Hesburgh Libraries

Building South Bend shows yesterday’s promise and tomorrow’s potential

By Andy Fuller | March 22, 2018

Building South Bend shows yesterday’s promise and tomorrow’s potential

At a news conference to announce Idea Week, an event created by Notre Dame’s IDEA Center to generate entrepreneurial buzz around the region, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg stepped onto the podium and pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket. It’s a list copied from “A Pictorial Souvenir of South Bend, 1919,” noting items manufactured in South Bend just after the turn of the 20th century.

As the mayor reads, eyes widen in the audience. Then mouths drop. South Bend was a city “heaving with activity,” as Buttigieg puts it. He gets about 25 items deep on the alphabetized list—just through the “C’s”—and stops: “Carpets, casket hardware, chandeliers, cigar boxes, clocks, confectionary, cornice.” The point is made.

A partnership between South Bend’s Historic Preservation Commission and Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Libraries and School of Architecture is giving new life to old South Bend. Launched in 2015 in celebration of the city’s 150th birthday, the Building South Bend project features a website (buildingsouthbend.nd.edu), a mobile app, a 3-D imaging project and a virtual reality simulator. The project has grown since its launch and as it does, it’s giving South Bend residents a better view of history and architecture students a real-world case study.

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