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LEG 28 · ITEM 9 · RUN B #146
The pattern's building stands in South Bend, and its rescue is documented to the dollar: the Palace Theatre — opened 1922, built for $1 million by the Palace Theatre Corporation of Chicago to J. S. Aroner's design, a vaudeville house on the Orpheum circuit at 211 North Michigan Street — prospered into the 1940s and then declined with television, until in 1959 its board voted to demolish it. Ella M. Morris bought the theatre for an undisclosed sum and sold it to the City of South Bend for $1; the city renamed it the Morris Civic Auditorium in her honor. The building was listed on the National Register on 5 June 1985 (ref. 85001226), closed in May 1998 for a $17 million restoration, and reopened 3 March 2000 as the Morris Performing Arts Center, a 2,564-seat hall that stands in November 2026 as downtown's northern anchor. Saved for a dollar is not a metaphor in this county; it is a deed price, at boundary size, the whole South Bend's.
The test on this ground runs negative, shown: no building in Osceola or Penn Township carries a rescue story in the Tribune and preservation record searched — no dollar sale, no eleventh-hour purchase, no preservation campaign for a structure. The town's one great save campaign, the Baugo Bay fight of Parks, was waged for water, not a building, and is not converted into one here. The District No. 5 schoolhouse's survival (item 6) was reuse, not rescue: no threat, campaign or savior is recorded for it. Printed plainly: the rescued landmark is a form of fame this ground does not hold.
Verdict, item 9 — TESTED NEGATIVE (on this ground; the boundary positive told whole at its size).
Sources: Morris Performing Arts Center, official centennial history (morris100.org — opened as the Palace, 1922; demolition vote and $1 resale, 1959; reopened 3 Mar 2000); South Bend Tribune, 28 Aug 2022 (centennial account, same facts); National Register record (ref. 85001226, listed 5 June 1985); Parks (Baugo Bay campaign). Searches run 11 Nov 2026.