The ledger of losses

1911 — 2012

The balance sheet, stated plainly: Against the courthouse the city picked up and moved in 1895–96 because it would not part with it, the record sets the buildings that fell. The James Oliver House was demolished in 1911, by private choice in the family's own building campaign, to make way for a public school. The Oliver Hotel, six stories and $600,000 of 1899, was demolished in 1967; the Oliver Opera House of 1885 in 1978. The Granada Theatre was demolished on 6 July 1971, two months after it closed — the Theaters account carries its full record. The Register itself keeps three South Bend names after their buildings' ends, in its removals: the Colfax Theater at 213 West Colfax, listed with the downtown batch on 5 June 1985, demolished in November 1991, and removed from the Register on 7 July 1993; the Morningside Club Residence at 413 West Colfax, listed the same day, destroyed by fire on 18 December 1988 and removed on 24 January 1989; and the Northern Indiana Gas and Electric Company Building at 221 North Michigan, listed in 1985 and removed on 9 October 2012 — the fourth county removal stands across the city line and is Mishawaka's to tell. The industrial loss is the largest by acreage: most of the Studebaker plant was demolished in the mid-2000s, and the cleared ground became Ignition Park; what stands — the Administration Building of 1909, Building 84 of 1923, Union Station across the tracks — stands because particular buyers and agreements intervened, as the present-regime entry tells for the Administration Building. The losses ledger is not an argument; the regime entries around it are the argument the city made in answer, and this entry is simply the other column of the same book.

Sources:

1. Architecture account in this record — the Oliver Hotel and Opera House demolition dates; the James Oliver House demolished in 1911; the plant demolition of the mid-2000s and the Ignition Park ground; the Register removals with their dates (Colfax Theater, Morningside Club Residence, Northern Indiana Gas and Electric Company Building), from the National Park Service's former-listings record.
2. Theaters account in this record — the Granada Theatre, closed 16 May 1971 and demolished 6 July 1971.