The Eberhart Mansion: the golf-course house

536 Miami Club Court — designed 1929, occupied 1931; Austin & Shambleau; Colonial Revival

The ground: The house stands on a bluff above the municipal golf course, on a plot its builder kept back when he gave the course away. The course beneath it had two club lives before it was the city's: the St. Joseph Valley Country Club, founded in 1900 with a nine-hole course on sixty-five acres — the wealth record's line — whose land was sold for development in 1911; and the Miami Country Club, opened in May 1916 on the same property, which is the club the mansion's own account names as the ground's former holder. The club closed in 1920, when Frederick George Eberhart, the Ball Band industrialist of the younger generation, bought the entire course. He donated the course to the city — it opened as the municipal course in 1929 and runs today as Eberhart-Petro, named for Eberhart and Mayor Mason Petro — and kept for himself the choice bluff plot that contained the original clubhouse.

The building: To build his residence Eberhart commissioned Austin & Shambleau of South Bend, the partnership of Ennis R. Austin and N. Roy Shambleau (1909–1942), the firm the banked fragment carries for its Mishawaka bank building of 1917. The house, at 536 Miami Club Court as the firm's works list gives its address, is Colonial Revival, built with bricks fired specially for the project by the Old Virginia Brick Company of Salem, Virginia. It was designed in 1929 and occupied in 1931. No construction cost or estate figure for it has been published; the wealth record, which prices what the record prices, carries none, and none is printed here.

Its designation: The mansion is not among the eleven Mishawaka listings on the National Register of Historic Places that form the banked fragment's skeleton. Its standing is the city's own: in the most recent city survey of historic sites and structures, on the mansion's own account, the home was awarded the survey's highest level of historic significance, "outstanding."

The survival course: After the Eberharts, the house was occupied by Freeman Yeager, an automobile dealer. In the 1960s the School City of Mishawaka purchased the property and used it for a period of years as its administration building — the mansion as a school office, the bluff house doing civic work. In 1984 it was sold to the developer Jack Hickey, who built new homes on the available acreage around it and allowed the house to serve as the 1985 South Bend Symphony Show House. It stands today as what its own account calls it, a private residence, on its bluff above the course its builder gave the city; no later change of use or designation appears in the record reached through November 2026.

Sources:

1. The Eberhart Mansion's own published history (eberhartmansion.com), preserved in quotation in the Golf Club Atlas forum's Mishawaka course thread — the Miami Country Club ground, the purchase and donation, the retained bluff plot with the original clubhouse, Austin & Shambleau, the Colonial Revival style, the Old Virginia Brick firing, designed 1929 and occupied 1931, the city survey's "outstanding" rating, the Yeager occupancy, the School City purchase and administration years, the 1984 Hickey sale and the 1985 Symphony Show House, and the closing description of the house as a private residence.
2. Golf Club Atlas forum, Mishawaka course thread (Ken Fry's account) — the St. Joseph Valley Country Club founded 1900, nine holes on sixty-five acres, the land sold in 1911, Miami Country Club opened May 1916 on the same property, the club closed in 1920 on Eberhart's purchase.
3. Austin & Shambleau, works list — the partnership of Ennis R. Austin and N. Roy Shambleau, South Bend, 1909–1942; the firm's Mishawaka Trust and Savings Company Building of 1917; the 1929 house for Frederick G. Eberhart at 536 Miami Club Court.
4. The banked wealth fragment — the younger Frederick George Eberhart's purchase of the closed club's ground, the donation and the course's opening as the municipal course in 1929, its present name Eberhart-Petro, and the absence of any published construction cost or estate figure.
5. The banked architecture fragment — the eleven in-city National Register listings, among which the mansion does not appear; the Dodge House and Beiger House articles, pointed to and not retold.