Opened in 1929 and situated across the tracks from the
Studebaker auto plant, the building served the
New York Central Railroad and
Grand Trunk Western Railroad. It was designed by the architectural firm
Fellheimer & Wagner. NYC's Detroit-Chicago "Great Steel Fleet" and GTW's Chicago-Canada trains used this station. When the New York Central merged with the
Pennsylvania Railroad in 1968 to make the
Penn Central Transportation Company, it used the station as well. The last trains departed in 1971 when newly created
Amtrak moved its operations to
the South Shore Line station on the city's western outskirts about west of Union Station constructed by the
Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad a year earlier in 1970. For several years after train service ceased, the abandoned station fell into poor repair, suffering heavy vandalism and losing portions of its
copper roof to
metal theft. The building was purchased by South Bend native and University of Notre Dame graduate Kevin M. Smith in 1979. Smith built a large
data center for his venture Global Access Point in a large adjoining building, Smith restored In the early 1990s, then-mayor
Joe Kernan expressed hope that the city might be able to successfully negotiate with Amtrak to secure a return of train service to the station. The
Tribune previously had been located at 225 West Colfax Avenue in South Bend. In 2020, the newspaper moved its office to a permanent space into Studebaker Building 113 in the nearby Renaissance District, which was also owned by Smith. In September 2024, the data center component was sold to Fifteenfortyseven Critical Systems. ==See also==