The Beiger House: the mansion that burned to its walls

1903–PRESENT · 317 LINCOLNWAY EAST

The building: The Beiger House at 317 Lincolnway East is the largest gesture Mishawaka ever made in domestic architecture, and its nomination — the city's first Register listing, on 28 August 1973 — measures it like one: a Classical Revival mansion of rusticated limestone, roughly ninety-eight feet wide, one hundred sixteen feet long and forty-four feet high, facing north behind a two-story projecting porch on fluted Corinthian stone columns, flanked by one-story wings, a porte-cochère with a crescent drive on the east, a two-story solarium on the west, and massive red Spanish tile hip roofs over all. Construction began in 1903 and was completed in 1909 on the nomination's dating; the mansion's own published history dates the completion to 1908 and Susie Beiger's residence from 1909 — both statements stand in the record, and both are printed here. The mansion's own history names its architects as Durham and Snyder of South Bend, and the planning of its landscaping as the work of Jens Jensen. The interior the nomination describes in 1973 was a period survival "in mint condition": mahogany, oak and bird's-eye maple, parquet floors, original tapestries, an elevator shaft built and never used, a third-floor ballroom, and a pipe organ that worked two ways — the wealth record of this history carries its price, $25,000, from the Aeolian company. The nomination calls the house "the largest and most widely known residence in the area" and quotes Professor Patrick J. Horsbrugh of Notre Dame calling it "exceptional by any standards"; the mansion's own account gives it 21,790 square feet and calls it, at its own strength, the largest home in Mishawaka.

The widow and the home: The house outlived its builder before it was finished. Martin V. Beiger, the Ball Band magnate whose fortune stands in the wealth record of this history, died on 26 September 1903, months after construction started; his widow Susie was sole owner and resident until her death in 1927. The house then passed to a trust operated as a residence for the elderly — the mansion's own history dates the Beiger Home for the Elderly's opening to 1 February 1930, and counts more than a hundred women housed there across its course — until operations ceased in 1967. At the nomination, prepared by Paul Frank Jernegan, FAIA, architect-planner, for Southhold Restorations, Inc. (Mishawaka Division) on 30 June 1973, the owner of record was the Beiger trust at the 1st National Bank of Mishawaka, the elderly housing was being phased out, and the form states the house's condition in one word: threatened.

The fire and the raising: In the early morning of 20 January 1975 the mansion was gutted in an arson that has never been solved. The county visitor bureau's account adds the night's measure: fifteen below zero, the hydrants frozen. The terracotta roof collapsed through into the basement and nearly the entire home was destroyed; what remained was the limestone shell — the walls, the chimneys, porcelain fixtures and safes. The 1978 Dodge House nomination, written across the street three years later, corroborates it in passing: of the Beiger interior, "only the original exterior remains… gutted by fire several years ago. It is slowly being rebuilt." The rebuilding was the Beiger Heritage Corporation's: begun as a division of Southhold Restorations, it split off in the 1970s when it acquired the mansion, and restoration was under way by the end of 1975. On 1 August 1989 Ron Montandon purchased the house from Beiger Heritage for $350,000, on the Tribune's account; Dennis Slade joined him in 2000. It has operated since as a bed-and-breakfast inn and event facility, its restoration still ongoing on its owners' own statement. The listing was never removed: the Beiger House on the Register today is the restored shell, limestone walls that stood through the fire, carrying a rebuilt interior behind them — the Register's own record of a house that is simultaneously a 1903–09 mansion and a work of restoration begun in 1975 and not finished yet.

Sources:

1. National Register nomination, Beiger House (1973), prepared by Paul Frank Jernegan, FAIA, for Southhold Restorations, Inc. (Mishawaka Division), read first-hand — the dimensions, fabric and interior, the 1903–1909 construction dates, the Horsbrugh judgment, the trust ownership, the elderly-housing course and the "threatened" finding.
2. The Beiger Mansion's published history and the St. Joseph County visitor bureau's account — the Durham and Snyder attribution, the Jensen landscaping, the 1908 completion and 1909 residence, the 21,790 square feet, the home's opening of 1 February 1930 and its hundred women, the arson of 20 January 1975 in full, and the restoration course.
3. National Register nomination, Dodge House (1977) — the fire's corroboration from across the street.
4. South Bend Tribune, via the Michiana Business & Research Library catalogue — the 1 August 1989 purchase price and the Beiger Heritage course; the wealth record of this history for the organ's $25,000 and the fortune behind the house.