South Bend Hotels and Motels

Hotels & Motels

South Bend has lodged its travelers since before it was a city, and the lodging record runs in a single line from a licensed tavern stand on the Michigan Road to a twenty-three-story casino tower on Prairie Avenue. The first houses were taverns, and their stands — Peter Johnson's Michigan Hotel at Michigan and Washington, William L. Earl's tavern, Lilly's stand — belong to the roads and the bar trade, and are told in the Corridors and Bars & Nightclubs accounts of this record; what belongs here is the lodging function itself, and it begins in earnest when the tavern stands give way to houses built and kept as hotels. What follows takes the houses in the order the record gives them: the named hotels of the 1830s through the 1890s from Samuel Leeper's hotel reminiscences, printed in Timothy E. Howard's 1907 History of St. Joseph County and read first-hand for this section; the grand houses of the new century from the National Register nominations, the History Museum's records, and the builders' own accounts; the color line from the Green Book's own pages; and the modern stock from the trade press and the houses' own records, verified against the listings of November 2026. Where the record gives two dates or two figures, both are printed. Where it gives none, the gap is named.