The architects of Mishawaka buildings

1853–PRESENT · AT BUILDING STRENGTH — THE PERSONS STAY IN THE PEOPLE RECORD

The division: This article names the designers of Mishawaka buildings where the record names them, building by building. It is a roster of commissions, not of lives: the architects as people — their births, their firms' whole courses, their standing — belong to the People record of this history, and South Bend buildings by any of them are South Bend's, boundary-printed at most.

The named: The documented roster, in the order their buildings rose. John Wagner, builder-architect of the Kamm brewery buildings of 1853 — a brewer building his own works. Elom Eller, the farmer who built the Eller-Hosford House of 1875–77 — the Register's database credits him where his nomination's form reads "Unknown," and both stand. Durham and Snyder, of South Bend, architects of the Beiger mansion of 1903–09, on the mansion's own published history — with Jens Jensen, the landscape architect, planning its grounds. Schneider & Austin, of South Bend, architects of St. Paul's Episcopal Church of 1906–07, built by Hess & Hiner of Mishawaka. A. F. Wickes, of Gary, architect of the Carnegie library of 1915–16 — a commission whose file states plainly that nothing else of him is known, his history and previous commissions alike. E. P. Rupert, of Chicago, architect of the Tivoli Theater of 1924–25, built by Reuben Levine of Chicago. Freyermuth & Maurer, of South Bend, designers of Fire Station No. 4 of 1929. Karl Schwartz, the architect the veterans' corporation hired to design Normain Heights' seven houses in 1946–47 — with Robert L. Pine, a development engineer of Dayton, Ohio, as the subdivision's planner. And Paul Frank Jernegan (1908–1993), the roster's one Mishawaka practitioner of the modern period in the record reached: the architect-planner who prepared the Beiger House's National Register nomination in 1973, who designed Mishawaka High School's additions so that, in the library's documentary phrase, old cannot be told from new, and whose drawing for a proposed Mishawaka tower of 1967 survives among the Heritage Room's exhibits — an unbuilt tower for the downtown the renewal was then remaking. He is not to be confused with the Ralph H. Jernegan whose name stands in the 1979 letters of the Ellis-Schindler file; the record keeps the two men in their two generations, and so does this chapter.

The firm that wrote the record: LeRoy Troyer and Associates belong in this roster twice over: as the architects who restored the Dodge House as their own office from 1977, and as the practitioner-authors of the preservation record itself — Arlene Hunter's Dodge nomination, Philip W. Cartwright's Eller-Hosford and Merrifield-Cass nominations, all written from 415 Lincolnway East. A firm that saved its building and then documented its neighbors' is a Mishawaka fact of a kind no other city's record in this history has yet produced. Beside them stand the record's other practitioner-authors: Glory-June Greiff, Adrian Scott Fine, and T. Brooks Brademas of the 100 Center Partnership, who filed their own project's nomination — each named in their buildings' articles above.

The unbuilt and the unknown: The roster's paper entry is the grandest: Ralph Adams Cram's Gothic Revival cathedral, designed in scheme for the Episcopal bishop at Cedar and Lincolnway in the St. Paul's of 1906's orbit — never built, preserved in the diocese's archives, and carried here at the size of a drawing. The unknowns are printed with the same care as the names: the designer of Battell Park's bandshell of 1927 is recorded as unknown; the builder of the Ellis-Schindler House is unknown, its Greek Revival detail read by its nomination as pattern-book work; the architect of Mishawaka High School's 1924 building and of Beiger School are not in the record reached; the architects of the city's churches beyond St. Paul's are not named in the record reached, nor is the designer of Hotel Mishawaka — the hotels record names the settling sources for the hotel's fabric, and they are named again in this section's note. A roster with its gaps printed is the record's true shape: a small city's buildings were designed by a South Bend firm here, a Chicago man there, a Gary stranger once, a farmer and a brewer for themselves — and, twice, by the men who then sat down and wrote the buildings into the National Register.

Sources:

1. The nominations and records of the buildings' articles above — the Wagner, Eller, Freyermuth & Maurer, Wickes, Rupert, Schwartz and Pine credits, the Troyer firm's three nominations and their authors, Jernegan's Beiger nomination of 1973, and the recorded unknowns for the bandshell and the Ellis-Schindler House.
2. The Beiger Mansion's published history — the Durham and Snyder attribution and the Jensen landscaping.
3. Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana archives — Schneider & Austin and Hess & Hiner for St. Paul's, and the unbuilt Cram cathedral scheme.
4. Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library, Heritage Room documentary record — Paul Frank Jernegan (1908–1993), the high school additions, and the 1967 proposed-tower drawing.