The West Washington fight and the district of 1975

1973 — 1977

A resident surveys her own street: The neighborhood's published history gives the answer a name and a mechanism: "The prospect of such a loss of heritage galvanized residents. Ruth Price surveyed the neighborhood and applied to the Department of the Interior for National Registry District Status, which was granted in 1975." The West Washington Historic District, listed in 1975, was the first neighborhood in South Bend placed on the National Register of Historic Places, as the University of Notre Dame's Building South Bend project records it — the street of the plow king and the wagon king, Copshaholm and Tippecanoe Place and the workers' streets behind them, written into the federal record while the renewal era was still running.

The two great houses enter the record first: The listings began with the mansions. Tippecanoe Place was listed on the National Register on 2 July 1973 — its nomination already names Southhold Restorations, Inc., the local preservation group, as the house's owner, holding it while the district fight was won around it — and Copshaholm followed on 28 August 1973. In 1977 Tippecanoe Place was designated a National Historic Landmark, the federal government's highest tier; it remains the county's only one, as the Architecture account's count of the Register states. The sequence matters to the city's heritage record: South Bend's preservation law, told in the next entry, and its first Register district both date from the same three years — the ordinance of 1973, the district of 1975 — and both were answers to the demolitions of the decade before.

Sources:

1. Near West Side Neighborhood Organization, "A History of the Neighborhood" — Ruth Price's survey and application, and the district status granted in 1975.
2. Building South Bend, University of Notre Dame — West Washington as the first South Bend neighborhood listed on the National Register.
3. National Register nomination, Clement Studebaker House (Tippecanoe Place) — listing of 2 July 1973 and Southhold Restorations, Inc. as owner of record; National Register record for the Joseph D. Oliver House (Copshaholm) — listing of 28 August 1973; Architecture account in this record — the National Historic Landmark designation of 1977 and its standing as the county's only landmark.