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1911–1928 AND PRESENT · SOUTH BEND (BOUNDARY) · NO MARKET EVER SEATED IN OSCEOLA
The curb market is dug from the city's own records, and its dates are ordinance dates. On 26 June 1911 Councilman Buechner introduced Ordinance No. 1600, "An ordinance establishing a Public Market on East Colfax Avenue"; after a 15-minute special session on 5 July 1911 re-passed it as Ordinance No. 1601 (8 to 1), and a fuller rulebook followed on 27 November 1911 as Ordinance No. 1618 (8 to 0, signed the next day). The market covered the north side of East Colfax Avenue between Michigan and Sycamore streets, plus the open space under the Colfax Avenue bridge to the river; the Board of Public Safety ran it through a Market Master; market days were Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from daylight to noon; the curb was marked into eight-foot stalls, one to a person or firm. The end is a minute, quoted in the city record's retelling: on 14 December 1923 the board resolved "that the Public Market which has been held on the Colfax Ave. Bridge be discontinued after Jan 1, 1924, on account of the obstruction of traffic" — a twelve-and-a-half-year curb market, killed by the automobile it had fed. The floor's dates (1911–1924) are therefore verified, with the precision that the legal end is 1 January 1924.
The lineage claim is tested, not repeated, as the row requires. The South Bend Farmer's Market of today — on Northside Boulevard, in an H-shaped building rebuilt after a September 1971 fire and reopened 14 December 1972 — dates itself "established in 1911" and tells a continuous course: begun 1911 at the Colfax Street bridge, outgrown by 1923 with over 100 vendors, moved to South Fellows Street, then settled on Northside Boulevard in late 1928. Tested against the city record above, the claim is half a lineage: the 1911 beginning and the Colfax bridge ground are the curb market's own facts, truly shared; but the curb market was formally discontinued after 1 January 1924, and the record reached shows no instrument carrying its legal existence across the 1924–1928 interval to the Northside ground. The honest print is therefore: one market tradition, two legal lives — a curb market of 1911–1924, and a farmer's market seated by 1928 that claims, and by ground and trade plausibly inherits, the earlier market's line. Continuity of vendors across the gap is asserted by the market's own telling and not proven by the records reached. Osceola's share: no public, curb or farmer's market seated in Osceola appears in any record reached; the town's produce went to these South Bend markets and to Mishawaka, and its own market record is the Lamport & Buck counter of the record.
Sources: South Bend Paper, "South Bend's curb market lasts 12 years before traffic ends it" — Ordinances 1600/1601/1618 (June–November 1911), the Colfax Avenue ground and rules, Market Master Byron Miller (1922), and the Board of Public Safety minute of 14 December 1923 discontinuing the market after 1 January 1924, from the city records. South Bend Farmer's Market record (market and directory accounts, read November 2026) — established 1911; Colfax bridge; Fellows Street; Northside Boulevard late 1928; fire September 1971; reopened 14 December 1972.