The Tower Era — the Tower Building (1929) and Liberty Tower

1929 – present

The Tower Building: At 216 West Washington Street, diagonally across from the courthouse and beside the moved Old Courthouse, stands South Bend's skyscraper of the old school. The Tower Building was designed by Austin & Shambleau and built by H. G. Christman & Company in 1929: twelve stories and 150 feet, faced in terra cotta and marble on its north and east sides, in the Skyscraper Gothic style — the only structure of its kind in South Bend, on the university survey's judgment. It was designed as the eastern half of a pair; the western twin was never built. The survey record dates its completion one week before the stock market crash that opened the Depression, and that timing froze it in place as the city's tallest building for four decades. It was listed on the National Register on 5 June 1985, and it works today as an office building — an architects' firm among its tenants.

Liberty Tower: The reign ended with the Liberty Tower, the 25-story, 331-foot tower that has been South Bend's tallest building since its completion — dated 1970 in the standard lists of the city's tallest buildings and 1971 in the list's own text, a variance the record carries as printed here (Building South Bend's survey dates the Tower Building's reign as tallest until 1969). The Liberty Tower, long known as the Chase Tower, underwent a facade renovation from 2015 to 2020. It remains, on the standard count, the tallest building in Indiana outside Indianapolis and Fort Wayne. Between the two towers stands the whole arc of the downtown office age: the terra-cotta Gothic of 1929, finished into the Crash, and the modern slab of 1970 that replaced it in the sky.

Sources:

1. National Register of Historic Places, Tower Building, ref. 85001244, listed 5 June 1985 — the Austin & Shambleau and H. G. Christman & Company credits and the 1929 date; Building South Bend, "Tower Building" (ND-SB-00203) — the Skyscraper Gothic description, the unbuilt twin, the completion a week before the Crash, and the tallest-until-1969 statement.
2. List of tallest buildings in South Bend — the Tower Building at 150 feet and 12 stories (1929) and Liberty Tower at 331 feet and 25 stories, its 1970/1971 dating, the Chase Tower name and the 2015–2020 facade renovation.