The surveys: the city reads its own buildings

1975 — 2005, and the cards published now

Survey before designation: Every designation in the entries around this one rests on survey work, and the survey record has its own chronology. The downtown was surveyed first: the Historic Resources of Downtown South Bend survey ran from 1975 to 1981, and its inventory became the January 1984 Multiple Resource Area nominations that carried dozens of downtown properties onto the National Register in a single batch on 5 June 1985. The citywide work followed: the City of South Bend Historic Sites and Structures Survey, conducted by the architectural firm of Crumlish/Sporleder & Associates, recorded the city's buildings address by address and rated them; the county's parallel record was kept under the state's program as the Indiana Historic Sites and Structures Inventory, whose summary reports stand behind the Commission's district guidebooks. The Commission's own meeting record shows the machine at work in its maturity: at its regular meeting of 16 September 1985 the Commission reviewed ratings for the proposed Riverside Drive district, heard the Lincolnway East district's liaison committee, and took landmark readings on the Darden Bridge and on houses on Sancome Avenue and East LaSalle Avenue — survey, district and landmark business in a single evening's agenda. The rating surveys continued by quadrant — the Commission's September 1994 report on the former Mount Olive A.M.E. Church at 310 West Monroe Street is a Quadrant 55 report — and a City of South Bend Interim Survey of Historic Sites and Structures was current by 2005, the rating the Commission cited when it landmarked the house at 113 Laurel Street in 2009.

The count the surveys built: The Commission's present accounting states the harvest: about 6,000 sites and structures have been identified in the architectural surveys as Outstanding, Notable or Contributing resources of the area's history. The survey's working papers — the Commission's survey cards, one for every rated building in the city — are the record's raw material, and their present keeper is a university: the University of Notre Dame's Building South Bend project, treated in the archive-keeping entry below, now publishes the Commission's survey records online, property by property.

Sources:

1. National Register nominations, Downtown South Bend Historic Multiple Resource Area — the 1975–1981 survey dates on the nomination forms and the January 1984 nominations entered 5 June 1985.
2. National Register nomination, Chapin Park Historic District (1980) and Architecture account in this record — the Crumlish/Sporleder city survey and its ratings.
3. Historic Preservation Commission guidebooks (Riverside Drive; Taylor's Field) — the Indiana Historic Sites and Structures Inventory summary reports behind the district records.
4. Historic Preservation Commission, agenda and minutes of the regular monthly meeting, 16 September 1985 (docs.southbendin.gov) — the Riverside Drive ratings review, the Lincolnway East liaison committee, and the landmark readings of that evening.
5. Historic Preservation Commission, "Historic and Architectural Significance," September 1994 — the Quadrant 55 report on 310 West Monroe Street.
6. Historic Preservation Commission staff report for 113 Laurel Street (2009) — the 2005 City of South Bend Interim Survey and its Notable rating.
7. City of South Bend, Historic Preservation Commission page — the approximately 6,000 surveyed sites rated Outstanding, Notable or Contributing.