Five Points: Corby's, The Commons, Nickie's and Bridget's — and the licensing wars

c. 1969 — 1994

The corner: At the Five Points intersection in the city's Northeast neighborhood — where Corby Boulevard, Eddy Street and South Bend Avenue meet — four student bars once stood across from each other: Nickie's, The Commons, Corby's and Bridget McGuire's Filling Station. The roster is Notre Dame Magazine's, in its bar retrospective: "The Five Points intersection once made a bar tour easy with Nickies, The Commons, Corby's and Bridget McGuire's Filling Station (aka Bridget McGuire's, aka Bridget's) right across the street from each other." The neighborhood around them is the Communities section's Northeast neighborhood; the bars' two documented fights with the licensing power are this entry's record.

Corby's first life and death: The original Corby's Tavern stood at the intersection of Corby and Eddy streets. Its documented late run opens with a closing: in February 1977 the Observer reported that Corby's, operated by Roger Stouffer for the previous eight years — so from about 1969 — would close before the month's end because its property owners would not renew the lease. Stouffer had spent two years building a new Corby's on land he owned next door, until the city's planning director, John DeLee, shut the project down under a new ordinance, backed by the Northeast Neighborhood Association, barring a new tavern within 1,000 feet of an existing one. The bar at Corby and Eddy traded on regardless — and in November 1980 the Observer opened a two-part series, "The Corby's Saga," on the fight over its license: the local board of the Alcoholic Beverage Commission had recommended the state not renew it, on the legal basis of a Corby's bartender's 1979 conviction for serving minors after three underage Notre Dame students were arrested inside the bar on 31 August 1979, and against a background of neighborhood complaints about the Five Points bars and their patrons. The bar survived the saga; the visitors bureau's history of the successor pub records simply that the original Corby's "went out of business in the 80s," and its exact last year is not pinned in the record reached.

The Commons and the end of the row: The Commons, at 826 North Eddy Street, run by the Anastasios family — its keeper Pasquale was, in the Observer's phrase, a local hero to the students — met the row's documented end. After years of underage-drinking trouble and a police raid in the fall of 1993, the city and the state reached an agreement with the owners in January 1994: the bar would close every night at 10 p.m., and Pasquale and his co-owner would sell the bar by the summer or lose the liquor license outright. The Observer covered the reprieve under the sign in the window — open, but not later than 10 — and the sale deadline closed the Five Points era: the student trade's center of gravity moved up Notre Dame Avenue to Club 23 and, in the next generation, to the Eddy Street Commons built on the neighborhood's south edge. Alumni memory, printed as memory with its carrier named — readers commenting on Notre Dame Magazine's bar retrospective — remembers The Commons as the beloved room of the early-1990s classes and its site as a vacant lot today.

Sources:

1. The Observer (Notre Dame), 4 February 1977 — Corby's at Corby and Eddy streets; Roger Stouffer's eight years of operation; the unrenewed lease and the February closing; the new-tavern construction stopped under the 1,000-foot ordinance; City Planner John DeLee; the Northeast Neighborhood Association.
2. The Observer (Notre Dame), 24 November 1980, "The Corby's Saga" — the license-renewal battle; the local ABC board's recommendation; the 1979 bartender conviction and the arrests of 31 August 1979; neighborhood complaints against the Five Points bars. Visit South Bend Mishawaka, "Around the Bend: Corby's Irish Pub" (September 2026) — the original Corby's out of business in the 1980s.
3. The Observer (Notre Dame), 13 January 1994 — The Commons, 826 North Eddy Street; the Anastasios ownership; the fall 1993 raid; the January 1994 agreement (10 p.m. closing, sale by summer or loss of license). Notre Dame Magazine, "Bar Tour" — the Five Points roster (Nickie's, The Commons, Corby's, Bridget McGuire's Filling Station); alumni comments on the magazine's "Soundings: A Toast to the Bars" — The Commons remembered, its site a vacant lot, printed as memory.