November 12 -- A South Bend Surprise

Folks in both Auburn and Dayton had recommended the Studebaker Museum, so I took a day to go about an hour and a half around Lake Michigan to South Bend, Indiana, best known as the home of Notre Dame.

I arrived expecting only to see the Studebaker Museum. I discovered, instead, that it is located in a brand new building right next the Northern Indiana Center for History. And good though the car part was, the Center had something to offer that was even more fascinating.

This special highlight was a guided tour of Copshaholm, an 1898 mansion built by the industrial magnate family, the Olivers. They were a Scots family that arrived in northern Indiana virtually penniless. They worked their way out of the sweatshops to make a massive fortune, largely the result of Pappy Oliver’s invention of a type of plow to which dirt didn’t stick! (Who knew that dirt EVER stuck to plows? Apparently, before the Oliver invention, farmers spent half their time scraping their plows just in order to make them work.)

Until 1977, the mansion was occupied by only two generations of family members. They had moved into it when it was built and kept it in pristine condition. After they died, Copshaholm was given to the Center by the third generation of Olivers.

What makes the mansion so unusual, and perhaps unique, is that it was donated with all its contents: furniture, furnishings, silverware, art; even the clothes in the closets. In addition, few changes were made to the interior or exterior of the place in all the time the Olivers owned it. As a result, what you see is a genuine late-19th Century mansion inside and out.

I can’t do the building justice. It reminded me a little bit of a mini-Biltmore – the Olivers were perhaps super-magnates and the Vanderbilts uber-magnates. The interior was remarkable: beautiful impressionist paintings; hand-painted wallpaper; heavy, ornate woodwork, Tiffany windows. And all sorts of cool contraptions (a steam/convection heating system, a centralized vacuum suction system); furniture from all over the world. Wow! The museum link has only one inside pic, and we weren’t allowed to take snaps when we were inside. You just have to go see it in person, I guess!

After a several-hour tour in the house, the docent took us to a typical worker’s house near the museum. It has been reconditioned to show what it would have looked like with a Polish immigrant family living in it. Also amazing.

I next went to the Studebaker Museum, where there was also an engaging family story . . .