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In addition to the neighborhood being an example of South Bend's turn of the <br />century upper middle-class housing stock, it is also significant for the <br />people who first built there homes here. These people were the second <br />generation of South Bend merchants, manufacturers and politicians, some were <br />the sons and daughters of South Bend's most influential pioneers. <br />Two of Colonel Taylor's children, Mary Taylor Nicar and Thaddeus had homes <br />built here. The Colonel had lived with Mary and her spouse, Virginius Nicar, <br />who built the first residence on the field, 617 South St. Joseph. Thaddeus <br />had a house built in 1905 at 531 South St. Joseph. <br />Other prominent citizens building residences .here included: Henry Gaskill, <br />owner of the areas premier Tobacco Shop; Samuel Bowman, County Commissioner <br />from 1882 to 1891;. Jacob Chillas, dry goods merchant, Board of Education <br />member and spouse of Lydia Studebaker Chillas, daughter of Henry; John J. <br />Gehring, Chairman of the Board of the Wyman Company department store; Charles <br />H. Murdock, board member of the Hoke Manufacturing Company; and ,various <br />members of the Stephenson family, which was prominent in various South Bend <br />manufacturing firms. <br />The remainder of the area included in the_ district, the portion east. of <br />Carroll Street and west of Fellows, was platted in 1854 by Joseph Tellows and <br />Hugh. Denniston. The earliest buildings in the district constructed during the <br />1880s are located in this area. <br />Conclusion 412 <br />Standard criteria for historic districts suggest <br />structures "that possess integrity of location, <br />workmanship, feeling, and association."[4] This <br />fulfill these criteria. <br />designating those groups of <br />design, setting materials, <br />group - of buildings readily <br />The neighborhood consists residential structures of the Queen .Anne and <br />American Four -Square type or variations of these forms constructed of a <br />similar size and materials. The majority are constructed of wood and were <br />built by, and for similar market upper middle-class homeowners and landlords. <br />A few of the earlier houses which bordered the industrial area to the <br />immediate northeast are built in humbler vernacular styles of the post -Civil <br />War era: cross gable, gabled ell, and gable front. Despite the many <br />alterations to the structures, as a group they have retained the "feeling" of <br />an early twentieth-century neighborhood. <br />Standard criteria also suggest designating groups of structures that are <br />"associated with significant people, local or otherwise."[5] This neighborhood <br />from the beginning has been associated with significant local individuals. <br />Among them is the co-founder of South Bend, Colonel Lathrop •M. Taylor. In <br />addition, the neighborhood was home to numerous locally prominant <br />professionals, merchants, manufacturers and the like. <br />