Ahead of you rises a slender twelve-story tower clad in pale terra-cotta and marble, with a stepped Gothic crown and small stone gargoyles perched high on its corners.
South Bend finished this building in nineteen twenty-nine, and the timing could hardly have been more cruel. Architects Ennis Austin and N. Roy Shambleau designed it as only half of a grand pair. Contractors completed this eastern tower just one week before the Wall Street crash, and the financial collapse killed the western twin before it ever rose. That is why this building has two faces: the handsome north and east sides dress themselves in marble and terra-cotta, while the south and west sides remain much plainer, because another tower was meant to attach there. If you want a clearer sense of that unfinished story, have a look at the image on your screen showing the stark west wall.
What survived, though, is remarkable. This is South Bend’s only true example of Skyscraper Gothic, a style that takes the pointed, vertical drama of old Gothic churches and stretches it into a modern high-rise. Around the tenth floor, three stone gargoyles cling to the chamfered, or clipped, corners. They were not merely decorative guardians. They also pushed rainwater away from the walls, which is rather practical for such theatrical little beasts.
At twelve stories, this became the first building to reach South Bend’s legal height limit, and it remained the tallest in the city for more than forty years, until nearby Liberty Tower finally overtook it in nineteen seventy. If you check the fuller exterior view in the app, you can see that proud, narrow rise very clearly.
It opened under another name, for the Building and Loan Association, the oldest institution of its kind in northern Indiana. But local people simply called it “the Tower” so persistently that the company eventually gave in and renamed itself to match the building.
And then, in one of those marvellous urban twists, peregrine falcons adopted the ledges. One abandoned mate, Zeus, even spent time roosting alone on the unfinished side after his partner chose a younger rival.
So this tower stands as both ambition and interruption, a skyline triumph with its missing half still visible. When you are ready, continue on and we shall meet the neighbour that finally surpassed it.
