Two rinks in the 1948 directory

Printed at directory size, because that is the size of the record. The national Directory of Roller Skating Rinks for 1948 lists exactly two rinks for South Bend, and this article claims those two listings and no more: the Playland Roller Rink at 1741 Lincolnway East, out by the amusement park whose name it carried, and Bock's Rink at 226 S. Lafayette Blvd., downtown. The Roller Skating Rink Operators Association's listings, carried in Billboard in the same years, give the same two addresses. Between them the two rinks cover the city's skate geography of the postwar years, the park-side rink and the city rink, birthday parties and school skates at one end of town and league nights at the other.

What is not fixed. Neither rink's opening or closing year is established by any source found, and the Playland rink's exact relation to the amusement park's 1960/1961 closing is not documented in the sources above; the listings also do not say whether the two rinks' sessions ran year round or seasonally. The namesakes in other states, a Playland skating center in York, Pennsylvania, and another in Georgia, are different rinks that happen to share the name, and nothing from their records is imported here.

Sources

1. Directory of Roller Skating Rinks, 1948 (Forgotten Roller Rinks of the Past, directory text): South Bend listings, Playland Roller Rink, 1741 Lincolnway East; Bock's Rink, 226 S. Lafayette Blvd.
2. Billboard magazine, Roller Skating Rink Operators Association listings (same era): corroborating addresses for both South Bend rinks.