The markets: the city's curb market of 1911–1924, and the farmer's market that claims its line

1911 — present · Colfax Avenue to Northside Boulevard

The municipal market, from the city's own record: Before the farmer's market was a corporation it was a law. In the summer of 1911 the Common Council passed, three times over, the ordinances that created a public market: Ordinance No. 1600, introduced June 26, 1911; No. 1601, passed 8 to 1 on July 5; and No. 1618, the rulebook that governed the result — as published from the city's ordinance book and Board of Public Safety minutes by the South Bend Paper. The market covered the north side of East Colfax Avenue between Michigan and Sycamore streets and the open space under the Colfax Avenue bridge. The Board of Public Safety ran it and appointed a Market Master — the city's sealer of weights and measures, or a policeman the board named — who closed the market by ringing a bell. The market sat three days a week, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, from daylight to noon, in stalls of eight feet. In May 1922 the board ordered its Market Master, Byron Miller, to confine the market to the bridge and not past its east end. On December 14, 1923, the board's minutes record the end: "Motion prevailed that the Public Market which has been held on the Colfax Ave. Bridge be discontinued after Jan 1, 1924, on account of the obstruction of traffic." The records reviewed for that account do not show what became of the vendors.

The farmer's market, and the seam between the two: The South Bend Farmer's Market tells its own course in Farms & Crops, and it is not retold here: trading from 1911 beside the Colfax Street bridge in the market histories' account; more than a hundred sellers by the early 1920s; the moves to South Fellows Street and then, late in 1928, to Northside Boulevard; the fire — 1970 in the Indiana Magazine of History's account, September 1971 in the travel listings — and the rebuilt building opened December 14, 1972; market families like the Kantorowskis, whose Walter started on the Colfax Bridge, in Notre Dame's Scholastic. The seam is printed, not smoothed: the city's own record discontinues its public market after January 1, 1924, and the farmer's market's own officers date its incorporation to that same year, 1924 — a board member told Notre Dame Magazine so, and a Common Council resolution of November 24, 2014, carries 1924 as the market's beginning. A market suppressed for traffic and a corporation born the same year may share a bridge, a trade, and vendors; the documents that survive name them as two acts, and this section prints both without joining them by force. The Purple Porch co-operative, begun at the market in 2009, carries the line into the present co-operative era, as Farms & Crops records.

Sources:

1. South Bend Paper, "South Bend's curb market lasts 12 years before traffic ends it," published from the city's ordinance book and Board of Public Safety minutes — Ordinance Nos. 1600, 1601, and 1618 (1911); the market's ground and hours; the Market Master and Byron Miller; the board's motion of 14 December 1923 discontinuing the market after 1 January 1924. A single modern reading of the city record; its specifics are printed at that strength.
2. Farms & Crops section of this history — the farmer's market's whole course: the 1911 trading and the 1924 incorporation, both dates as their sources give them; the moves of the 1920s; the fire-year conflict; the building of 14 December 1972; the Purple Porch co-operative of 2009.
3. Scholastic, University of Notre Dame, "More than a Market" — Walter Kantorowski's start on the Colfax Bridge and the market families' lines.