The Man in the Hall: Mike Muszar, 1917

Night of 18–19 August 1917

The documented facts: In the night of Saturday, 18 August 1917, Magyar Hall on Chapin Street — the Hungarian societies' hall, built in 1910, holding a theater, a dance floor, club rooms, a store and a saloon — burned. The South Bend News-Times of Sunday, 19 August, put the loss at $15,000 and reported that the flames had gained great headway before the firemen arrived; the fight lasted nearly an hour and a half. The theater took the greater portion of the damage: the main staircase was burned, all the scenery and curtains were destroyed, and the club rooms on the second and third floors were burned slightly and flooded with water. The fire's seat was at the rear of the second floor, under or upon the stage that occupied the hall's entire rear, and the paper reported its center at the switchboard, whose wires ran without the protection of a metal box; charred remains of a wire were found near the board, and the theory the paper advanced was defective wiring. All of that the record settles. What it does not settle is the man in its headline: "Magyar Hall Burns; Fear Man Is Lost." Mike Muszar, president of one of the Hungarian societies that owned their hall in common, could not be found. A report circulated that he had been burned to death; a search of the building, the paper says, could find no trace of him, and at the paper's late hour he was reported still missing.

The open question, exactly: whether Mike Muszar died in the hall that night or walked away from it. The two readings are the only ones the evidence permits, and this record adopts neither. If he died in the fire, the search of the ruins missed what a search in 1917 could miss in a burned theater's wreckage; if he left the building alive — before the fire, during it, or by an exit the paper did not canvass — no document reached for this history says so. The News-Times item is the whole of the press record that the digitized index returns: searched for this section, the name Muszar appears in the Hoosier State Chronicles run of the paper on 19 August 1917 and nowhere later that the index reaches. The burying ground of his own community gives no answer either: the published transcription of Sacred Heart Hungarian Cemetery, read in full for this section, carries no Muszar — and the transcription states in its own headnote that it is not a complete listing, so the absence is printed at exactly that strength. The Hungarian community's published extractions for St. Joseph County — church, funeral-home and cemetery records gathered over years of work — surface no later trace of the man that: no marriage, no burial, no obituary abstract under his name.

What would settle it, and has not: the record names its own routes. A death in a fire was a coroner's case, and the St. Joseph County coroner's records for 1879–1960 survive under a published index; an Indiana death certificate, if one was made, would close the question in a line. A living Mike Muszar owed the government a draft registration in September 1918, when every man of his years in the United States was registered, and a card in South Bend's boards would prove survival as flatly as a certificate would prove death. The Tribune and the later issues of the News-Times itself, on microfilm, may carry a follow-up the digitized index does not reach. None of those pulls has been made first-hand for this section, and so the entry stands where the evidence leaves it: a named man, an officer of his community, reported missing in the ruins of his community's hall on a Sunday morning in 1917 — and unaccounted for in every source this history could reach. The fire itself, and the hall's place in the immigrant city, are told in the Wars, Unrest & Disasters section; this section keeps only the question the fire left.

Sources:

1. South Bend News-Times, 19 August 1917 (Hoosier State Chronicles, Indiana's digital historic newspaper program) — "Magyar Hall Burns; Fear Man Is Lost": the hall and its 1910 building, the $15,000 loss, the hour-and-a-half fight, the seat at the stage, the switchboard account, Muszar reported missing, the search of the ruins fruitless, still missing at the paper's late hour.
2. Sacred Heart Hungarian Cemetery, South Bend — published transcription (St. Joseph County INGenWeb / Piechorowski submissions), read in full: no Muszar entry; the transcription's own headnote states the listing is not complete.
3. Chris Kovach, Hungarian Immigration Collection for St. Joseph County (church, funeral-home and cemetery extractions) — searched for the name; no later Muszar record surfaced in the parts of the collection.
4. This history, Wars, Unrest & Disasters section — the Magyar Hall fire's place in the city's disaster roster, from the same 19 August 1917 report.