The posts as builders: Veterans' Homes of Mishawaka, Inc.

1946 – 1951 · the organizations' joint work, at anchor size as assigned

The corporation: When the Second World War's veterans came home to a town with no houses for them, the answer was organized by the posts. In January 1946 the city appointed a housing coordinator, J. A. Riggs. Committees of American Legion Post 161 and of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 360 took the problem up, joined with United Rubber Workers Local 65 — Ball Band's local, many of whose members were veterans themselves — and the three bodies together formed the nonprofit corporation that built Normain Heights: 315 houses on battle-named streets, built 1947–1949, for returning veterans and their families. The subdivision whole — its plat, its seven house designs, its streets named for Normandy, the Ardennes, Palau, Bastogne, Leyte, St. Lo and Guam, its National Register listing of 20 March 2002 — stands in the Neighborhoods record of this history. What belongs here is the organizational fact: the largest single work Mishawaka's veterans' organizations ever did was not a parade or a hall but a neighborhood, built by the two posts acting as founders of a housing corporation.

The name, and the corporation's own name — both conflicts carried: The subdivision's name was chosen in a contest the Legion post ran, and is a contraction of "North Main," for the ground at Main and McKinley. The corporation's name stands in the record in two forms, and both are printed rather than chosen between: the National Park Service's National Register nomination names the builder as "Mishawaka Vets' Homes, Inc.", formed by the three organizations; the Indiana Historical Bureau's marker on the ground (erected 1997) names it "Veterans' Homes of Mishawaka, Inc., founded by veterans, 1946." The two forms are one corporation's name as two public records print it; the corporation's own articles, in the state's records, are the settling source, and until they are read the discrepancy stands in this record exactly as it stands in the sources.

The dates, as each record gives them: The marker dates the building 1947–1949; the National Register nomination gives the district's development as 1946–1951 — the wider frame including the corporation's forming, the annexation of the eighty acres in November 1946, and the groundbreaking of 13 November 1947. Both datings stand in the federal and state records respectively and are printed with their sources, not averaged. The corporation's later course — when it wound up its work, and into whose hands its obligations passed — is not in the record reached; the Normain-Northway Neighborhood Association, documented organizing the district's 2002 National Register celebration, is the subdivision's present civic form, and it is the neighborhood's, not the posts'.

Sources:

1. National Park Service, National Register nomination, Normain Heights Historic District (nomination by Glory-June Grieff, July 2001; listed 20 March 2002, ref. 02000203) — the corporation's forming organizations, its name as there printed, the development dates, the architect and the seven types.
2. Indiana Historical Bureau marker 71.1997.1 (1997), 2332 North Main Street — the corporation's name as there printed, "founded by veterans, 1946; built 1947–1949; 315 houses."
3. Wars and Neighborhoods records of this history — the housing emergency, the coordinator, the name contest, the annexation and groundbreaking, and the subdivision whole.