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1950 — 1964 · 916 East McKinley Avenue throughout
The house: South Bend built Studebakers, but Mishawaka bought them from a Mishawaka dealer: Brook Motor Sales Inc, at 916 East McKinley Avenue, which the Studebaker Drivers Club's dealer register dates from 1950 to 1964. The 1956 canvass shows the firm in working form — Milton M. Brook president, Sara Brook secretary-treasurer, "New and Used Cars and Trucks" — and the classified list carries its display line: "YOUR MISHAWAKA STUDEBAKER DEALER." The Brooks lived across the river, at 2008 Dorwood Drive in South Bend by the 1963 canvass, one of several dealer families in this record who sold in one city and slept in the other.
The end, and the address: The 1963 canvass still lists Brook Motor Sales at the same address, with the same officers and a McKinley Avenue telephone, BLackburn 5-9674 — listed, that is, in the year Studebaker's South Bend works closed, in December 1963; the register's closing date of 1964 makes the Mishawaka store's course the plainest in this section: it was a one-make house, and it ended with its make. Its address carries a second fact: a new-car store stood on East McKinley Avenue from 1950, thirteen years before Gates moved to West McKinley and a generation before the Grape Road corridor — the east end of the avenue was dealer ground before it was anything else.
Sources:
- Polk's South Bend and Mishawaka directories, 1956 and 1963 (read first-hand) — the Brook Motor Sales Inc entries (916 E. McKinley Ave.; Milton M. Brook, president; Sara Brook, secretary-treasurer; "New and Used Cars and Trucks"), the "Your Mishawaka Studebaker Dealer" display line in the 1956 classified list, and the 1963 entry with its Dorwood Drive residence.
- Studebaker Drivers Club dealer register (studebaker-info.org) — Brook Motor Sales Inc, 916 E. McKinley, Mishawaka: established 1950, closed 1964.