Copshaholm — the Joseph D. Oliver House (1895–96)

1895–96 – present

The house: At 808 West Washington Street, at Chapin, stands the house the plow works built. Joseph Doty Oliver, president of the Oliver Chilled Plow Works, had it built in 1895–96 to designs of Lamb & Rich of New York — the architect Charles Alonzo Rich — with Christopher Fassnacht of South Bend as builder. It is a 38-room house of three stories and an attic, some 12,000 square feet, its walls of Indiana fieldstone granite boulders, cut and fitted, with a carriage house and a perimeter wall of the same stone; the grounds run to two and a half landscaped acres. In 1899 the Olivers engaged Lamb & Rich again for a music room addition. The house was redecorated in 1938 under the direction of Walter Johnson, an architect from Philadelphia. The National Register has classified it twice, and both classifications stand in the record: the original nomination of 1973 described it in the style language of its time as Queen Anne, "though considerably more robust than that term usually connotated," while the Park Service's additional documentation of the 2020s classifies it as Richardsonian Romanesque. The name, Copshaholm, the house carries for the Oliver family's Scottish home country.

The family's tenure and the transfer: J. D. Oliver died at Copshaholm on 6 August 1933; his wife Anna died in 1938. The 1973 nomination records that the Olivers lived in the house continuously until the death of Joseph D. Oliver Jr. in 1972 — the museum accounts round the tenure at 72 years — and the Park Service's additional documentation states that the home and its contents, original Oliver family pieces, were donated to the forerunner of today's History Museum in the 1970s. The fuller chronology in the university's archaeological study of the family's triangle lot across the street puts the completion of the transfer at the end of the line: Gertrude Oliver, the last of J. D.'s children, died in 1987, and her extended family then turned the mansion over to the Northern Indiana Historical Society; the museum's acquisition is dated 1988 in the museum-tour record. The printed record thus holds both a 1970s donation and a 1987–88 completion of it, and they are printed here as the record gives them. What followed is not in dispute: the house passed intact, with its original furnishings in place, to the historical society whose successor, The History Museum, operates it today on the museum campus it shares with the Studebaker National Museum.

The listing: Copshaholm was listed on the National Register on 28 August 1973, among the county's earliest listings, and the additional documentation prepared in the 2020s sought to elevate its significance from the state to the national level and reduced the listed boundary, excluding the carriage house after additions were made to its rear. Around it, the Oliver family's other building survives and fell in the ordinary way: the house James Oliver built in 1886 as a wedding gift for his daughter Josephine, east of Copshaholm, is operated today as the Oliver Inn, while the James Oliver House itself was demolished in 1911 to make way for a public school.

Sources:

1. National Register nomination, Joseph D. Oliver House (1973), and National Park Service additional documentation and boundary decrease for the Oliver House (in.gov, DNR board papers) — the 1895–96 construction, Lamb & Rich, the fieldstone granite, the 1899 music room, the 1938 redecoration, the style classifications of 1973 and of the additional documentation, the deaths of J. D. Oliver (1933) and Anna Oliver (1938), the occupancy to 1972 and the donation statement.
2. Indiana Historical Society, "Copshaholm" (Traces, Fall 2005) — the 12,000 square feet, the rooms and baths, the two and a half acres of grounds, and the family's history in the house.
3. Patrick Finnigan (Indiana University South Bend), "Plowed Over: An Archaeological and Historical Investigation into the 'Triangle Lot' in the West Washington District" — Gertrude Oliver's death in 1987 and the family's transfer of the mansion to the Northern Indiana Historical Society.
4. The History Museum and Visit South Bend Mishawaka — the museum's operation of the mansion, its original furnishings, and the Oliver Inn's survival.