The Register Roll — eleven listings, no Landmark, one removal, one over the line

1973–2022 · FAME AT REGISTER SIZE

The test: National fame of the official kind is measurable, and this chapter measures it. The National Park Service's county record, complete through its postings of September 2026, holds 102 current listings for St. Joseph County, including exactly one National Historic Landmark — Tippecanoe Place, in South Bend. Mishawaka's test against that standard returns a plain negative: no property in Mishawaka is a National Historic Landmark. What the city holds is the Register itself, at Register size: eleven listings standing inside the city — the Beiger House (1973), the Dodge House (1978), the Kamm and Schellinger Brewery (1979), the Eller-Hosford House (1983), the Merrifield-Cass House (1983), the Ellis-Schindler House (1990), the Battell Park Historic District (1996), the Carnegie Library (1998), the Normain Heights Historic District (2002), Fire Station No. 4 (2017) and St. Joseph's Parish Square (2022). The Architecture record of this history owns the roll whole, nomination by nomination, and it is not re-listed here; this chapter's business is only the fame arithmetic — a real Register presence, honestly short of the Landmark line.

The rescued landmark: South Bend's fame file holds a theater saved for a dollar; Mishawaka's roll holds the quieter version of the same story. The Dodge House at 415 East Lincolnway — the house of 1889 whose date is proven from its own fabric, a stair tread inscribed “April 26, 1889” — was bought in 1977 by LeRoy Troyer and Associates, the Mishawaka architects, in order to save it, and restored as the firm's own office. The rescue then compounded: from inside the saved house the firm prepared three of the city's house nominations, its own Dodge House nomination in 1977 and the Eller-Hosford and Merrifield-Cass nominations after it. The Architecture record carries the house and the firm whole; the fame point is this chapter's — Mishawaka's Register was, in unusual part, written by the people who had bought one of its houses rather than let it fall.

The edges of the roll: Two listings stand at the roll's edges and are printed at boundary size. The Mishawaka Reservoir Caretaker's Residence, listed the same day as the Carnegie Library in 1998, stands at 16581 Chandler Boulevard in Penn Township, south of the city line — the city's own reservoir ground, a city building outside the city, filed on the county list under Penn Township; the Architecture record carries it as the boundary case it is. And the roll has a subtraction: the Tivoli Theater, 208 North Main Street, listed 1 April 1998, demolished 2 February 2005, removed from the Register 24 March 2005 — a famous location that exists now in the form this history's theaters record documents: a marker, installed on the site on 21 May 2026, the city's fourteenth. The listing, the wrecking ball and the marker are the whole arc, and the theaters and controversies records own its middle.

Sources:

1. National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places — the St. Joseph County listings complete through the weekly lists posted 18 September 2026: 102 current listings, one National Historic Landmark (Tippecanoe Place, South Bend), and the former listings, including the Tivoli Theater (no. 98000304; listed 1 April 1998, removed 24 March 2005).
2. The Architecture record of this history — the roll whole, from the nominations: the eleven city listings with their dates and reference numbers, the Reservoir Caretaker's Residence as the boundary listing, and the preservation corps that filed them.
3. The theaters record of this history — the Tivoli whole: the demolition of 2 February 2005 and the marker installed 21 May 2026.