Yesterday, much to my
surprise, I had a wonderful day in South Bend and am going to have to return to
see what I missed at one of their local museums. If you’ve read some of my
other posts, you know I am an advocate for getting to know the area where you live
and its history. South Bend IN is a great place for doing that.
After a leisurely breakfast
and some reading, I headed off to Notre Dame. This is a good place to walk and
take photos of the statues and architecture. Then, of course, you have to visit
the bookstore, which has an extensive religion section of course, but a also a
fair amount of fiction for adults and children alike, and HISTORY!
Then it was off to the Center
for History and the Studebaker Museum. Unfortunately, I had not planned ahead and
found that the Center’s admission price included, if you so choose, a tour of
Copshaholm, the mansion that belonged to the Oliver family. The mansion, where
I only had time to view the first floor, is stunning. All of the original
furnishings are intact and it is as though the family had just stepped out
while you toured their home.
The Joseph D. Oliver family
moved into the Queen Anne/Romanesque house on New Year’s Day, 1897. The home
has 38 rooms, making it smaller than the Studebaker’s home, but its exterior is
far more impressive due to the stonework and design. Copshaholm is the name of
the town in Scotland where Oliver’s father lived until immigrating to the
United States. Oliver made his fortune in farm equipment, developing a process
to make plows more sharp and later manufacturing tractors.
If you visit the home, plan
to spend at least an hour because the tour is guided and some tourists tend to
get a little chatty with the guide. Just a confession—but I was promoting Fort
Wayne!
The temporary exhibit at the
Center for History is “Gizmos, Corsets and Concoctions”, which, unless you
REALLY want to see how a lobotomy is performed and what a too-tight corset does
to a woman’s spine, can be skipped. I didn’t have time to walk the “time-line”
in the basement nor did I have much interest in the baseball exhibit, but the
children’s section looked like a lot of fun if you have a child under six that
you’re trying to entice to go to a museum.
There’s also a gallery
devoted to Notre Dame and its presidents, which is worth more time than I
devoted to it.
If, like me, you love old
cars, the Studebaker portion of the building is something to see. My great-aunt
Hazel always drove Studebakers. My father, who worked for over 50 years in the
car industry, never could understand why she thought those were the cars for
her. Granted, some of them were pretty darn ugly. But others were pretty darn
cool and you can see why at this museum. The Studebakers also collected
carriages belonging to famous persons, such as Lincoln, Grant, McKinley and
Benjamin Harrison, whose carriages are on display.
South Bend also is home to
the College Football Hall of Fame, two other art museums, the South Bend
Chocolate Factory and Museum, the Military Honor Park and Museum, and the Civil
Rights Heritage Center. Next trip, the Civil Rights center will be on my list
as well as a return to the Oliver Mansion so I can view the second and third
floors.
History CAN and IS fun! Day
trips, photography and a curiosity on the part of parents can make learning fun
for kids and family memories.
(And as an aside, I got lost and wound up at the city's oldest cemetery. I didn't take time to get out and walk around, but if you like studying history via headstones, this would be a good place to do that.)
