John McGauley photograph The Iconic GE Sign posted May 19, 2014 on flickr I thought it was worth going up to capture this icon in its rightful place over downtown Fort Wayne before the GE complex demolition gets started.
In 1944 GE employed 20,000 workers, they had a General Electric Company Quarter Century Club and Elex Club for women with files on ACGSI.org. A May 23, 2024 post with 22 photos on True Fort Wayne Indiana History on Facebook shows crowded parking lots: the center Jones Street lot, and right, the west Jones Street lot. Directly below is the Lindley Avenue lot. Center left shows the Winter Street lot and center right, the west Fairfield Avenue lot. Lower left shows a view from the north of the east Fairfield and lower right a view of the east Fairfield Avenue lot from the south." Images & Information Source: The General Electric Works - November 24, 1941
We LIKE this #tbt to 1947 on the GE campus in #FortWayne. Check out as Broadway still featured brick streets and trolly tracks (once the most popular way to get around town).
What would you like to see happen to the 32 acre campus on Broadway?
Hoch Associates wants to remind you to bring your #powerfulideas to the "Future of General Electric Campus Meeting" tonight at Citzens Square 5:30-7:30PM.
Employees of the General Electric Fort Wayne Works were beneficiaries of an exemplary corporate social welfare program. This included employee clubs, family outings, athletic organizations, open houses, special-interest newsletter columns, and vacation opportunities. Employee organizations were voluntary, but had high rates of participation, and active democratic participation led by elected officers was encouraged.
In addition to leisure, GE offered benefits that provided stability, treating an employee’s family as part of their responsibility. GE provided a Relief Union and insurance plan, deduction-oriented savings plans, home ownership aid, retirement and disability pensions, a company credit union, an employee pricing discount store, profit sharing, discounted education, and company-provided medical services. Come and learn about Corporate Culture during the twentieth century with our new interactive display on GE Employee organizations. #sociallyhistory
Where should we keep our money? It is a question that has been asked by the workers of Allen County for generations. In our communities, there are mainly two different options: banks and credit unions. The latter began during the Great Depression when President Roosevelt signed the Federal Credit Union Act in 1934, forming a national system to charter and supervise federal credit unions. Locally one of the first credit unions began just two years later. In 1936, a group of GE employees in Fort Wayne, Indiana, petitioned for a federal credit union charter. On May 15, it was announced that the formation of the General Electric Employees Federal Credit Union was assured and temporary officers were elected. Decisions were made to limit membership to regular employees at the Winter Street and Broadway plants and those who had at least one year of service. The charter was granted on May 29, 1936. The first office was actually located inside the plant. Eventually, the young Credit Union needed more room and leased office space near the plant. In 1946, the Credit Union was located at 2001 Broadway and later, it relocated to a moveable office at 1021 Swinney Avenue. This credit union account book was used by GE employee, Garland Roby, Jr. The dates in it indicate that it was used from 1962-1966. In 1969, a permanent structure was built on that site. With the growing number of branches and mergers, the institution changed its name in 1987 to MidWest America Federal Credit Union to better reflect this expanded field of membership and market area. Today, Midwest America is still headquartered in Fort Wayne and continues its 88-year tradition of financially supporting the people of Allen County. #sociallyhistory
Fort Wayne Electric Works on Vintage Machinery.org discusses its history from Jenney Electric based on information from The pictorial history of Fort Wayne, Indiana 1917 pgs 509-510.
Future unsure for GE's crowded campus New use might require more buildings to come down by Paul Wyche was published March 29, 2015 in the The Journal Gazette newspaper.
1916 a basement is excavated using two steam shovels and horse drawn wagons. The name Fort Wayne Electric Works is painted on the building to the left.
The historic General Electric campus on Broadway will get new life! Developers purchased the property from GE on Sept. 21, and expect the first tenants to move into the reinvented Electric Works facility sometime in 2019. So much history on these 30+ acres! Copied caption for 20 photos posted September 26, 2017 by Greater Fort Wayne, Inc. on Facebook.
It has been decades since the General Electric campus along Broadway generated the frenetic buzz that comes from nearly 10,000 employees working on the site. ... General Electric has been there since it bought the former Jenney Electric Light Co. in 1911, and Ewing Street and Fairfield Avenue were made one-way to facilitate the traffic generated by thousands of employees flowing in and out of the plant at shift change. But now, the future is uncertain. - read the rest of the story Iconic GE site’s future: Blight or a new light? Company, city officials discuss likely uses by Dan Stockman of The Journal Gazette November 18, 2012 newspaper.
The final 2014 entry on the ARCH Endangered List is the largest, the General Electric, Broadway Campus.
General Electric announced in 2014 that it would be closing down all operations in Fort Wayne. While this signals an end of an era in Fort Wayne, it ushers in new challenges. The future of the Broadway Campus buildings presents a new challenge for GE and the local community.
Demolition has begun. The landmark GE sign will be put in storage. While GE and the City of Fort Wayne claim to be talking, little has been shared with the community about the future of the site. The huge scale of the campus, its relationship to downtown and the surrounding historic neighborhoods, and prospect of a long-term large "clear-cut" space on the community's tax base all deserve public debate.
Now that a GE plant has shown interest in moving Fort Wayne's iconic sign to Kentucky, the pressure is on. Do we step up or let it go? http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20140619/LOCAL/306199961
Now that a GE plant has shown interest in moving Fort Wayne's iconic sign to Kentucky, the pressure is on. Do we step up or let it go? Old GE sign could get to stay in city Company ‘open to suggestions’ for saving skyline’s historic icon
Downtown Fort Wayne saw a major change to its skyline today when the iconic GE sign was razed.
Here's why: http://wane.com/2016/03/29/iconic-ge-sign-pulled-down-from-downtown-campus/
I wrote something about this GE sign for Four for Quarter. I just heard it came down today. Here is my take:
The Maintenance of Light and Language in the Air
above Fort Wayne, Indiana
My dad was a janitor all his life over at the GE. We lived on Brandruff Street by the Wabash tracks. From our backyard, where we kept a garden of trellised tomatoes, pole beans, and grape arbors, we could see the top floors of the factory beyond the rails and warehouses. I staked the plants. Strips of white cloth trained the stems up the poles and wires. GE's got factories everywhere, making all kinds of things electrical. The Broadway GE made the light bulbs. My dad worked third trick. He changed light bulbs with new light bulbs off the line. Union rules, that old joke. Yes, it took three guys, two to turn the ladder while he held the bulb. On the roof was the GE sign. GENERAL ELECTRIC spelled out in thousands of bulbs. The old intertwined initials blazing in a circle of script above it. G and the E laced together. Each night, my dad woke up and, ready for work, sat with me in the garden. We listened to the plants grow. Fireflies sparked upward off the tips of the lush leaves. The trains shunted back and forth in the yard. With binoculars, he focused on the burning sign, floating above the roof. Later, I watched him, a blurred shadow, crawl across the light, making his way along the brilliant scaffolding, to the single extinguished bulb. I had to look away. Only the brightest stars were in the sky, the rest washed out by the all the light of the city. My father kept his eyes closed as much as he could even behind the polarized window of the welder's mask he wore. He'd look away, he told me, to where he thought our dark house would be where I would be in the vast darkness below.
With the GE sign in Fort Wayne taken down recently due to vandalism, we thought we'd mention our collection of digitized General Electric materials from the Fort Wayne complex. It includes scrapbooks, photographs, archives and publications, as well as employee publications from the Elex Club. View the collection on our website at: http://www.genealogycenter.info/generalelectric/
For those people that moved from closed and downsized GE plants, this will hold special value. This is the sign that...
For those people that moved from closed and downsized GE plants, this will hold special value. This is the sign that was atop one of the Broadway buildings in Fort Wayne. For many years, our union brothers took care of the sign, changing bulbs for the Christmas season, to red and green. It was a familiar sight for people in the city for many years. The GE portion of the sign has been brought to Evendale, where IAM 912 members are painstakingly restoring it. Thank you for your hard work. It will bring a smile to as many people here as it did there.
GE signage newspaper article
In 2016, I was the facility operations plant manager for the GE Aerospace Evendale facility located on Interstate 75 in Evendale, Ohio — a few miles north of Cincinnati.
I received a call from the GE Motors plant manager asking whether I had any interest in the old GE sign that was part of the Fort Wayne skyline for the past 80 years. As an amateur historian, I could never pass up something that had such significant impact on the Fort Wayne community as well as my family.
Of course, I said yes to the offer and paid for all shipping costs. A few months later, several semis pulled into the Evendale campus to unload roughly 30 large crates containing the disassembled sign.
I had no idea what to do with the crates or whether the sign could ever be reassembled and placed on campus.
We decided to unpack the sign and begin to lay it out in a large basement area in one of our many factory buildings.
...
On Aug. 16, 2023, the sign was unveiled on the exterior of a building on campus and along Interstate 75.
The sign has been completely modernized with new LED lights and new multicolor controls that could be changed to reflect a holiday or to orange and black if the Cincinnati Bengals win the Super Bowl.
Mothers give life in different ways. Today, we celebrate the women of Electric Works’ past, and specifically the founders of the ELEX, a GE “Girls” Club. Started in 1915, the purpose of the club was: “to promote social and educational activities, to foster the spirit of friendly service and to stand for the highest ideals of womanhood.”
While examples of “the highest ideals of womanhood” may be different in this day and age, the legacy of their efforts is a building block in the social innovation strategy for Electric Works’ innovation center.
Examples of their activities include welcoming new “girls” to the GE team; ensuring proper working conditions; visiting absent men and women employees to offer assistance as needed, providing counseling services to women and men having personal problems at home; sending 10,000 boxes of “goodies” to the GE service men and women serving during World World II; organizing trips outside of northeast Indiana including Niagara Falls in 1935, and Europe in 1953; and offering evening classes on sewing, business English, basketry, gymnastics and music.
By 1992, the club had over 1,500 members, including 42 men.
We salute the founders of ELEX: Joy Elder, Velma Ranking, Flossie Davis, Bertha Buecker, Faith Small, Harriet Droegmeyer, Edith Lee, Nina Rose Offerle, Emil Fuhrman, Florence Ranking, Thelma Campbell, Gilda Hassinger and Sophia Ranking, and Mina Blue and Cora Blue.
Source: General Electric at Fort Wayne, A 110 Year History by Clovis E. Linkous.
On this day in 1916 [November 6], the Elex Club was founded by plant superintendent E.A. Barnes for a group of women employed by General Electric. Today, there's a bench memorial dedicated to the Elex Club and its trailblazers next to our campus in McCulloch Park.
Did you know that the Genealogy Center has a digital collection related to General Electric? The collection includes GE scrapbooks, photographs, publications, memorabilia, and many other records. To browse our General Electric collection, click the link here: https://www.genealogycenter.info/generalelectric/
The photograph on the top shows the General Electric complex with street cars while the photo on the bottom shows GE employees celebrating the end of WWI. The celebration was on Broadway near building 17.
While watching a documentary detailing our Electric Works history, 95 year-old Hildegard Hofacker, a retired teacher, recognized one of the General Electric retirees featured in the video. Denver Sarver was one of her former third-grade students, and the two recently reunited at Electric Works, more than 60 years later. Connections like this are why it's important to us to honor and maintain the history of campus.
Click the link below to watch this heartwarming story by Wane 15:
