The works today: two buildings, a cleared campus, and a new name on the map

1963 – 2026

What was left: Studebaker left behind one of the largest factory complexes in Indiana — dozens of buildings around Main Street, Lafayette Boulevard, and Sample Street, many dating to the wagon era's rebuilding and the 1920s expansion. Over the following decades the city took ownership of much of the campus and, in its community investment director's words, "ultimately demolished a significant portion of it," much of the demolition coming in the mid-2000s. Of the downtown complex, two buildings stand.

The Administration Building: The company's headquarters, at 635 South Main Street at Bronson, was designed by S. S. Beman of Chicago and opened in June 1909 — 149,000 square feet (the city's preservation resolution dates the building 1907–1909), built in concrete with its original fixtures substantially surviving; it is a city local landmark (1992). Studebaker abandoned it in December 1963 and sold it a few years later to the city for $1; the city passed it to the South Bend Community School Corporation, which used it as its own headquarters until the fall of 2006. It then stood empty — nineteen years, in the 2026 account — through a 2009 sale to a Phoenix owner, a place on the Historic Preservation Commission's 10 Most Endangered list in 2023, and in July 2024 a redevelopment-commission agreement to roof and secure it, as redevelopment of the complex's surviving space proceeded around it.

Building 84: Across Lafayette Boulevard stands the works' other survivor: Building 84, at 635 South Lafayette Boulevard, built in 1923 to Albert Kahn's design — six stories and a basement, more than 800,000 square feet, where bodies were built and painted, trimmed, and finally assembled (the Avanti excepted). It never went wholly vacant after 1963, passing through warehousing and distribution uses, and in the 2010s it was bought by the developer Kevin Smith, who had already converted South Bend's Union Station into a data center; by 2024 Smith was redeveloping nearly a million square feet of former Studebaker factory space, Building 84 among it, with data-center use established in part of the building — the city's judgment, in its investment director's words, being that without him the city would probably have none of the old buildings left. On 20 December 2013, fifty years to the day after the last car, Building 84 opened for public tours.

The cleared ground: The rest of the campus is largely open land. The city cleared and remediated the factory blocks for a technology park, Ignition Park, and six decades after the closing, accounts of the ground in 2026 still describe much of it as empty field — the site of the wagon works and the car plants legible mainly by the two buildings at its edge and by the scale of the space between them. The Chippewa Avenue plant, the wartime engine works, outlasted the main plant in industrial use through the General Products Division's passage to Kaiser and AM General, as carried in the aftermath entry.

Sources:

1. Hemmings, "Studebaker administration building: Revitalization?" — the Administration Building's Beman design, June 1909 opening, 149,000 square feet, the $1 sale to the city, the school corporation's tenure to 2006 and the 2009 sale; Building 84's 1923 construction, six stories, 800,000-plus square feet, paint/trim/final-assembly use, and sale to the Union Station developer.
2. City of South Bend, Historic Preservation Commission Resolution 02-2023 — the Administration Building at 635 South Main, built 1907–1909, local landmark under Ordinance #8267-1992, and its 2023 endangered listing in boarded condition.
3. "After the Last Shift — South Bend" (2026) — Building 84 at 635 South Lafayette, its Kahn design and body-plant purpose, the attached Buildings 112 and 113, the data-center use, the city's demolition of a significant portion of the campus and the 2024 statements of its community investment director, the Administration Building's nineteen empty years and the July 2024 roof-and-windows agreement, and the tours of 20 December 2013.
4. Chicago Switching, "Studebaker Works" — the Administration Building and Building 84 as the downtown complex's two survivors, most of the rest torn down in the mid-2000s; the 2026 video account of the Ignition Park ground — the cleared field and the two buildings.