Lakeside Park & Forest Park Boulevard,

Fort Wayne, Indiana - 2006 & 2008
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One of Fort Wayne's Legacy Parks, Lakeside Park was designed about 1912 by Adolph Jaenecke. The park's
lagoons were created as part of a drainage system to open a former wetland at the confluence of the three rivers for
development. Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World, featuring Annie Oakley, came to
Lakeside Park in June, 1896.

From the Heritage Landscapes web site:
The City of Fort Wayne features an extensive park system that was greatly influenced during the early 20th
century by several notable landscape architects, including George Kessler, Arthur Shurcliff and Charles Mulford
Robinson. Swinney, Lakeside and Memorial Parks stand out as historical examples from this period of
development, each one exhibiting unique features designed by Adolph Jaenicke, Park Superintendent from 1916
through 1948.

When I lived in the neighborhood in the late 1950s, the park was shaded by many giant American Elm trees, all of
which perished from blight in the sixties. The original pavilion was a huge elevated Queen Anne sort of style, with a
screened activity floor at second story level reached by broad steps on two sides, and equipment storage
underneath.

Lakeside Park is best known for its rose gardens, where 145 different varieties are cultivated. The roses had passed
their peak and were pretty much devoid of blooms by the time I visited there on September 27. The sunken gardens
were completely rebuilt over the last couple of years, with the complete replacement of all the walkways and concrete
structural elements.

Forest Park Boulevard, which intersects Lake Avenue at the east edge of the park, became home to Fort Wayne's
merchants and industrialists in the 1920s as they became more prosperous and sought to move up from their former
domain in West Central. No McMansions here -- these are the Real Deal, and most of them pretty much escaped the
1950s and 60s ravages of the aluminum siding salesmen and home-improvement contractors. It's still one of the
city's finest places.

A half-million-dollar expansion and renovation in progress

Large lots and deep setbacks with big lawns

Big foursquares are plentiful in Fort Wayne, and they come in a variety of flavors.

This one sold for $1 million a couple of years ago, and the purchaser sank a large
sum into remodeling and redoing the landscaping.

I like fishscale shingles in gable ends.

Mastodon trying to hide from the lions. The camouflage isn't working.

No, it isn't a Frank Lloyd Wright house. The J.B. Franke house was designed
in 1914 by Francis Barry Byrne, who joined Wright's Oak Park studio in 1902
as an apprentice and worked there until 1908.

One of my favorite Fort Wayne houses:

Moving west a couple of blocks to a parallel street, I want to show you Alabama Avenue. The Lakeside neighborhood
overall is quite pleasant, even on the streets that aren't so grand as Forest Park Boulevard. This is the street where
my mom and her sister grew up.

I brought you to Alabama Avenue to show you the house my maternal grandfather built in 1923. He served in the US
Navy from 1901 to 1904 and learned the baker's trade there. After he returned to civilian life, he continued to work as
a baker, and by working hard and living frugally, he made a good life for himself and his family. In 1929, that garage
became home for a new Hudson sedan, quite a classy automobile.

My grandfather, John, on the right, with his brother, Charlie, in front of John's
house.The old photos I have show the house without the shutters and with awnings
and painted wood steps. Those can be treacherously slippery under a light
coating of frost or snow, as my grandfather sadly found out. On a winter morning in
1941, he slipped and fell and broke his arm and fractured his skull. He died in the
hospital the next day at age 61, still a strong and vigorous man to the very last.

Lakeside Park, July 2008
All Photos © 2008 by Robert E Pence

I missed the peak; the roses were already past their prime.

See the Japanese Beetle?

I had to play dodge-'em with the sprinklers in some areas, and most often I lost.
I'd watch long enough that I thought I had the pattern figured out, pick a place that
I thought was safe, and as I was composing the photo, SPLAT! I'd get hit by one I
didn't anticipate, or maybe one that just popped up. I should have been using a
rain sleeve; my camera took a couple of direct hits, but apparently didn't get wet
enough to get hurt. I took a few shots in the back and got sopping wet.

In addition to adding aesthetic appeal, the fountains aerate the lagoons to avoid
stagnation. With a proper license, fishing is permitted in the lagoons.

This thing was crawling on the bottom of one of the reflecting pools, and it tried to climb the side and get me. I outran
it, though.

The gardners keep cutting back and thinning, and the plantings keep growing and blooming. These beds continue to
fill out and bloom through late summer.

After all these years, finally an appropriate marker. Beautiful design and workmanship.

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