On your left, look for a tall concrete tower with a slim rectangular profile, a white facade edged in gray and dark teal, and a broad recessed base that opens the building to the street.
Liberty Tower marks South Bend’s late twentieth-century leap upward. Crews began work in nineteen sixty-eight, after the old Oliver Hotel came down in nineteen sixty-seven, and they topped out this twenty-five-story skyscraper in nineteen seventy. It first opened as the American National Bank Building, then later took the name Valley National Bank Building. Its style is modernist, meaning the design favors clean lines and function over ornament, and you can feel that discipline in the plain concrete skin.
The building has kept reinventing itself. Today, the Aloft Hotel fills most of the tower, with the W-X-Y-Z Lounge on the first floor. Floors two through eight hold two hundred twenty parking spaces. Before Aloft, a Holiday Inn ran more than one hundred eighty-five rooms here, and the top floor housed the private Summit Club until twenty twelve.
This tower tells a story of ambition, setback, and renewal. When you are ready, continue on to the next stop.
