The Salvation Army, South Bend Corps

Corps worship and offices at 540 S. Carroll Street from 1946 — corps now centered at the Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center, 900 W. Western Avenue, opened January 2012

The Army's arrival: The Salvation Army, founded in London in 1865 by William and Catherine Booth, officially began in the United States on March 10, 1880, and by its Kentucky-Tennessee Division's account had expanded into Indiana by 1883. The founding year of the South Bend corps itself is not stated in the Army sources consulted; the corps' earliest documented South Bend fabric is its building at 540 South Carroll Street, erected in 1946 as the Army's offices and welfare center and used since as a worship and activity center — the corps being, in the Army's order, a congregation as well as a relief agency.

The Kroc Center: In January 2012 the corps moved its center of gravity to the Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center at 900 W. Western Avenue: a 100,000-square-foot, $64.2 million complex on 12 acres, one of the Kroc centers endowed nationally, with a chapel and worship and performing-arts venue among its facilities.

Sources:

1. Building South Bend (University of Notre Dame / South Bend Historic Preservation Commission) — the Salvation Army Building, 540 South Carroll Street, built 1946, and its continuing worship and activity use.
2. The Salvation Army, Kentucky-Tennessee Division history page — the Army's 1865 founding, its 1880 American beginning, and expansion into Indiana by 1883.
3. University of Notre Dame athletics news and trade press (2012) — the Kroc Corps Community Center's opening in January 2012, its Western Avenue site, cost, size and chapel.