A Studebaker Event in South Bend, Ind., Focuses on Revival James Brosher/South Bend Tribune, via Associated Press People browse classic Studebakers parked on the sixth floor of one of Studebaker's former factory buildings in South Bend, Ind., on Friday. Foul weather in South Bend, Ind., on Friday didn't stop a big crowd of Studebaker fans and area residents from coming to visit the former site of the automaker's factory on the 50th anniversary of its closing. Jo McCoy, the director of marketing at the Studebaker National Museum, which opened a new exhibit Friday, said in a telephone interview that at least 800 people came through the museum. Fireworks and searchlights marked the 50th anniversary of the Studebaker plant's closing in South Bend, Ind., Friday. The Studebaker National Museum Mark McDonnell, left, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Rebecca Bonham, executive director of the Studebaker National Museum at a ribbon cutting for a new museum exhibit on Friday. The new exhibit is called "Studebaker: Preserving the Past, Pursuing the Future." "A lot of people thought that would be the end of South Bend," she said about the closing of the factory. But the mayor said Friday that within two to three years, the unemployment rate was back down to what it was before the factory closed in December 1963. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, in his speech at the Studebaker event, highlighted ways that businesses had reinvented the city since auto manufacturing moved elsewhere. "This is a city that turned a disused industrial waterway into a kayak run and an emptied high school into new downtown homes," he said. We took advantage of being at the center of six fiber-optic routes to turn old factory acreage into data centers, an industry that didn't even exist when Studebaker closed. As the city celebrated after what, in 1963, had seemed like economic tragedy, fireworks and searchlights lit up the cold, rainy sky. Part the celebration was the repurposing of building 84 - once part of the Studebaker factory - into a technology center. "It really felt like we turned a corner," Ms. McCoy said. There were a lot of people talking about the good things and the positive legacy left by Studebaker.