The Lincoln Tower: Indiana's First Skyscraper
Near Fort Wayne, Indiana
When construction crews broke ground in nineteen twenty nine on a twenty-two-story bank tower in downtown Fort Wayne, the timing was terrible. The stock market crashed in October of that year, just as the building's steel frame was going up. The Lincoln National Bank pressed forward anyway.
When the Lincoln Bank Tower opened in November of nineteen thirty, it was the tallest building in Indiana, and it held that distinction until nineteen sixty two. It was also the first true skyscraper in the state, and it remains one of the finest examples of Art Deco architecture in the entire Midwest.
The building's surface is Indiana limestone, banded with gilded terra cotta on its upper floors. The gilding technique was new enough that Lincoln Tower is considered one of the first examples of it in the country. Inside, the main banking lobby runs eighty five feet wide and one hundred ten feet long, two stories high. Seven bronze panels in the main entrance depict scenes from Abraham Lincoln's life, which explains the bank's name.
The bank's origins are more complicated than the Abraham Lincoln imagery suggests. It was founded in nineteen oh five as the German-American Bank, a straightforward reflection of Fort Wayne's demographics at the time. In nineteen eighteen, with anti-German sentiment running high during the First World War, the directors reorganized it as the Lincoln National Bank, choosing the most unimpeachably American name they could find.
The tower itself stands at three hundred twelve feet. It is still the tallest structure in Fort Wayne. From the right angle, looking up at the gilded summit, it still looks like something that was built when this city believed it was going to become something much larger than it did.
