The Shrine to LaSalle that Never Happened

BY TYLER GILLEAN // POSTED JULY 19, 2026

If you stand today on the western bend of the St. Joseph River, where the rush of modern traffic hums along Portage Avenue, you are standing on the shoreline of a forgotten dream that nearly changed the skyline of South Bend. Beneath the tires of thousands of daily commuters, who pass by without a glance or a thought, lies the quiet monument of an American dream so vast, so staggeringly ambitious, that it could only have been born in the roaring twilight of the 1920s.

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