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South Bend, 1970s; Granger, as of November 2026
The first district fight in this county was fought over West Washington Avenue, South Bend's upper-class residential street of 1854–1910. The sequence, from the neighbourhood's own history and the National Park Service nomination: through the 1960s the street declined and houses were demolished for the inner beltway; in the 1970s residents worked with the federally funded Model Cities programme and founded the Near West Side Neighborhood Organization; the city's urban-renewal threat to Tippecanoe Place galvanised the campaign; Ruth Price surveyed the neighbourhood and applied to the Department of the Interior for National Register district status, which was granted in 1975 — the nomination form is entered 17 January 1975, National Register reference 75000049, encompassing 330 contributing buildings. Building South Bend (University of Notre Dame) confirms West Washington was the first neighbourhood in South Bend listed on the National Register. Two different "firsts" must not be merged: the first National Register district is West Washington (1975); the first local historic preservation district designated by the Common Council is West North Shore Drive (1978), per Notre Dame's district history and the Commission's own 2003 guidebook.
For Granger the test is printed plainly: no neighbourhood in Clay or Harris township, and no ground inside the CDP, has ever been designated a local historic district or a National Register district. The nine local districts and every National Register district in the county sit inside South Bend or Mishawaka. Granger's neighbourhoods — platted subdivisions of the mid-to-late twentieth century, per the Neighborhoods file — have never been the subject of a district nomination, a district fight, or a district refusal in the record reached.