"

If you walk to the south end of campus, just beyond the stadium, you will reach Legends of Notre Dame, a university-owned restaurant and pub. Legends is not typically at the top of students’ lists as a going-out destination, but, four decades ago, the building housed a prime spot for upperclassmen: “Senior Bar.”

In the Sept. 1982 edition of Scholastic, senior Teri Schindler wrote about the opening of this new location of Senior Bar. Its original location, since 1969, had been a brick house called the Alumni Senior Club, but it was demolished in the summer of 1982.

“[Students] described the new one as looking like anything from a Zayre's department store to the credit union, a warehouse, a library, or even a firehouse. Still, everyone wanted to get inside,” Schindler wrote, adding that the building featured two dance floors, stages, a DJ booth, a game room and a conversation pit.

The bar was, interestingly, student-run – the 1982-1983 manager was Kevin Woods, a Notre Dame senior, and many of the staff members were also seniors.

“They're giving me a three-fourths of a million dollar building to run. There's a lot of pressure on us to do a really good job or they'll probably get a professional manager next year,” Woods said.

As the name suggests, Senior Bar was primarily a seniors-only establishment, and security was quite strict on who could get in – in fact, the administration “implemented a $100 fine for ‘hopping the fence’ or letting a friend in the back door.” However, at the request of Fr. Ted Hesburgh, the university’s president at the time, Sunday nights at Senior Bar were for underclassmen to dance, eat and drink (non-alcoholic beverages).

For 21 years after Schindler’s article was published, the bar’s new location flourished, and weekends spent there were beloved among students. In Sept. 2003, however, Senior Bar officially became Legends, no longer a student-run establishment.

These days, seniors have access to numerous bars and restaurants in the South Bend area, but there is no designated bar just for their class. Legends is more of a restaurant than the storied hangout spot its location once housed, and students instead opt for such locations as the Linebacker Lounge, Olf’s and Corby’s.

Perhaps, one day, the university will pay homage to the place many Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s alums still rave about with a new Senior Bar. In the meantime, though, it lives on in family stories, photographs and Scholastic articles.