The working city map: street sheets, 1876–2005

Plans, directory-age indexed maps, and the last printed street maps

The case's run. Between the bird's-eye and the GIS, the city's everyday map was the printed street sheet, and the St. Joseph County Public Library's map case holds the run, as its finding aid lists it (20 December 2021): an 1876 Plan of South Bend and Mishawaka — among the case's digitized sheets — drawn before either city's street system settled, its Mishawaka half boundary-printed here; an 1892 Map of River Park, the streetcar suburb platted that spring, also digitized; a 1903 Map of the City of South Bend, two Indiana copies; a 1904 plat of the Berner Grove subdivision, digitized; Hibberd's Map of South Bend of 1908, with its companion Hibberd's Map of Mishawaka & River Park; a 1921 Map of South Bend and Mishawaka; the Greater South Bend and Mishawaka sheets of 1937, 1939 and 1941; a 1948 city map; and a shelf of city maps running 1992 to 2004–05, where the printed run ends — the years when the county's map moved to the database taken up at this section's close. The Library of Congress catalog also carries a Map of South Bend dated 1874 and a Map of South Bend, Ind. dated 1890; neither sheet's maker was established, and both are carried in this section as cataloged items with the attribution named as an update pull.

The directory-age map. The city directory taught its readers the town with a folded map, and the trade's local product survives in the State Library's list: Calvin Moon's Up-to-date Indexed Maps: South Bend and Mishawaka (about 1913) — "indexed" being the selling word, a street index keyed to the sheet, the ancestor of the street-finder grid every later city map carried. The directory map is the least monumental sheet in this section and was, in its day, the most opened: it is printed here at the size of its catalog record, which is the size the evidence gives it.

Bruggner, the local mapmaker. South Bend had a mapmaker of its own in the middle of the century. Louis V. Bruggner (27 December 1900 – 29 December 1969) published the city plan City of South Bend, Indiana in editions of 1929 and 1931 — a plan labeling, in its catalog record's words, the schools, parks, cemeteries and railroads — the Lake Shore & Michigan Central, the Grand Trunk Western, and the South Bend, St. Joseph & Southern among them. The 1931 edition survives, the Geographicus catalog record for the sheet states, in a single known example; two examples of the 1929 map are cataloged. Bruggner's name carries the local trade forward: the State Library's list holds his South Bend and Mishawaka of about 1949, and the library's case holds a Bruggner's Street Map of 1958. A one-man map house is a fragile archive — the 1931 edition's single survival is the measure — and the sheets that remain are the record of the city he drew at its industrial height.

The automobile-age street map. The last generation of printed city maps was made for drivers and sold at gas stations and chambers of commerce: B. P. Drake's Know South Bend and Mishawaka Featuring Notre Dame Campus (Car-Tel Maps, about 1954) — the university on the cover as the region's landmark for strangers, in a sheet whose Mishawaka coverage is boundary-printed here; Spectrum's city map of about 1989; and Rand McNally's South Bend/Elkhart, Michiana StreetFinder (about 2000, scale 1:31,680) with the same house's 2000 South Bend/Mishawaka city map — the national trade's local product at the end of the print era.

Sources:

1. St. Joseph County Public Library map case finding aid (20 December 2021) — the street-map run: the 1876 plan, the 1892 River Park map, the 1903 city map, the 1904 Berner Grove plat, Hibberd's maps of 1908, the 1921 map, the Greater South Bend and Mishawaka sheets (1937, 1939, 1941), the 1948 map, Bruggner's Street Map (1958), and the city maps 1992–2004-05; digitized items as marked there.
2. Library of Congress catalog, as indexed in the genealogy guides to its holdings — a Map of South Bend (1874) and Map of South Bend, Ind. (1890) among the Congress map records.
3. Indiana State Library, "St Joseph County Maps" — Calvin Moon's Up-to-date Indexed Maps (c. 1913); Bruggner's South Bend and Mishawaka ([1949]); B. P. Drake / Car-Tel Maps, Know South Bend and Mishawaka Featuring Notre Dame Campus (c. 1954); Spectrum's city map ([1989?]); Rand McNally's StreetFinder (c. 2000, 1:31,680) and 2000 city map.
4. Geographicus Rare Antique Maps — catalog record for Louis V. Bruggner's City of South Bend, Indiana (1931): contents, the single known surviving example of the 1931 edition, the two cataloged examples of the 1929 map, and the maker's dates.