Electrification: the power changes state

1868–1911

The city's first utilities grew out of the races and then replaced them: The sequence begins with light. The South Bend Gas-Light Company was organized in January 1868 with a capital of $50,000 and its works at the foot of Jefferson Street; the city was first lit with gas on 1 December 1868, and by 1880 Chapman counts seven miles of main, 371 consumers, 119 public lamps and some 28,000 cubic feet consumed daily — with Clem Studebaker as the company's president and J. M. Studebaker its secretary-treasurer, the wagon fortune already investing in the utility business. The city's own works made the same point from the public side: the municipal water works drew river water above the dam through head gates into wheel pits where three 66-inch "American" turbine wheels turned the pumps — the dam doing civic duty, as Chapman describes it, alongside its factory tenants.

Electricity arrived on race ground. Per the Sanborn maps as read in the National Register documentation, the South Bend Electric Company occupied the site between the East Race and the river, on the north side of East Colfax Avenue, in 1891–1893; and on that same site the Indiana & Michigan Electric Company built its new plant in 1911, "considered one of the most modern in the state." Meanwhile the great works were becoming their own utilities — the documentation's judgment is that toward the end of the nineteenth century many large industries no longer used water power, preferring to generate electricity with coal-fired steam turbines — and the one great counter-current ran west: the Oliver company, having bought the West Race rights in 1903, built its hydro-electric plant on the race within two years, turning the oldest power source in the city into the newest form of it, and supplying, as the industry press later remembered, the Oliver factory and the Oliver family's downtown properties. By 1911 the transformation of power was complete in kind. A manufacturer no longer rented a place on a canal; he bought current, or made it, and the races began their long demotion from machinery to scenery — a demotion the next entries complete.

Sources:

1. Chapman, History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1880) — the South Bend Gas-Light Company (organized January 1868, capital $50,000, works at the foot of Jefferson Street, the city first lit 1 December 1868, seven miles of main, 371 consumers, 119 public lamps, about 28,000 cubic feet daily, C. Studebaker president and J. M. Studebaker secretary-treasurer); and the city water works' three 66-inch "American" turbine wheels fed above the dam.
2. National Register of Historic Places, East Bank Multiple Property Documentation Form (1997/1999) — the South Bend Electric Company on the site between the East Race and the river, 1891–1893 per the Sanborn maps; Indiana & Michigan Electric's 1911 plant on the site, among the most modern in the state; the large industries' turn to coal-fired steam-turbine generation.
3. This build's Businesses section — Oliver's 1903 purchase of the West Race water-power rights and its hydro-electric plant; cross-referenced.
4. Water Power Magazine, November 2022 — the early-1900s hydroelectric plant on the west race supplying the Oliver Plow factory and Oliver downtown facilities.