The two oldest houses: the Ellis-Schindler and Merrifield-Cass houses

1834–1990 · 900 AND 816 LINCOLNWAY

The older building: The Ellis-Schindler House at 900 Lincolnway West is a Greek Revival house of 1834 — one-and-a-half stories of wood clapboard on a brick foundation, its heavy raking entablature carried on dentils and regulae, its recessed entry porch framed by paneled pilasters carved with stylized honeysuckle leaves, its attic windows set in the enlarged frieze. Its nomination states its standing in the plainest terms the Register record holds for any Mishawaka building: "an outstanding example of the Greek Revival style," "one of few high-style examples of this mode left in St. Joseph County, and one of only two Greek Revival style buildings in Mishawaka. It is also the oldest known building in the town." The builder is unknown; the nomination reads the boldness of the detail as suggesting a pattern-book source. Robert Ellis, an undertaker, built it in 1834, and his family held it until 1872, when John J. Schindler bought it; Schindler's insurance business, begun that year, "still continues today," the nomination records, and his family held the house until 1960.

The move: The house stands on the Register under Criteria Consideration B, the Register's category for a moved property, listed on its architectural importance. In 1979 Dr. and Mrs. Speiser bought it and moved it about one block west, from 707 to 900 Lincolnway West, to the opposite side of the same street. The move was a restoration as much as a relocation: the c. 1920 Bungalow porch and a later rear addition were removed and discarded; a new concrete foundation was veneered with the original foundation brick; every board of clapboard came off for insulation, about forty per cent of it replaced in kind; pilaster ornament lost over the years was replaced from the evidence of paint layers; and a twelve-foot full-width rear addition was built. The new site is part of the Colonel John Smith Addition — "coincidentally the oldest platted section in Mishawaka," the nomination notes. The interior was converted to an optometrist's office, and its tin ceiling was salvaged from old buildings in downtown Mishawaka. The city letters filed in support of the listing in 1979 and 1980 call it "the oldest house in our City" and "the only Greek Revival style building in our City" — the second of those claims standing against the nomination's own "one of only two," both printed here as the record gives them.

The older dwelling: Three years younger and never moved, the Merrifield-Cass House at 816 Lincolnway East carries the complementary claim, in its nomination's own framing: "the second oldest known dwelling in the City of Mishawaka, and is considered to be the oldest dwelling in continuous use." George Merrifield — the teacher who brought public education to Mishawaka, whose own record stands in the schools leg of this history — built it in 1837: a rectangular one-story house on a full basement, fieldstone foundation walls, floor beams hewn from black walnut, poplar siding, a blend of Federal and Greek Revival in its first form. Albert Cass, a wagon-and-carriage part-owner who built the Ripple Mills flour mill on the race, bought it in 1867 and remade it: the second story added, and a one-story tenant house moved from elsewhere on the property against the east side, making the L-shaped plan — the nomination preserving, from the family's telling, the two-inch difference in floor elevation between the old house and the moved one, "a detail which we are told aggravated Mr. Cass." The porches came in 1871, their sawn bracketry the house's Carpenter Gothic layer over the Federal and Greek Revival beneath. Only six owners have held the house since 1837 — "which undoubtedly accounts for its excellent condition," the nomination judges — and the owner at its listing was Mrs. Garth Stroup, under whose name, the Garth Stroup Home, the Register also carries it. The two claims, read together, divide cleanly: the Ellis-Schindler House is the oldest known building, moved and office-converted; the Merrifield-Cass House is the oldest dwelling still lived in as a dwelling, on its first ground. Both stand in this history exactly at the strength their nominations give them.

Sources:

1. National Register nomination, Ellis-Schindler House (1990), read first-hand — the 1834 construction, the Greek Revival fabric, the oldest-building and two-Greek-Revival statements, the 1979 move and restoration in full, the Schindler insurance line, and the 1979–80 city letters in the file.
2. National Register nomination, Merrifield-Cass House (1982), prepared by Phil Cartwright, AIA, LeRoy Troyer and Associates, read first-hand — the 1837 construction, the Cass alterations of 1867 and the porches of 1871, the floor-elevation detail, the six owners, and the second-oldest and oldest-in-continuous-use framing.
3. National Register Information System — the listing dates and reference numbers: Ellis-Schindler, 18 December 1990, #90001926; Merrifield-Cass, 16 June 1983, #83000147.