The Torrington works — Bantam Bearings on the west side

Documented 1945 – closed 1984

A Connecticut company's South Bend division: The Torrington Company of Torrington, Connecticut, one of the country's great bearing makers, kept its Bantam Bearings Division in South Bend. The tie is documented in the period trade press rather than in a modern list: from 1945 through 1961, journals from Iron Age and Aviation Week to the Paper Trade Journal and Design News carry the division's advertisements and listings under the dateline "South Bend 21, Ind." beside "Torrington, Conn.," and the division specialized in the heavy end of the line — needle, spherical, tapered and straight roller bearings, and ball bearings for industrial and aircraft service. The Indiana University South Bend archives hold the records of the division's union, UAW Local 590, with materials running from the 1940s: the works was a working plant, not a sales office.

The 1984 closing: Ingersoll-Rand acquired the Torrington Company in the mid-1960s. In 1984, on the IU South Bend archives' finding aid, Ingersoll-Rand chose to close the South Bend plant rather than renovate it, and relocated the operation to a non-union facility in South Carolina. That is the documented whole of the story at the record's size: a mid-size defense-and-industry bearing works, a Connecticut parent, and an exit of the kind the 1980s made common in the bend of the river. The South Bend founding date of the works was not pinned and is not printed.

Sources:

1. Indiana University South Bend Archives, finding aid, UAW Local 590 and the Torrington Company Collection — the Bantam Bearings Division in South Bend; materials from the 1940s; Ingersoll-Rand's acquisition of Torrington in the mid-1960s; the 1984 decision to close the South Bend plant rather than renovate it and the relocation to a non-union facility in South Carolina.
2. Period trade press, 1945–1961 — Iron Age (1945), Aviation Week (1950, 1952), Paper Trade Journal (1956, 1958), Product Engineering (1960), and Design News (1961), carrying Bantam Bearings Division advertisements and listings at "South Bend 21, Ind." and Torrington, Connecticut.