South Bend's Communities: The Peoples of the City

Communities

South Bend was never one community. It was built parish by parish and plat by plat: a Potawatomi village ground that never entirely emptied, a French trading town, an Irish and German mother parish on Taylor Street, a Polish west side that for half a century was nearly a city inside the city, Hungarian streets around Chapin, a Jewish neighborhood on William Street, Greek families who bought a German Lutheran church, Calabrian coal-shovelers who stayed, Belgian neighbors who mostly belong to the next city over, a Black west side whose institutions urban renewal cut through, and a Mexican and Latino west side that grew from migrant farm families into the city's largest living community story. Each of those peoples built the same set of things — a church or synagogue, a school, a hall, a society, a store — and each left a geography that the street map still spells: a Pulaski Street through the Polish quarter, a Hungarian parish on Calvert, a Shalom Way on the city's south side.

This section tells those communities at the size the record supports: from the parishes' own histories, the National Register nominations, the neighborhood associations' and organizations' own accounts, the university studies of the 1970s, and the press of record. Where two accounts differ, both are printed. Where the record runs out — and it does, for some peoples more than others — the entry says so rather than filling the silence.