South Bend audiotours

South Bend grew up making things with its hands. The Studebaker brothers started building wagons here in 1852 and eventually produced automobiles until the company folded in 1963, leaving behind a campus of brick factory buildings that still anchors the east side of downtown. The Studebaker National Museum fills several of those buildings with 150 years of vehicles including the presidential carriages Studebaker built for Lincoln, Grant, and McKinley. It is an unexpectedly moving place, the kind of museum where manufacturing ambition is on display alongside its consequences.

The University of Notre Dame sits just north of the city line, and its relationship with South Bend is the kind of complicated coexistence that defines many American college towns: the university supplies culture, employment, and football Saturdays that transform the city every fall, while South Bend provides the restaurants, housing, and labor force that any institution of 12,000 students requires.

The Golden Dome glows above the campus from most approach roads, and the Basilica of the Sacred Heart and the Hesburgh Library's Word of God mural, which visiting fans call Touchdown Jesus, are landmarks worth visiting outside football season.