Downtown: the department-store street

MICHIGAN STREET · WYMAN'S FROM 1878 · ROBERTSON'S FLAGSHIP 1925 · THE TRADE TO 1986

Two stores and the block between them: The first shape of South Bend shopping was a street. George Wyman and Company — Wyman's — stood at 107–109 North Michigan Street from 1878, a dry-goods house of 112 years' run, with a hat-making shop and a window-shade cutting room built around the cloth and deliveries across a fifty-mile territory. Two blocks south, Robertson Brothers opened its first South Bend store in 1904 and in 1925 opened the six-story flagship at 211 South Michigan — about 185,000 square feet over a basement, the largest department store in South Bend, employing about 400 people at its postwar height. The firms themselves stand in the Businesses section and their buildings in the Architecture section; what belongs here is the geography: between and around the two anchors the rest of the trade stood on the same pavement — J. C. Penney, opened in November 1937 at Michigan and Wayne; S. S. Kresge's five-and-ten bordering Robertson's on the north; the Ellsworth store beside Wyman's until Wyman's bought it in 1951; the Grand Leader, later the Francis Shop, to Robertson's south; Sears trading on Western Avenue. Downtown was not one store among many. It was the region's only complete retail place, and every shopping trip in the county ended on that street.

The street holds, then lets go: The anchors' own histories mark the turn. Wyman's modernized as late as 1962, folding the Ellsworth store into a combined front behind a blue-and-white ceramic tile façade — a downtown store still investing in itself a decade before the end. The end, when it came, came in sequence and on the record: Wyman's closed in 1972 and its building was demolished in 1973, the site left a parking lot at the heart of the old retail block. Penney's downtown store closed in the early 1980s. Robertson's held longest, trading at 211 South Michigan until 1986 — by then with suburban addresses of its own, including space at Scottsdale Mall and near University Park — and its building survived by changing its work, redeveloped by the South Bend Heritage Foundation as affordable housing for seniors. 1st Source Bank, founded in 1863 as the First National, kept its headquarters at 100 North Michigan through all of it: the institution stayed on the street the shoppers left.

Sources:

1. Businesses — Wyman's (107–109 North Michigan from 1878; the 1951 Ellsworth purchase; the 1962 façade; closed 1972, demolished 1973) and Robertson's (1904 first store; the 1925 flagship at 211 South Michigan, about 185,000 square feet, about 400 employees; the 1986 closing; the Heritage Foundation reuse), and its downtown-trade entry (Penney's, November 1937; Kresge's; Sears on Western Avenue; the closing sequence), cross-referenced and not retold.
2. The History Museum, South Bend, "Robertson's and Wyman's" — the stores' runs and services, as carried in Businesses.
3. Department Store Museum, "Robertson's, South Bend, Indiana" — Robertson's later suburban addresses, including Scottsdale Mall and University Park.