By: Ed Semmler, South Bend Tribune

Originally Posted June 15, 2019

SOUTH BEND — Throughout most of its history, Firehouse No. 7 served as a type of glue for much of the surrounding northeast neighborhood.

Marguerite Taylor, who spent her entire life within two blocks of the building, remembers the firemen giving kids candy and allowing them to stand inside while waiting for a bus during the frigid winter months.

“It was one of the hubs in the neighborhood,” she said. “It was always a place of safety.”

And though the firehouse was closed in 1968 as part of a department reorganization, it remained an important fixture in the area when the Northeast Neighborhood Council moved there in December of that year to provide a variety of services for the community.

Taylor, now 76, worked as a community outreach worker at the center; similar facilities operated throughout the city as part of the federal government’s war on poverty.

Today, the old building continues to serve the neighborhood offering meeting space, a food bank, a backpack program and other services while also providing a home for the Northeast Neighborhood Council.

But the building at Notre Dame and South Bend avenues is now in serious need of repairs. There are holes in the cedar shake siding, damaged exterior bricks, interior walls with signs of moisture damage and a chunk of interior wall missing as the result of a damaged pipe, among other things.

A fundraising campaign is underway to get the Queen Anne-style building stabilized and revamped to look as close as possible to how it appeared when it was built in 1904. So far, the campaign is approaching the midway mark to its $250,000 goal with donations from the immediate neighborhood, foundations and Notre Dame.

“Now we’re trying to get the word out to the rest of the community,” said Taylor, who is involved in the restoration campaign and still serves on the board of the Northeast Neighborhood Council.

South Bend Heritage Foundation is lending its assistance to the campaign as well as the construction project, said Elizabeth Leachman, director of marketing and strategic initiatives for the foundation. Planners hope to get the project underway this summer with completion slated for about a year from now.

The two-story building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, was designed by Charles Brehmer, a Notre Dame-educated architect who lived across the street and also designed Firehouse 6 and other prominent buildings and residences in South Bend.

Pat Lynch, staff architect for South Bend Heritage, will oversee the work and aims to turn it back as close as possible to how it appeared when it was first built.

Additional work could be undertaken in the future to restore other elements of the property, including the yard, which once had a working fountain.

“It’s important to preserve the firehouse because it’s part of the city’s history,” said Leachman. “But it’s also important to the neighborhood because it’s still used as a hub for activities and programs.”