Sollitt Construction Company Architectural Records Collection

The collection contains 358 architectural working drawings and two sets of specifications for 11 buildings from the Sollitt Construction Co. of South Bend, Indiana, from 1923-85.

A variety of building types are represented: an apartment building, a retirement home, a government center, a church, a bank, a Masonic temple, a U.S. post office, two schools, and two industrial buildings. Most of the buildings are in northern Indiana (Elkhart, Ft. Wayne, Goshen, Marion) but projects in Anderson, Indianapolis, and Terre Haute are also included.

Sollitt Construction Co. presumably acted as a contractor for all of the projects and designed four of them. Other designs are by K. M. Vitzthum and J. J. Burns, Austin & Shambleau, Hubert Miller, W. E. Russ, Guy Mahurin, Johnson Ritchhart & Assoc. with D. L. Collins, Smith-Voorhees-Jensen Assoc., and Sherbondy Associates.

The collection contains only a fraction of the firm's work. It consists of selections made in 1994 from a much larger body of Sollitt Company records--several hundred cubic feet, mostly drawings--stored temporarily in the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend. Most of the drawings were for large institutional and industrial commissions: schools, wastewater treatment plants, oil refineries, factories, and factory additions. About half were Indiana commissions. The other half were in neighboring states: Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky.