The laundries — from the Home Laundry to the Laundryette

1902 – 1956

How it was missed:Mishawaka's own books do grant the heading, and the trade's course runs four directory states long.

The course: Johnson's 1902–03 directory lists two: the Home Laundry, at 503 N. Bridge, and Zigler J. W., laundry, at 118 N. Main. The 1921 classified, under Laundries, carries two of a different kind: Clark's Laundry & Dry Cleaning Co., at 317–319 N. Main, with a display advertisement — a steam laundry with a dry-cleaning arm, the trade industrialized — and, at 124 N. Main, Mark Sing Lee, the directory's name-form for the Chinese laundryman whose one-man hand laundry was the era's other kind of laundry entirely; he stands in this section's storefront article as well, at anchor size, as the city's Chinese business of record. Clark's is the trade's through-line: by 1949 it stands at 331 S. Byrkit Ave. — the plant moved off Main Street to a working address — beside a second house, the Crystal Cleaners & Laundry Co. Inc., at 702 E. Jefferson Blvd. The 1956 book carries Clark's at Byrkit and Crystal at Jefferson still, and adds the trade's successor form: the A & A Laundrymat, 210 W. 3d, and the Bendix Laundryette, 824 W. 7th — the self-service laundries arriving in the same heading that began with the Home Laundry's name. No Chinese laundry stands under the later headings reached; the one-man laundry's course past 1921 is a named gap, its settling sources the directories of the 1920s and 1930s read at the heading.

Sources:

1. Johnson's Business & Professional Directory (1902–03), the Mishawaka Business Directory — the Home Laundry; Zigler J. W.
2. Polk's Mishawaka City Directory (1921), classified directory, heading Laundries — Clark's Laundry & Dry Cleaning Co.; Mark Sing Lee.
3. Polk's South Bend and Mishawaka City Directory (1949), Mishawaka classified — Clark's Laundry & Dry Cleaning Co., 331 S. Byrkit Ave.; Crystal Cleaners & Laundry Co. Inc., 702 E. Jefferson Blvd., as read from a poor scan.
4. Polk (1956), Mishawaka classified — Clark's and Crystal at the same addresses; A & A Laundrymat; Bendix Laundryette.