On your left stands an eight-story brick office block trimmed in white terra cotta, with big round-arched top-floor windows and a projecting cornice held by brackets.
This is the J-M-S Building, at one hundred eight North Main Street, and it carries the confidence of South Bend in nineteen ten. Architect Solon Spencer Beman designed it in the Commercial style, the practical early skyscraper look used for busy downtown offices, then dressed it with Classical Revival details borrowed from ancient Greece and Rome to give it a little ceremony. John Studebaker, co-founder and later executive of the company that grew into the Studebaker Corporation, commissioned it as a statement in brick and white terra cotta: business, yes, but business with polish.
On the screen, you can see more of its historic massing from the rear and south side. On the fifth of June, nineteen eighty-five, the National Register of Historic Places gave this building its formal place in the national story.
It is a fine reminder that commerce once dressed for the occasion. When you are ready, continue on for the next chapter.
