the building.

It was always so loud when I said goodbye to my family just before I boarded because all the busses sat there idling.

Boy, all I have to do is smell diesel fuel right now and I'm right back at that bus station again.

I remember when the ice rink in McMillan was outside.

I spent the whole winter at McMillan skating.

At least that's how I remember it.

You just reminded me of the Fort Wayne Speedway.

Not the one now, but the 1950s version.

That was always such a good time.

My buddies and I would go there in the summer and spend all day Saturday and Sunday afternoon there.

It was everything.

The speed, the noise, the cool cars and the secret hope for a wreck.

We saw some doozies, but no one was ever hurt when I was there.

I always heard the track was built on top of a million junk cars.

So you never knew when the track was going to cave in and after we were completely overstimulated by the heat, the noise and the races, we spent the rest of the evening cruising around Gardners Drive and talking about how we'd souped up an old clunker car and try it out at the Speedway someday.

That's what we talk about.

But the whole time our eyes were scoping out the girls at Gardner's.

There was always someone in the car that had a crush on a car hop.

Boy, Gardners had the best French fries on the planet.

My big thing was to dip the fries into my chocolate shake.

Hey, it's good.

I showed my kids and they still do it.

And as soon as my grandkids are old enough, I'll show them.

You should try it.

I remember the strawberry pie with tons of real whipped cream and the burgers were huge.

They always stuck out the sides of the bun.

And that's what we gnawed off first all the way around.

Yeah, we sure had some good times.

We lost Gardners, but I'll never forget it.

Okay.

The all time swankiest restaurant in Fort Wayne, hands down, was Berghoff Gardens on Harrison, South of Berry Street.

It's the kind of place you went to for your anniversary.

Very special - linen tablecloths.

Things like shrimp cocktail and very fine cuts of meat for maybe two bucks.

There was also entertainment and dancing.

It was a very special occasion if your date took you to Berghoff Gardens.

The English Terrace was also a very nice place.

Originally, it was called Miller's English Tea Room.

That was at the corner of Harrison and Jefferson Street.

I also remember going to the Java shop in the Van Orman for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie.

In the forties, the Hitching Post was a hot nightspot at the Van Orman.

we used to haunt.

The Van Orman, originally the Anthony was considered one of the city's finest hotels built in 1908.

This nine story luxury hotel was truly elegant, complete with bearskin rugs in the lobby.

The hotel's grand staircase was marble, and it boasted a cafe, grill, public dining room, two private dining rooms, and a banquet hall.

Fort Wayne has a history of many fine downtown hotels.

The large 13 story Keenan Hotel was built in 1923, and its list of famous patrons reads like a who's who, from politicians to movie stars.

In 1924, Chester Keenan began broadcasting from the mezzanine floor of the Keenan Hotel.

What would eventually become WGL Radio and the Wayne Hotel on Columbia Street was the city's first 100 room hotel.

Built in 1887, it claimed 40 rooms equipped with private baths.

That grand hotel was owned in 1911 by Carole Lombard's grandfather.

Sadly, in 1975, this gem on Columbia Street, then named the Rose Marie, was destroyed by an arsonist.

The Baltist Hotel in 1908 claimed to be the city's most comfortable and modern hotel and was absolutely fireproof.

Or so it claimed.

You could get a room with hot and cold running water and telephone service for $0.75 a day.

Berghoff Gardens restaurant was connected on the South side of the hotel.

Old Heidelberg Hotel was built in 1909 and catered to the traveling businessmen.

Its choice location was close to the interurban line and train station.

It maintained a café with excellent service, open to both men and women.

Hotel Centlivre was also a place for the traveling salesman to stay.

Located on Baker Street, near the main train station, each room was finally furnished and equipped with electric lights, stand heat and telephone service with good ventilation throughout.

Popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Randall Hotel was a lovely site.

Located where Columbia Street intersects Harrison.

It was touted as the best $2 hotel in Indiana.

It was torn down in 1963.

And then there was the Aveline House Hotel.

It was built in the mid 1800s and in 1908 burned down in a tragic fire, killing 12 people.

1974 was a big and somewhat sad year for the hotels in the downtown area.

It lost its two largest hotels built in the early 1900s on purpose.

The 65 year old Van Orman Hotel was the first to go in January.

At 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning, nearly 300 explosive charges were detonated inside the building and after the dust cleared, ther The implosion attracted quite a crowd on that frigid day, and film crews captured the impressive event.

In October of that same year, the Keenan family decided to demolish the 52 year old Keenan Hotel at the southwest corner of Washington Boulevard and Harrison Street.

This implosion attracted even more spectators.

I saw the demolition on the news, and I remember how cool it was to watch.

It almost seemed like it fell in slow motion.

Now, I was never in the Keenan Hotel, but I had a connection to it in the early sixties.

On Saturday nights, my family would go to the new McDonald's downtown and sit in the car and eat our hamburgers and shakes.

I remember staring at the fire escape on the back of the Keenan that you could easily see from the parking lot at McDonald's.

For the life of me, I could not figure out how it worked.

The stairs zig zag down the building, but there was at least a two story drop to the ground.

I remember laying in bed at night trying to decide how they would get down in case of a fire.

I think I finally asked my mom and she told me about the ladder that slid down.

Fort Wayne lost another beautiful landmark in 1974.

To this day, people still wonder how such an incredible mansion made of marble and stone.

And it played host to such elaborate parties in the twenties could have been demolished.

Located on Fairfield Avenue, the Noll Mansion was built in 1916 for over $1 million by William Noll, maker of Pinexcough sirup.

Built in the classic Italian style, this 28 room home had marble floors, crystal chandeliers, oriental rugs, ornate brass railings, a second floor balcony, and a stained glass dome above the curved main staircase.

The solarium looked out onto the Rose garden and visitors walked through an Egyptian teahouse to get to the pool.

The master bath provided a shower with 17 showerheads to get you especially clean.

Afterwards, you could get dressed in front of a wall of floor to ceiling mirrors.

In 1960, the vacant home, after having been vandalized for several years, was purchased by the Fairfield Avenue Church of the Nazarene, where they used it as a sanctuary.

14 years later, it was torn down.

I just couldn't believe it.

They auctioned a few things off before then and just knocked down.

I just couldn't believe it.

Around the same time the Noll Mansion was built, there was a privately operated airport called Guy Mean Field, located just off State Road 3.

My grandfather used to talk about going to Guy Means as a kid and watching the planes.

That was when there were a lot of daredevils.

At the time, it was in the middle of nowhere.

But today, it's just about where Glenbrook is.

It was around that time at the turn of the century that Robison Park was all the rage.

Ladies dressed all in white and men in their straw hats took a special open air trolley from space run seven miles northeast of town along the Saint Joe River.

There, they enjoyed roller coasters, dancing under the moonlight, shooting galleries, bowling alleys, a merry go round, photographs, studios, steamboat rides and theatrical productions day and night.

Some people saw their first movie at Robison Park.

There were plenty of places to eat and buy fine candies.

For nearly 20 years, Robison Park was the community's greatest recreational outlet.

I heard my grandmother talk about that a lot.

She went there as a teenager, usually with a bunch of girlfriends, and they'd always run into boys they knew.

She talked about how pretty the river was there and the woods surrounding the park.

There was a ride similar to what I can figure out in my head at least a toboggan run where people sat in a boat and it flew down a chute into the water.

She said, You always got wet, but you won anyway.

There are still some concrete footers and other remnants left from the park in that area.

I've seen them.

The carousel is still in operation today at a park in Logansport, and you can find souvenirs around from Robison Park.

Now, 90 years later.

Although you'd be hard pressed to find people willing to part with them.

When Robison Park was closed down in 1920 by the streetcar firm that owned it due to decreased revenue, some of the buildings, including the wooden roller coaster, were dismantled and moved to Trier's Park in what is now Swinney Park on the west side of the St Marys River.

For the next 30 years, Triers amusement park was the fun place to go in the summer for exciting rides, great music and dancing.

The cyclone, as the roller coaster became known, provided a thrills and chills.

A miniature train provided a more relaxed ride.

There was a funhouse and a house of mirrors, a penny arcade, a Ferris wheel and a ride called the Skooter.

The dance hall was huge and featured famous big bands on occasion.

On Kids Day, a special day each summer, they threw pennies out of the rides to the kids below.

And that day, the rides were only $0.02.

After World War Two, park attendance declined and it was finally closed in 1953 after a fire destroyed the roller coaster, dance hall, and funhouse.

That wasn't the only thing the Trier family brought to Fort Wayne before Triers Park.

They operated the dance pavilion at Robison Park and before that around 1911 Triers Minuet dancing school across from the Palace Theater.

In the late 1920s, they were teaching between two and 3000 new dancers each season.

Another way people had fun was a trip to Municipal Bathing Beach along the Saint Joe River, just below the North Anthony Dam.

It was created in 1936 by the city who cleaned up the banks and trucked in sand.

Diving boards and floodlights were added and lifeguards were hired to stand watch.

It opened in July and was a big hit.

Reportedly, over 7000 bathers took advantage of the beach each day that summer.

There was a fear that the river might be unsafe because of possible contamination from local sewage.

But the Board of Health gave its approval and the scare ended.

During the polio epidemic of the forties, the beach was closed because some feared the virus was being spread via the water.

Because of the public's on and off concern for the purity of the river water, the beach was eventually closed for good.

Oh, yeah.

My mom wouldn't let us go to the beach at all because she was positive that's how people got polio.

My husband thought it was funny that we actually had a beach on a river in Fort Wayne.

I thought it was kind of neat.

We had some great times.

I learned to swim there.

Before the beach was closed, recreational opportunities grew with boxing rings and softball diamonds.

As a matter of fact, it was the original home of the very popular Zollner Pistons fastball team.

Those national champions were so talented that no other team could fairly compete with them.

From 1940 until 1957, they consistently won the National Fastball League Championship.

In 1947, Fred Zollner built Zollner Stadium and the team moved there from the beach.

Even though the team is gone, the stadium still remains on North Anthony and the old ball diamond by Municipal Beach near Johnny Appleseed grave is now called Carrington Field.

I went to a lot of Pistons basketball games when the stadium on Anthony was brand new.

They just never lost it seemed and the ball, most of the time you never saw when it was pitched.

It was so fast.

We had the biggest crushes on the players.

Wed hang around down by the fence, hoping that I'll come over and talk to us.

But of course, they never did.

But we got a few winks and here and there they were tremendous ballplayers.

Watching them in the outfield, it always looked like they were having fun.

I just thought it would be so amazing to get paid to play ball.

One year before the Pistons fastball team began.

Zollner organized the Pistons basketball squad and they became a national powerhouse as well.

The team, following the lead of their prized long shooter, Bobby McDermott, introduced a new fast paced passing game to the sport and held their own as National Basketball League champions in 1943, 44 and 45, and world champions in 1946.

The team was the pride of Fort Wayne for 17 years until 1957, when they moved to Detroit.

They played in the North Side gym, my school on my court.

I hoped some of their moves would magically rub off on me when I stood at the top of the key during my team practice.

They just seemed so smart and cool.

I really put each player up on a pedestal.

They were quite the inspiration for lots of boys that hoped to play basketball for a living someday.

I still have a ton of the game programs and even one has autographs.

I think I won that at one of the games.

We had crushes on them too.

We hung out at coffee shops.

We heard they frequented.

Just hoping to get a glimpse of them in street clothes.

Boy, I guess we were pretty boy crazy then.

We didn't care about the game of basketball at all.

We just knew they were cute and winners.

Don't forget the Daisies.

They were winners too, and provided a lot of exciting baseball, especially during World War Two.

We needed a little entertainment around here instead of air raid drills.

We all worked pretty hard, so it was a real treat to go to a doubleheader on a Sunday afternoon at Memorial Park Stadium.

I remember they always drew a big crowd.

They were easily as good as the men.

Real fan pleasers.

It was more of a show with them for some reason.

Those women made some amazing plays and they played in skirts believe it or not, the daisies were a part of the all-American Girls League.

They had four of the league's top ten hitters in a three year period.

They attracted 78,000 fans to their games here in Fort Wayne.

That was 62% of the population then.

Admission price was $0.74.

But worth much more.

There was a baseball field here known as League Park, and it had a long history.

Built in 1883 between Clinton and Calhoun, it was home to many professional teams and saw the likes of Babe Ruth and Len Gehrig.

In 1930, it was destroyed by fire.

An angry fan was suspected.

It was rebuilt immediately, but smaller.

And by 1939, the buildings which had begun to fall apart were torn down.

A few years before League Park was razed, another landmark was torn down as well.

The old post office was located at Berry and Clinton streets from 1889 to 1932 until the new federal building on Harrison Street across from Lincoln.

Life was built in 1904.

The new library was built on the corner of Webster and Wayne Streets.

This impressive Greek revival building was razed in 1965 to make way for the new and equally impressive modern version of the Allen County Public Library.

In 1962, another grand old Greek revival style building was razed.

The Hanna homestead on East Lewis Street, built by one of Fort Wayne's most prominent founding fathers.

The home stayed in the Hanna family until it was given to the Fort Wayne Community schools, which used it as a school for handicapped children until 1962.

It's now the site of the Hanna Homestead Park.

Perhaps one of the most dramatic losses in recent history was that of St Mary's Church on the corner of Jefferson and Lafayette.

The beautiful brick church with its tall steeple that towered over the city was built in 1887 by a strong German Catholic congregation.

On the second day of September in 1993, the grand old beauty was struck by lightning, which started a fire that destroyed the church.

After crews cleaned up the remaining rubble, all that was left was a hole in the heart of downtown Fort Wayne St Mary's Church.

Lost but not forgotten.

Just down the street from the old Greyhound bus station stood the Jefferson Theater across from the Embassy.

It opened in the early 1900s and claimed to be the largest and safest theater in the state.

Running films that, quote, carried an element of refinement and education as well as entertainment, unquote.

The Temple Theater, located in the old Masonic Temple, introduced silent motion pictures to Fort Wayne in 1897.

That great music hall had a colorful ending.

A discarded cigarette on the stage set the whole theater aflame.

But perhaps more spectacular was when the fire reached the fourth floor of the building.

That was where the Fort Wayne National Guard stored more than 50,000 rounds of ammunition.

It took over 4 hours to get the unplanned fireworks display under control.

Actually, Colerick Hall was probably one of the first theaters located in Fort Wayne.

Located on the north side of Columbia Street between Clinton and Barr, it played host to early minstrel shows and traveling theater groups in the early 1800s.

There was the Maumee, the Wayne and the beautiful Empress Theater at the corner of Wayne and Clinton Streets, which presented clean, wholesome and high class vaudeville acts for $0.10.

The Orpheum and Lyric Theaters attracted large crowds on the weekends.

The Majestic on Berry Street, just east of Clinton, served as a vaudeville house, a movie house, and then the home of the Civic Theater until 1957.

The next home of the Civic was the Palace Theater, which saw everything from the early production of Hellzapoppin, which later went on to break attendance records on Broadway in 1941 to the first run of Walt Disney's animated classic Pinocchio.

Many think that the Embassy was the most ornate movie house this town has ever had.

But actually, the spectacular Paramount Theater, built around the same time was just as ornate, if not more.

You know, most of the drive in movie theaters are gone, too.

Those were an important part of my childhood.

My folks would load us into the car, we were already in our pajamas along with a big grocery bag full of popcorn, and we'd head off to the drive in.

I can still hear the sound of the people walking in the gravel past our car and the sound of someone throwing an empty cup out of the car window.

Normally we were asleep before the movie was even over, but I remember once waking up as my dad slowly drove over each of those small little hills between the rows of speakers on the way out.

I think he was just having fun.

Most people know Fort Wayne's close German ties, so it should be no surprise that two very successful breweries operated here starting in the mid 1800s.

The Centlivre Brewery began business in 1862.

It was built along the Saint Joe River on Spy Run Avenue.

In less than 40 years.

This once small operation was one of the major breweries of the Midwest.

Centlivre claimed to use only the purest water, the best grade of hops, and its product was free of contamination.

Absolute cleanliness prevailed on staff with a German brewmaster who insisted that the correct processes be used to produce the finest product.

The brewery invited sanitation officers in to inspect and to help them ensure the utmost in cleanliness Centlivre Special, Centlivre Extra Pale, Special Export and Nickel Plate were a few their brands.

Another brewery called Berghoff Brewing began beer production in 1887 and soon grew bigger than simply.

The Berghoff Brewery was located just off Washington Boulevard on Grand Street and also prided itself on using only the finest ingredients and the most scientific methods.

In 1913, it produced 160,000 barrels of beer, which was valued at two and a half million dollars.

Unfortunately for the two breweries, prohibition went into full swing in 1919, but in 1933, with the repeal of the Volstead Act, both breweries went back into full production, with Berghoff beating Centlivre to the shelves by several days.

Eventually Centlivre was sold and the name of the brewery was changed to Old Crown Brewery.

The Berghoff family opened another operation called the Hoff-Brau Brewery and eventually the Berghoff Brewing Corp. was sold to Falstaff in 1934, right after the repeal of Prohibition.

The Berghoff brothers, brewing makers of Hoff-Brau Beer, published an impressive book like the told the story of Hoff-Brau Beer and extolled the virtues of beer consumption.

It promoted the beer as a national food drink of America because each ounce of Hoff-Brau beer they claimed had the food value equivalent to an ounce of milk.

It stimulated the appetite and aided digestion.

It induced sleep and quieted the nerves.

You had a regulatory effect on children's bowels.

It was very palatable and required no coaxing to get children to drink their daily portion.

Rich in vitamins.

It was the ideal food beverage for lunches and with meals.

And they claimed it should be a part of the daily diet for everyone, as it had a slightly alkaline reaction and was very kind to the body during the day as well as the morning after.

Because the alcohol content was high, it was considered the brandy of beers and had a warming effect on the system without causing physical distress.

It brought out the finer qualities in human nature, and because it had a stimulating effect on the mind, growing children needed a small glass with every meal.

And because beer had a mild habit forming tendency, they claimed it enjoyed tremendous sales potential.

And so the booklet goes on to suggest ways to market the beer using food, menus, recipes and specific furniture manufactured just for the purpose of selling Hoff-Brau beer.

It also gave tips on how waitresses should dress and make personal visits to businesses in the area, giving personal invitations to its employees and management, suggesting that she would be there to welcome them and to be their personal server.

Eventually, the brewers moved out of Fort Wayne and the breweries were dismantled.

The huge copper kettles used in the brewing process were either relocated to other breweries in the U.S. or, in the case of the old Falstaff brewery shipped to the Orient to start up a new beer brewing operation.

The brewery sat abandoned for years and many a businessman had hopes of transforming them into offices or apartments.

But it was not to be, and both met the wrecking ball.

My grandmother was a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, so of course drinking was a no no in our house.

You know, she died in the late seventies and there was a flower spray from the WCTU at her funeral.

They were still in existence.

Who knows?

Maybe they still are.

It's funny how different things are today.

My dad used to talk about how as a kid, my grandfather would send him down to the neighborhood tavern with a bucket to buy some Berghoff beer.

They'd actually fill up the bucket with beer and sell it to my dad, who was maybe ten.

Isn't that wild?

I guess it didn't matter how old you were then.

There was always a Berghoff beer bottle in our house.

Dad didn't drink much, but we always had one or two on hand in case company came.

Speaking of bottles, remember the Eskay Dairy?

They used to deliver the milk and a green wagon.

The horses pulled the milk.

Man would gather jugs of milk and take them up the house, and the horse would just keep slowly walking forward.

I suppose he knew his way back to the barn at Baker and Fairfield Streets.

I vividly remember the sound of the milk bottles hitting together.

I found a cottage cheese crock at an antique store just recently that brought back memories.

My mother used to keep one of those crocks outside the back door with a bar of soap stuck inside of an old stocking.

And next to that was usually a bucket of water.

We were supposed to wash our hands there before we came in the house if they were especially dirty.

I'll bet you the stocking was from when knitting mills because that's where my mother worked for a time.

Hosiery was one of Fort Wayne's big claims to fame.

Wayne Knitting Mills won the highest honors for hosiery at the Saint Louis World's Fair in 1904, and that helped business quite a bit.

By 1923, it was aggressively being courted by Munsingwear and was eventually sold to that company.

The Packard Piano Company also helped put Fort Wayne on the map, making fine pianos and organs for nearly 60 years.

In 1914, they produced 5000 pianos to keep up with orders went out of business due to the Great Depression.

The company was located in what's now known as Packard Park off Fairfield Avenue, but we had a Packard player piano.

You pumped it with your feet and it played a role with holes punched in it in such a fashion that it would actually make the hammers play a tune.

I study the guts of that piano for years before I figured out just exactly how it worked.

You know, if we're talking about factories, we need to include Harvester.

Most people, when talking about Fort Wayne refer to before Harvester pulled out and after Harvester pulled out, there was a definite difference in the economy and attitude.

International Harvester began construction 1922 on a new plant here in Fort Wayne.

After an exhaustive effort on the part of the city to provide them with everything they needed to do business like road improvements, storm and sanitary sewer service, power lines, railroad tracks and the like.

The payoff for the city was a company employing between four and 5000 people.

In 1923, they produced 433 trucks.

The following year, after some expansion of the plant.

They produced an excess of 6800 trucks.

By the mid-fifties, they were producing 40,000 trucks a year.

In the sixties, they introduced a new sport utility truck called the Scout, which significantly increased production.

The early eighties, however, proved to be an economic challenge for International Harvester, and by 1983, despite the city's offers to assist the company they pulled out of Fort Wayne.

Here was the story filed by reporter Neal Moore from WANE TV.

On the last day, Harvester was in operation in Fort July 15th, 1983, as the 1,527,299 Harvester truck rolled off Port Wayne's assembly line, the reality of the shutdown hit home.

When the line was stopped and their tools set aside, employees knew it would be for the last time.

I got word.

Yeah, It's all over.

But the shutdown was far from a glum occasion.

Indeed, the lunchtime mood at this nearby bar was party like as IH workers forgot their misfortune.

At least for a while.

With the shutdown, 1700 more United Auto Workers will join the ranks of the unemployed.

The remaining 500 or so will be laid off in the coming weeks as shut down and cleanup operations are completed.

But while most of the employees seemed upbeat, clearly some bitterness remains.

What do you think about International Harvester?

Well, it's a good company to work for.

It's just that I wish the management would get their act straightened up so we can have a chance to retire.

Earlier in the day, North American Van Lines held a ceremony at Harvesters Front Door to accept the last truck from the A assembly line.

North American officials say they purchased the truck a gesture of their long standing relationship with Harvester.

Company officials offered no official statement at today's closing.

The point was clear the end had come and all that remained were parting goodbyes, a last trip to the time clock and the final walk through the Harvester gate.

Neal Moore News 15.

When Harvester closed, that nearly wiped out a few families in my neighborhood.

We all did what we could for them, but the men were so depressed and their wives didn't know what to do either.

It was a real mess.

It shouldn't have been a surprise, but I think some of them just never thought it would happen.

I know some people took years to find a job.

It was a tough situation.

I'd hate to have to go through something like that again.

So now the factory sits mostly empty.

Some parts of the plant are used, but for the most part, it sits quietly.

Windows are broken.

The parking lot is empty as a reminder of how hard Fort Wayne fought to get the plant and won.

And how hard Fort Wayne fought to keep it.

And lost.

That's something this town will never forget.

Actually, there are many reminders of what this community has lost over the years, mostly in the form of vacant lots and places to park your car.

But there are also reminders that some things change for the better.

And those places stand as a tribute to the people that live in this community and work hard to make it a better place to live.

And raise a family.

And even though an old landmark is demolished, that doesn't mean its history goes with it.

It's up to all of us to keep the memories alive.

Fort Wayne Lost (But Not Forgotten) was made possible by the financial support of viewers like you.