A League of Their Own, Oliver Mansion Tour

Touring again yesterday.  The Center for History and this included the tour of the Oliver Mansion, in South Bend Indiana.

The special interest of baseball during the WWII years was told with the movie of A League of Their Own.  South Bend was a host of one of the first women's baseball teams during these times.  The first room on the basement was a tribute to the players and teams.

This wide picture shows several of the star players from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.  The League continued into the 1950s.

The groupings of the displays was by type of use or purpose, and not by using the old to newer transition that is normally used in other museums.  The displays were grouped by subject such as Shelter, Quality of Life, and others, and were difficult to follow.  This old TV is a really neat old model.  The other apparatus is electric curling irons and a hair dryer from an earlier time. the clips hanging from wires were attached to small rollers in the hair.

This display shows corsets for women and men to promote healthy posture.

A 1918 electric car.

Oliver plows, their history, the family home, and its story were the highlight of the afternoon.

The tour of Oliver butler house, allowed pictures inside, and the walking tour of the big Oliver Mansion didn’t allow indoor photographing.  The kitchen area of the small house had an old ice box and our guide is showing a sign that was used for ice delivery, indicating how many pounds to deliver 25-100.

Anne-Marie and I had an old chair of this design, we outfitted our house in Early Depression Style furniture, it’s all we could afford.  The kitchen had a early gas cooking range.

The Oliver house at 12000sq.ft. with 38 rooms, 9 bathrooms, 4 stairways, constructed of granite stone from the farm fields around Indiana.  The tour wound around the house up one staircase, and up another to the private areas of the huge home.  We were led through one section of the home where we passed through bedroom after bedroom, and our guide had a story about who lived in each one.  The smaller building with a large door opening in the center is what used to be the carriage house, and in later years the garage, with living quarters upstairs for the chauffeur.

The Studebaker mansion was just down the street, and it was built during the same time, late 1800s.  This huge building has 24000 sq. ft. 40 rooms, and is now a restaurant, and their advertising mentions suite rentals.  They were not open on Monday, so no pictures.

Today, The RV/MH Hall of Fame, a museum of trailers and early motorhomes, from 1913-forward.