‘Greyhound Blue’ Bus Terminals
A quick message scribbled on this 1940 postcard and mailed off to family in Ohio depicts what to the transient sender was just the Greyhound bus station in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
To us of the future, it is a Streamline Moderne gem, one of more than 50 “Greyhound blue” porcelain enamel bus terminals designed by William Arrasmith and scattered across the line’s nationwide system. The Fort Wayne depot opened in 1938 replacing a Berry Street bus stop that required passengers to load and unload at the curb. The new station had a second story restaurant and loading stalls for buses screened from the street by a glass block pierced wing wall. The station closed in 1977, survived the 1980s in a neglected state of abandonment, and despite hopeful ideas for adaptive reuse was demolished in 1992. A Marriott Courtyard now stands on the site adjacent to Parkview Field built in 2009 for the Ft. Wayne Tin Caps, farm team for the San Diego Padres.