Ben Miller ’14MBA stands on a sidewalk in downtown South Bend and watches as sections of a worn steel facade are removed from a long vacant retail building.
Revealed is the original stone block front of the 1902 structure, including large window openings topped with limestone arches. The faded beige covering had been masking the building’s true face for 65 years.
“This is better than Christmas. This is fun,” Miller says.
Ben and his wife, Christina, who both work tech jobs, bought a vacant bakery in 2019 and renovated it into Dainty Maid Food Hall, a successful home for culinary startups. They wanted to be part of the revitalization of downtown South Bend, which has experienced new restaurants opening, apartment development and construction of new houses near the St. Joseph River in the last few years.
“We saw all the development that was going on. We started to talk about what we could do to contribute,” Ben Miller says. “We’ve always wanted to do a bigger project. We had our eyes on this building,” he says of the three-story Center City Place, the food hall’s neighbor to the north.
There are hopes that reuse of the building will prompt more revitalization nearby. Center City Place is in the 200 block of South Michigan Street, across the street from a vacant building that Notre Dame graduates of the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s will recall as the former home of Club Fever and Heartland Dance Hall.
When the Millers bought the building in June, some people wondered why. The weathered front was so nondescript that many pedestrians passed by without noticing it. The roof leaked. The place looked abandoned. And it has the dubious distinction of being the location of a deadly bank robbery by the Dillinger gang in 1934.
But the Millers had seen vintage photos from the 1920s and 1930s and knew what many others did not. The battered facade, added in 1960, was believed to be hiding the building’s distinctive original stone front.
Commercial buildings of that architectural style are rare in South Bend, where many 19th and early 20th century structures were torn down during the urban renewal era of the 1960s and 1970s. The Millers didn’t want Center City Place added to the demolition list.
A work crew began removing the facade in mid-August. As soon as a few panels were pulled off, the original stone front saw daylight for the first time in more than six decades. Some decorative elements are damaged or missing, but they can be recreated.
The Millers intend to renovate the 34,880-square-foot building, restore its original exterior look, turn the upper floors into a boutique hotel and the first floor storefronts into mixed use – perhaps a coffee shop, small retail stores and other ventures. They have help from city leaders, Notre Dame students and local architects.
Students in Notre Dame’s School of Architecture historic preservation master’s degree program look to local buildings as a living laboratory. They research the buildings in depth, analyzing their condition and potential for renovation and reuse. Center City Place has been on the architecture school’s radar for years.
Architectural designer Guillermo Alfaro ’06, ’24M.S. studied the building for a class project in spring 2024. “We were looking to see if the structure was sound. And we were happily surprised to find that it looked like it had good bones,” he says.
He chose Center City Place because he considered it a mystery and a challenge. “You never know what you’re going to find,” he says, recalling how excited he was to discover openings for the original windows visible inside. Alfaro is pleased that the Millers plan to breathe new life into the 123-year-old building. “It makes so much sense environmentally, because you’re not demolishing anything,” he says.
While working on his historic preservation degree, Benson Kinyanjui ’25M.S., did further study and built on Alfaro’s report during a summer 2024 internship with Indiana Landmarks, a statewide historic preservation organization. “The general architectural design language stood out, especially judging from the historic photos — the proportion of the base, the window proportions, the use of the masonry and some details on the cornice,” he says.
Christina Miller says the students “were really helpful. When Benson first came through, we took a bunch of measurements for him. He created our first rendering. That helped us think through what is still here.”
Center City Place features brick load-bearing walls and wooden floors supported by large joists. “It’s a robust building. It’s structurally sound,” says Todd Zeiger, an adjunct assistant professor of the practice in the School of Architecture and Indiana Landmarks’ northern regional director.
Designed by prominent South Bend architects George Freyermuth and R. Vernon Maurer, it was known as the Merchants National Bank block when it was built in 1902. (The same two architects in 1916 designed the Daniel J. McNamara family home, which later became Notre Dame's Alumni-Senior Club.) The Merchants National Bank block was a series of three adjoining buildings, with the exteriors designed to look like a single edifice. The bank occupied the center, with retail businesses in the neighboring spaces. The north section was badly damaged in a 1919 fire, which gutted an F.W. Woolworth five-and-dime store. It was quickly rebuilt and Woolworth’s reopened.
On June 30, 1934, Merchants National Bank was robbed of $28,000 by armed gunmen, believed to be led by gangster John Dillinger. A South Bend police officer was shot dead, and three other men and a woman were shot and injured. Within a month, Dillinger was shot and killed by federal agents outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago.
Over the decades, the north section of the building housed Woolworth’s; then The Grand Leader, a discount department store; and then the Frances Shop, an upscale women’s clothing store. In the 1970s the building was converted into Center City Place, a mini-mall that eventually failed.
The porcelain-enameled steel facade was installed in 1960 as part of a modernization by The Grand Leader, which closed two years later. The Frances Shop painted the steel slipcover in bold vertical red and white candy stripes. The south portion of the complex was demolished in 1965 to make way for construction of Dainty Maid Bake Shop — where the food hall now operates.
The building’s interior has been gutted. The Millers are working with architects Chris Hartz ’96 and Rick Podrasky ’91 of Alliance Architects in South Bend to craft a renovation plan.
“While we hoped there would be more of the (exterior) decorative elements remaining, we are glad that the majority of the stonework is there,” Hartz says.
Because the building was significantly altered at mid-century, the architects may propose a restoration that combines elements from its early years and its later major renovation. “We’re looking at two eras. We have the classical revival, then we have mid-century,” Podrasky says.
The idea of helping to revitalize South Bend’s downtown by leading renovation of a vintage building has both men enthused. “I’ve loved old buildings since I was a kid,” Podrasky says.
Center City Place doesn’t have any sort of historical designation or protections. With its original stone front intact, the building may qualify, says Ross Van Overberghe ’02, administrator of the Historic Preservation Commission of South Bend and St. Joseph County. “There’s a possibility it could be added to the National Register of Historic Places,” he says. A historic designation could make the owners eligible for grants or federal tax credits to help with renovation.
Down the block is the vacant State Theatre, which the city recently acquired and has also served as a study project by Notre Dame architecture students. Elsewhere downtown, Notre Dame last year bought the vacant century-old former South Bend Tribune building, and is working with the city to renovate it as the base for an emerging tech and talent district.
The ongoing facade removal is attracting pedestrians who stop to observe, chat about the progress and marvel at the building’s “new” old look. Its planned redevelopment has the potential to enhance the vibe of the entire block.
“We should probably thank whoever covered up the facade,” says Alfaro, the architectural designer who was captivated by the ugly duckling building as a graduate student. “I don’t think they did it on purpose, but they actually protected what was underneath.”
Margaret Fosmoe is an associate editor of this magazine. Contact her at mfosmoe@nd.edu.