Signature Inn Fort Wayne, IN - Location #2

aerial view courtesy of Bing Maps

map graphic courtesy of signature-inns.com at archive.org

Signature Inn's second location opened in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1982.  It consists of 102 rooms, making it a little smaller than average, compared to the rest of the hotels.  The design of this building would more or less set the stage for how the subsequent locations would look.  The vertical ridge at the peak of the roof covers the entire peak and the ell looks like it belongs with the building instead of looking like an afterthought.

While many other hotels in the chain were re-branded as Jameson Inns in 2006, this is one of the few that kept the Signature Inn name throughout the Jameson days.  The hotel was sold off in August 2007 and became an Econo Lodge (comments on tripadvisor.com confirm this).  It was somewhere between 2008 and 2010 that the hotel became a Quality Inn, which it still is today.

overview of the hotel

The most obvious change to the building from its Signature Inn days is the color.  The building has a metal roof and the same metal cladding extended to down below the second floor windows.  That had been removed in the building's remodel and lights were added to the exterior wall.

In getting photos of this hotel, I was in a race against the clock.  I had left Itasca, IL around 4:00 PM (Eastern; 3 PM their time) and was trying to get the South Bend, Elkhart, and Fort Wayne locations before darkness fell.  I was "lucky" enough to get stuck in some slow-moving Chicago-area traffic, which ate up about an hour of my time.  I hit South Bend around 7 PM and Elkhart 40 minutes later.  It was around 9:15 by the time I rolled into the parking lot here and even though the sun was pretty well down, I had just enough light to take some decent photos.  There was a van parked in the canopy when I arrived; after taking a few shots and then talking to my wife on the phone, I noticed it was loading up getting ready to leave.  In that 15 minutes, the sun sank down even further and I was able to snap a few nighttime shots before heading for home.

sources for this post include the Allen County, Indiana, auditor's website, signature-inns.com archived at archive.org, and imagery found through Bing Maps.

Photographs not accredited in their captions were taken by me.  These and additional photos can be found here: Formerly Signature Inn by Ryan on Flickr

Signature Inn Indianapolis Northwest - Where it all began

aerial view courtesy of Bing Maps

map graphic courtesy of signature-inns.com at archive.org

Signature Inn's first location opened on March 12, 1981 in Indianapolis, Indiana.  This hotel is located on Payne Branch Rd. in the northwestern section of the city.  This was the second largest hotel in the chain, with 137 rooms.  Only Terre Haute has more rooms, but then again, Terre Haute wasn't originally a Signature Inn when it was first built.  I guess I could say that the is the largest hotel the chain constructed.

After looking through various photos and aerial images of the other hotels of the chain, I've found that while this location set the stage for the design of the buildings, there are some notable differences.

2015 view

First, the rectangular part on the ridge of the roof does not run the full length of the roof.  According to what I was able to find on historicaerials.com, it never did.  The second difference I found is that the ell (you can thank all the years I've spent doing crosswords for that word) extended toward the back of the building instead of the front.  It could be something as simple as the way the lot was laid out didn't allow for the ell to come out of the front of the building.

the front of the building

More importantly, the ell appears to have a small hallway connecting it to the main part of the building, making it look almost like an afterthought.  All subsequent locations of this same general design were built to look like one cohesive unit.

the ell that runs toward the back of the building

Finally, when the building was constructed, the pool was open-air.  Judging from historicaerials.com, I cannot be 100% sure that the building had the famous S-shaped pool, but it sure looks like it.  The property card I found shows improvements to the pool in 1997, which must be when it was put under roof.  Historicaerials.com from 1992 shows an outdoor pool; their 1998 imagery shows it was put under roof.

In the research I've done, I've been able to find that sometime between 2004 and 2006 was when the hotel was sold and converted into a Days Inn.

sources for this post include the Marion County, Indiana, auditor's website, signature-inns.com archived at archive.org, and imagery found through both Bing Maps and historicaerials.com.

Photographs not accredited in their captions were taken by me.  These and additional photos can be found here: Formerly Signature Inn by Ryan on Flickr