The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
1884 – 1914
George W. Loughman (1884–1888): Loughman (1846–1909) was, in the local historian's phrase, the busiest man in South Bend: freight agent for the largest railroad in the city, president of a building and loan association, president of his own life insurance company, and foreman of the Number One fire crew — the mayoralty was one more job on the pile, and he held it four years. His portrait is the era's: in the 1880s the office went to the men who were already running everything else.
Longley, Leeper, Schafer (1888–1898): William H. Longley's four years, David R. Leeper's two and D. B. J. Schafer's four carried the city through the boom of the late eighties and the depression of the nineties at roster size; the record reached for this section keeps their tenures and little more, and they are printed at that size.
Schuyler Colfax III (1898–1902): The eleventh mayor was the son of the most famous man South Bend ever sent to Washington — Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the House and Grant's vice president. Colfax III (1870–1925) was twenty-eight when he took the office, the youngest mayor in the city's history, and his administration holds the era's landmark: it was in his term, in 1902, that James Oliver's new City Hall opened on North Main Street and the government of South Bend moved into a building of its own for the first time, thirty-seven years after incorporation.
Edward J. Fogarty (1902–1910): Fogarty's eight years made him the longest-serving mayor of the city's first century, a mark that stood until Kernan passed it in 1997. His was the streetcar city at full stretch — paved streets, the interurban, the Studebaker and Oliver plants at their great expansion — and his two full terms set the pattern the office would keep: a professional administration, re-elected once, in a city that had become the industrial capital of northern Indiana.
Charles L. Goetz (1910–1914): Four years, closing the era; the next election broke the pattern of party men entirely.
Sources:
- Aaron Helman, South Bend News-Times (8 September 2026), "George Loughman: The Busiest Man in South Bend" — the railroad agency, the building-and-loan and insurance presidencies, the fire crew.
- South Bend Tribune, "Throwback Thursday" (12 April 2018) — Colfax III as mayor when the 1902 City Hall opened; the mayoral list and the History Museum's account — Colfax III the youngest mayor, son of the vice president.
- The History Museum's list of mayors — tenure years; Fogarty's eight years the longest before Kernan.