The Historical Society and the Mansion, 1972–1989

317 Lincolnway East, 1972 to 1989

Mishawaka's historical society enters the record the way its museum would, fifty years later: trying to save the city's past with private money. By 1972 the empty Beiger Mansion was slated for demolition to make way for a used-car lot. The local community, with the Mishawaka Historical Society, banded together to save and restore it, and on September 7, 1973, the mansion was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The society thus held — as owner or steward, the record reached does not separate the two — the largest artifact Mishawaka ever offered a museum: the house itself.

In the early morning of January 20, 1975, the mansion burned in an unsolved arson. The terra cotta roof collapsed into the basement; nearly the entire home was destroyed; the bulk of the valuable furniture and artifacts within was lost; only the limestone walls, chimneys, and safes stood, and the insurance policy on the house was $75,000. It took four years to get a roof over the structure again. The recovery outlasted the society: by the mid-to-late 1980s the Historical Society had lost support and finances for preserving and restoring the mansion, and on August 1, 1989, Ron Montandon purchased the mansion from the Historical Society. Montandon — joined in 2000 by Dennis Slade — restored the house on its original floor plan, its interiors reproduced from photographs and accounts, and it operates today as the Beiger Mansion Inn, a bed and breakfast and event facility: a restored mansion, not a museum, its original contents largely ash since 1975.

The society itself is this section's open thread. Its founding date, its officers, and its end are not in the record reached; neither is any statement of whether the Mishawaka Historical Museum Corporation of 2016 is its successor or a new body raised on the same ground of memory. Both records stand as they were found. The settling sources are the Tribune and Enterprise files at the public library, the corporation's own records, and the Indiana Historical Society's local-history files.

Principal sources

1. "Beiger Mansion," the house's documented account — the 1972 demolition threat, the society's rescue, the Register listing of 7 September 1973, the fire of 20 January 1975 and its losses, the $75,000 policy, the society's failing support, the sale of 1 August 1989.
2. Visit South Bend Mishawaka, "Around the Bend: The Beiger Mansion" — the fire, the 1989 purchase, Dennis Slade joining the restoration in 2000, the inn today.
3. This build's Businesses and Wealth passes — the Beiger family and fortune, cross-referenced.