The Wilson Brothers and a Life Surrounded by Ruins

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Jacob Titus

Creator of West.SB

There will always be this kind of cloud of failure, and I think as long as that crumbling infrastructure is seen along people’s drive to work there will always be some kind of, whether its a conscious recognition that this place used to be bustling, the population used to be this, and the economic capability was this, or it's just a bummed out feeling that you get by driving past shut down and crumbling factories on your way to work or on your way home, I think that that infrastructure does affect the feel of people.

- Patrick Quigley in Big Enough, Small Enough - South Bend in Transition

This quote from Patrick Quigley in the new documentary, Big Enough, Small Enough - South Bend in Transition, is stuck in my head.

It’s been three years since I last published photographs of an abandoned place, but that’s not to say they’ve been out of view. I drive past several on a daily basis including Muessel-Drewry’s Brewery, Sibley Machine Tool Company, and Wilson Brothers Shirt Company.

For different reasons, irresponsible ownership at Drewry’s, a near-decade of abandonment at Sibley, and an incomplete deconstruction project and fire at Wilson Brothers, these three places share the common state of being half-demolished.

Wilson Brothers Shirt Company was founded in Chicago in 1864 and opened its first factory in South Bend in 1883.

This first factory in the city was small, so in 1887 J.D. Oliver, then-owner of Oliver Chilled Plow Works, sold Wilson Brothers a plot of land on the South West corner of Sample Street and Prairie Avenue on one condition: within ten years, the factory must employ at least 1,000 women.

The company hit J.D.’s goal and kept growing: by 1926 the factory employed 1,600 people and had grown into seven large buildings, and by 1929 the factory employed 2,200 people. The Sample Street factory would continue at about this size for decades until a merger in 1950 and closure in 1975.

In the years since, the buildings have been used as warehouses for a variety of businesses, but today stands as one of the city’s most visible examples of crumbling infrastructure. And I think Patrick is right—as long as driving through South Bend means passing by abandoned and half-demolished factories, many people will struggle with this “cloud of failure.” We fall short of loving our neighbors when we allow these places to sit half-demolished.

What if the state of Wilson Brothers’ factory instilled pride in older residents of South Bend, instead of painful nostalgia. And what if the state of Wilson Brothers’ factory showed our kids that success can mean building a business here, in their mid-size, Midwestern hometown.

We’re seeing this take shape at places like The Lauber, Ward Baking, The Armory, The Hibberd, and Vested Interest. This is no get rich quick scheme, and it requires developers whose internal purpose is shaping their investments.

If we continue to call for and support these kinds of projects, we can come out from under the cloud.

At 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, March 8th I captured the Wilson Brothers Shirt Company factory as it stands today. I am working on my film photography, so the following photographs were shot on Kodak Ektar 100 using a Pentax 645N. This is what I saw.