South Bend Private Clubs: The Membership City

Private Clubs: The Membership City

South Bend has always kept a second civic architecture behind its public one: the lodge hall, the nest, the clubhouse, the members-only room across the street from the tavern. In 1907 the county's own historian counted the fraternal orders and found them "exceedingly numerous," and the city he described ran on their dues and their meeting nights — Catholic benefit societies founded in the 1880s, an Elks temple rising on Colfax Avenue, a brand-new order of Owls invented in a South Bend law office and already nesting from coast to coast. The Polish west side built the densest club map of all: two Falcon nests, a Democratic club whose Dyngus Day became the city's political New Year, and a men's motoring club that met on Sundays for the better part of a century. This section takes the membership institutions one at a time, from their own records — charters, the orders' published rolls, club histories, the press, and court and corporate records where those are what survive. Where a body's own published membership figure exists it is printed with its date; no other numbers are estimated. The public bars are in the Bars & Nightclubs section; the halls that section pointed to — the Breezers Club at 1202 Dunham, the Dyngus Day halls — are here.