The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
1916 — present
The first subdivision laid between the city and the Notre Dame campus was filed in 1916: the Harter Heights Addition, marketed for suburban living in the ground between downtown and the university, stands in the federal historic-preservation record under the "Historic Residential Suburbs" theme for 1908 to 1945 — the early automobile suburb, houses with garages on curving, tree-planted streets. Its architecture, in the 2025 National Register nomination's account, runs from 1904 to 1960 on the ground bounded by Angela Boulevard, Michigan Street, the St. Joseph River and Corby Boulevard, Colonial Revival the dominant style with Tudor Revival and Craftsman houses beside it. The neighborhood sits inside the larger Northeast neighborhood, and its modern course includes the early fight over its character: in 1974 and 1975 its residents carried a single-family zoning proposal through the Area Plan machinery against the pressure of student housing — the Notre Dame Observer of 9 April 1975 records the proposal passed, with the district printed as Angela Boulevard north, Corby Boulevard south, Leeper and Niles west, Notre Dame Avenue east.
The neighborhood's present chapter is a preservation campaign of its own: a National Register nomination for the Harter Heights Historic District was submitted to the Historic Preservation Commission on 29 October 2025, the staff report dated 8 December 2025 and the public hearing set at the commission's meeting of 15 December 2025 — the nomination, as of the record reached, in the state review pipeline. The Harter of the addition's name is not identified in the record reached: no proprietor's biography, deed or obituary naming the man or family behind the 1916 plat stands in the documentation, and the name is printed here as the record leaves it — attached to the ground, its bearer a named gap.
Sources:
- Historic Preservation Commission of South Bend and St. Joseph County — staff report and agenda, Harter Heights Historic District National Register nomination (October–December 2025); National Register nomination (Kurt West Garner, consultant) — the 1916 addition, the district's bounds and building era
- Notre Dame Observer, 9 April 1975 — the single-family zoning proposal and its printed bounds