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ELUID11-11a :I *At AM: <br />l ` V�r pl 0 , W <br />At <br />184 feet, the smokestack of <br />the Oliver Chilled Plow Works tow• <br />ers over nearly every other structur <br />in South Bend. Cloaked in scaffolding <br />it is being rehabilitated, along with <br />the adjacent powerhouse. <br />These structures fueled the 35 -acre <br />Oliver complex— factories where <br />workers helped settle the west by <br />producing a chilled steel plow that <br />broke the prairie sod. The City of <br />South Bend has invested significant <br />resources in rehabilitating and securing <br />a new use for these two icons of the <br />city's industrial past. <br />My attention was diverted from this <br />�oteworthy endeavor by a nearby <br />nountain of aggregate. A few months <br />before, I had toured the various indus- <br />trial buildings on the site. Structures <br />' that dated to the earliest years of the <br />Plow works sat side -by -side with <br />"newer" industrial buildings of ma- <br />sonry and concrete. Now the site was <br />a vast expanse of cleared land inter- <br />- rupted only by the powerhouse and <br />smokestack —and the mountain of <br />rubble created after the other build- <br />ings were demolished and processed <br />through a giant masonry crusher. <br />Historic buildings are the physical <br />links to the generations that came <br />before us, people who labored long <br />days with no such thing as paid vaca- <br />tion to create a better place than they <br />found. I wager that visitors to the now <br />renamed Oliver Industrial Park will be <br />impressed with the renovated power <br />house, soon to be the new home of <br />use Fuel and Material. It will stand <br />t as a place with a story, unlike the <br />new industrial buildings that will rise <br />around it. <br />. orthern RcSgiop7u! offi,7e <br />�U1o�i��nel/ tin �nali an ti Yee v a 1 irlrliS'f I'la- e /�•pn�� <br />