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Famous Locations
Every city has two maps: the one in the surveyor's office and the one in the world's head. This section walks the second one. It takes the places by which people who have never been to South Bend know South Bend — a golden dome, a stadium, a grotto, a whitewater course in the middle of downtown, a theatre that premiered the most famous college-football film ever made, a bank corner where a patrolman died in 1934, a field that voted itself the best of its class in the country — and tests each one's fame against the evidence: the designation, the broadcast, the production record, the attendance figure, the register listing. Places famous only in local telling are printed at local size. Places the world files under South Bend that stand somewhere else are printed under their true geography. And one of the city's famous grounds cannot be found at all, which is also part of the record.
Rockne's grave — the famous grave that moved
1931 – 2024 at Highland Cemetery; 2024 – present at Cedar Grove
The place that was: For ninety-three years the most visited grave in South Bend stood in Highland Cemetery, on Portage Avenue in the city: Knute Rockne's, where six of his own players carried him in April 1931. Its fame was a…
The Studebaker Proving Ground and its tree sign — the name written for airplanes
1926 – present · Olive Township, near New Carlisle — county ground, printed at its true geography
The place: Twelve miles west of the city, in Olive Township, stands the ground Studebaker opened in 1926 as the first controlled outdoor proving ground built by an American automobile manufacturer — some 840 acres with a…
The Studebaker National Museum — where the presidents' carriages live
1966 – present collection; 2005 – present building · 201 Chapin Street
The fame: On Chapin Street, beside The History Museum, stands the building that holds what its executive director calls "the world's largest collection of presidential carriages" — the attribution is the museum's own, repeated by…
Tippecanoe Place — the National Historic Landmark
1886–89 – present · 620 West Washington Avenue
The fame: Clement Studebaker's house is the one building in the city the federal government has singled out at the highest level of its historic register: listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 2 July 1973, and…
Copshaholm — the plow king's house, at Register size
1895–96 – present · 808 West Washington Street
The fame, at its documented size: A block from Tippecanoe stands the other great industrialist's house of the West Washington district: Copshaholm, Joseph D. Oliver's 38-room house of Indiana fieldstone and granite boulders…
The former College Football Hall of Fame building — fame's forwarding address
1995–2012 at 111 South St. Joseph Street; the fame is Atlanta's now
The fame frame: For seventeen years, from its opening in August 1995 to its last afternoon on the last day of 2012, the building at 111 South St. Joseph Street in downtown South Bend simply was the College Football Hall of Fame…
Union Station — the screen test negative, the wires positive
1929 – present · 326 West South Street
The test that fails: A grand 1929 station by Fellheimer and Wagner — the firm of Buffalo's Central Terminal and Cincinnati's Union Terminal — would seem a natural film location, and stations named Union Station are among the most…
The Morris — opened as the Palace, premiered the Rockne film, saved for a dollar
1922 – present · 211 North Michigan Street
The place: The theatre at Michigan and Colfax opened in 1922 as the Palace, an Orpheum-chain house built for a million dollars on a hundred-thousand-dollar lot to J. S. Aroner's designs, beside the Palais Royale ballroom of the…
229 South Michigan — the corner of one morning in 1934
The building of 1902 – present; the event of 30 June 1934
The site: Some famous places are famous for one morning. The Merchants National Bank corner, at Michigan Street and Wayne, is South Bend's: on 30 June 1934 the bank was robbed by the gang the FBI's own published summary names …
The East Race — Olympic trials water in the middle of downtown
1984 – present · the Seitz Park channel off North Niles Avenue
The place: In 1984 the city reopened the old East Race of the St. Joseph River — the mill channel that had powered its industry — as a engineered whitewater course through downtown: a drop of about twelve feet in a run whose…
Four Winds Field — the ballpark the fans voted best in the country
1987/88 – present · 501 West South Street
The fame: The South Bend Cubs' ballpark holds a documented distinction of a kind no other place in this section can claim: it has repeatedly been voted the best ballpark of its class in the country. Ballpark Digest's Best of the…
The screen map — what the cameras actually shot here
1940 and 1992–93 · the production record, whole
The whole list is short, and it is distinguished: The production record reached for this history documents exactly two feature films shot on location in South Bend and on the Notre Dame campus, fifty-two years apart, both of them…
A League of Their Own — the league was this city's; the cameras were not
The film of 1992; the Blue Sox of 1943–54
The test: Ask the world where the women's professional baseball of the 1940s happened on film and it will name this league's cities — and South Bend fielded the South Bend Blue Sox in that league for all twelve of its seasons…
Bendix Field — fame without a findable ground
The Blue Sox' first home, 1943–45 · unlocated
The finding: This section ends its tests with the place that fails the most basic one: it cannot be found. For the Blue Sox' first three seasons the team played at Bendix Field, and the crowds were real — the historical marker…
Filed under the wrong city — the closing confusions
Standing cautions of the record
The other South Bend: Researchers of this city keep meeting its namesake: the Libraries history in this record found federal and listing records for a "South Bend Carnegie" library that belong to South Bend, Washington — a lumber…
The East Race, closed for its works
April 2026 — 1 May 2027
The contract and the money: The riverwalk improvement project between Seitz and Howard Parks was funded by the Redevelopment Commission on 26 March 2026 with $5.6 million — four million from the River East Residential TIF and…