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The history museum: explore the bend's past.

What you see around The Bend today is rooted in its past.

Few attractions bring this to light better than The History Museum , which is on the same campus as the Studebaker National Museum and includes the pristine Oliver Mansion. Its exhibits paint a vivid picture of South Bend and the surrounding area — from prehistory to settlement to the rise of industry with stops along the way. It’s a must-see for any visitor, especially those looking to include a history tour on their itinerary.

Tour a Historic Mansion

History doesn’t get much more vibrant than the mansion.

Once owned by the industrialist J.D. Oliver, it was built in 1895-96. A New York architect designed the 38-room home. Tour it and you’ll find what others have seen — it’s in perfect condition. All the furnishings are original, which offers a rare window into how the Oliver family lived decades later.

Some facts about the mansion:

• It was built with Indiana field stone, which was transported to the site and cut.
• It was one of the first homes in South Bend with electricity.
• More than two acres of Italianate gardens surround the mansion.
• The mansion and gardens are listed on the National Record of Historic places and registered as an American Treasure.
• The mansion was donated in tact, meaning with most of the items inside.

See them While You Can 

One stop at The History Museum might not be enough. Several exhibits change, giving visitors a new look every time they make the trip. Here is the current lineup of temporary exhibits.

University of Notre Dame: The Fabric of a Global University:  A collaboration with Notre Dame International, this exhibit highlights stories on international education, research and engagement worldwide by the University. 

Forging Innovation:  Learn about South Bend's history of innovation during 100 years that included major contributions from the Oliver and Studebaker families. Exhibit is in conjunction with the south Bend Museum of Art's "Visualizing Innovation," which celebrates the city's legacy of innovative thinking.

Fighting Fear: Pandemics Past and Present:  Examines past pandemics, including that of influenza in 1918, and how they changed local, national and global communities.

A Closer Look at the Area's Growth

Seven rooms of dioramas and interactive displays explain how the St. Joseph River Valley blossomed from dense forest to the age of French exploration and into a thriving Midwest industrial center.

Visitors can "walk" the portage that connected the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. They can see how early settlers lived in the area. This permanent exhibit tells how the native Potawatomi were forcibly removed from the area in the 1830s.

It also touches on the Grand Kankakee Marsh, which was dredged for farmland. An award-winning, 30-minute video documentary in the Free Life Theatre features stories about the African American community in the region from the 1820s through World War I.

Another area explains industrial growth in the late 1800s, including the rise of Studebaker and the Oliver Chilled Plow Works.

Guide yourself through this area so you can take in each display on your own time.

Women's Baseball in The Bend

Men abroad during World War II sparked an idea for Philip Wrigley – create the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

Immortalized in the film “A League of Their Own,” the league actually operated for 12 years. Teams propped in cities across the Midwest. South Bend jumped into the game with the South Bend Blue Sox. It was one of the original four tams and stayed in the league for all 12 seasons.

So, basically every participant in the league visited The Bend at some point.

The History Museum’s collection — a repository for the league — includes photographs, programs, film footage, scrapbooks and playing equipment used by teams. It’s a treasure for baseball and The Bend.

Colfax: Speaker for Freedom 

Opened in early 2023, "Colfax: Speaker for Freedom" is an in-depth exhibit on the life and times of Schuyler Colfax. Colfax was born in the region and went on to a storied political career. He rose to prominence as Speaker of the House under president Abraham Lincoln, during which time he guided passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery. He later served as vice president to Ulysses S. Grant.

Jake is the Director of Marketing & Communications for Visit South Bend Mishawaka. Prior to VSBM, he was a reporter and columnist for the South Bend Tribune. Jake is a proud Indiana University grad and was raised in the region.

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Oliver Mansion at The History Museum

• Address 808 West Washington St. South Bend, Indiana 46601
• Hours Monday–Saturday 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Sunday 12:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m.
• Phone 574-235-9664

Visit Oliver Mansion at The History Museum

It was 1897 when J.D. Oliver and his family moved into their 38-room mansion in South Bend, Indiana. Later named Copshaholm, it was designed by Charles Alonzo Rich of New York and would be their home for 75 years. Built in the Romanesque Queen Anne Style, the exterior of the 12,000-square-foot Oliver Mansion is native granite. Hand-carved woodwork, 14 fireplaces, and leaded Tiffany windows add to the home’s beauty. All furnishings are original to the home. J.D. Oliver was president of the Oliver Chilled Plow Works, which was founded by his father, James Oliver, inventor of the chilled plow.

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How did the Olivers celebrate Christmas? Take a tour of Copshaholm to find out.

SOUTH BEND — The History Museum ’s “Holm for the Holidays” yuletide guided tours of Copshaholm continue through Jan. 7 at 897 Thomas St.

Tours of the Oliver Mansion, or Copshaholm, as the Oliver family called their home, feature a total of 29 Christmas trees as well as decorated fireplace mantels and tabletops.

On the main staircase, garlands of greenery are draped from the banisters leading to the second and third floors.

The den’s Christmas tree is decorated with a Victorian theme to reflect how it looked when the family lived there. Red- and white-striped stockings are hung from the fireplace.

Namely News: Shades of Clark Griswold: Phil Blasko's Christmas display show grows and grows

In the dining room, the table is set with china, crystal and silver, all original to the home.

Copshaholm was home to the J.D. Oliver family for 75 years. Its furnishings are original, showing the house as it appeared when the Oliver family lived there.

Tours are at 1 and 2 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and 1 and 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Closed Dec. 24 and 25 and Jan. 1.

Admission is $11-$7; free for members and ages 5 and younger.

For more information, call 574-235-9664 or visit historymuseumsb.org .

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• WHAT WE KNOW

Unlocked: Inside the Oliver Mansion in the heart of South Bend

by Jim Pinkerton

SOUTH BEND — It's a slice of living history that draws visitors to downtown South Bend, but what you see when you tour the Oliver Mansion isn't all there is to the historic home.

The History Museum has literally thousands of items that are hidden from the public eye. Many of those items are stored in the basement of the mansion, once home to 20th-century industrialist J.D. Oliver and his wife Anna.

The family donated the property to the museum in the 1980s. Now, visitors take guided tours several times a day.

“I think I could come here 10 times and not see it all,” said Deb Mail of Elkhart. “There is so much detail, so much original detail. It was a perfect tour.”

The museum's Deputy Executive Director Kristie Erickson estimates there are 50,000 artifacts in the mansion.

“Probably a fifth of that is available to see on a tour at any one time,” said Erickson.

The rest is stored in places like the basement. The public isn’t allowed there on tours for safety reasons.

Weaving your way through the cramped space, you find a treasure trove of items waiting to go on display.

Erickson showed us a painting that is supposed to be hanging in the main hall. Margaret Gilbert was the great aunt of Anna Oliver. The picture suffered damage from excess heat and the museum recently got approval to have it conserved.

Around the corner from that painting is a room filled with curtains for different seasons. They're all stored as if frozen in time, many marked with hand-written notes that once helped staff identify where they were to be displayed.

“If you look at these beautiful gold drapes with this nice pattern, the tag says old winter drapes for music room,” Erickson said.

There are also beautiful pieces of furniture that there simply isn't room for on the tours, pieces like a desk that was once used by the family.

“It actually has electricity underneath with a button so he [J.D. Oliver] could call a staff person,” said Erickson. “It's been cut now, but if you look underneath you can see where that used to be, and it has some really great Victorian details like these legs on the side.”

Like any basement, it also served the purpose of storing items out of sight -- and this one is no exception. Hidden in one far corner is something a little unexpected

“This little corner kind of serves as the house's liquor cabinet,” said Erickson. “You can tell they had some favorites. We've got many bottles of this John Collins Gin.”

You can also see dark circles on the wall, which is probably where the wine bottles once rested against the wall, and scratched into the bricks in a work room is a business card of sorts.

“On the wall, the electrician with his office and home number,” said Erickson. “They would have the butler do minor jobs, but obviously if something was beyond his ability, he's got somebody he can call.”

The items that are stored are used for other purposes.

“We're able to tell a lot of stories at the museum through the items in this house both here and in the other building,” said Erickson. “We're constantly working to try to clean those items and store them a little better and keep them in good shape and make sure they're available for other purposes in the future.”

The attic also contains some unique features. It’s used for museum storage now, but there are tunnels that once housed a cistern for water. It also contains parts of the heating system.

And the mansion is still revealing secrets from the past. During recent electrical upgrades, they discovered that there had once been a fire in house.

They also found that places that looked like solid walls at one time had doors in them.

“When the house was donated, we knew a lot about it from the family and from other sources, but nobody writes down the whole history of all the remodels you've ever done,” said Erickson. “So a lot of times we have to use some investigation techniques to really learn a little more.”

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HIGHLIGHTS & SIGHTSEEING IN OMSK

• A visit to the Church of St. Nicolas that is a beautiful sample of architecture of 18th – 19th centuries will open you few pages of the Russian history.
• World famous Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky condemned to penal servitude spent four years in Omsk from 1850 till 1854. Commandant of the Fortress of Omsk paid a special attitude to this state convict and gave F. Dostoevsky a small room in his house. Nowadays the former House of the Commandant of the Fortress is the Fyodor Dostoevsky Museum. The famous novel «Notes from a Dead House» reflects events of that period of writer’s life.
• The Fine Arts Museum of Omsk possesses a rich collection of more than 16,000 pieces of art including pictures of European and Russian artists and some beautiful golden decorations excavated by archaeologists in the Omsk region.
• The Local Lore Museum presents interesting collection of the typical for the region fauna and flora samples.
• The Siberian Antiquity Museum exhibits the best works of local craftsmen.

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Traveler’s guide to the city of Omsk, Western Siberia’s secret gem

Omsk was founded in 1716 when a wooden fort was constructed to house a Cossack unit in the area to protect the expanding Russian frontier from Central Asian nomadic incursions. It served various administrative functions throughout the 1800s and became infamous as a place of exile and incarceration. The city was rundown when selected as a hub for the Trans-Siberian railway in the 1890s. Many international trade companies and foreign consulates relocated here and the remnants of their offices can still be found in the city today.

The mystery of Kolchak’s gold

Kolchak was entrusted with a large portion of the Tsarist’s gold reserves, yet amazingly lost much of it. Supposedly 250 million rubles were lost (about $8 million at the time). Legend has it that they were buried near the village of Taiga, yet numerous excavations have turned up nothing. The area still attracts the occasional fortune seeker.

Kolchak’s headquarters are located at what is today the Omsk Regional Archives at Broz Tito St., 3. Nothing shows how much times have changed as the imposing Kolchak statue that was unveiled in 2012 around the corner. The statue guards Kolchak restaurant , a four-story culinary complex featuring a steak house, an Irish pub, a Central Asian café and an Italian eatery.  For more details on where and how to dig Kolchak's gold, see Top Ten Mysterious Lost Treasures of Russia  

Dostoevsky and the Tsar

Most foreigners have heard of Omsk via writer Fyodor Dostoevsky who spent four years here as a prisoner (1849-1853). He spent most of his time in Omsk in squalor and chains and with no books besides the Bible, however, it left an indelible mark on his memory and influenced his future literary output. There is a statue of the writer in chains grasping a Bible at the corner of Partizanskaya and Spartakovskaya streets, where Dostoevsky undoubtedly stepped many times. A museum dedicated to the author's time in Omsk is located nearby at Dostoevskogo St. 1. The local university is also named for him.

Tarskaya Street is one of the city’s oldest thoroughfares. It features a monument to victims of Stalinist repressions and the Tara gates, originally built in 1792 as one of the four entrances to the Omsk fort. Nearby stands the Assumption Cathedral, one of the largest churches in Siberia. Future Tsar Nicholas II laid the first stone here in 1891 when making his way back to St. Petersburg after his Eastern journey.

In Omsk you are never more than a few steps from the village, made clear when one exits the center to the north, where most houses are wooden and roads unpaved. Stroll along Bulatova and Rabinovicha streets, a well-preserved ensemble of wooden architecture.  

Omsk’s cultural heritage

One of Omsk’s most famous sons is Symbolist painter Mikhail Vrubel (1856-1910). Vrubel ignored contemporary trends and focused on themes from fairy tales, demons and religious subjects and also designed a majolica frieze for the Metropol Hotel in Moscow. Omsk’s Fine Arts Museum is named for him and features a number of his works .

Over the years a number of tourists have tripped over the monument to Stepanych. This bust of a plumber rising from a sewer was the idea of Omsk’s former mayor after a trip to Slovakia in the 1990s. Stepanych has become one of the symbols of the city.

Omsk is a hockey town, with one of the major teams, Avangard , in the KHL, Russia’s premiere professional league. Russian champions on several occasions, check out a match at Omsk Arena. But if you can’t catch a game there’s a large kiosk featuring the team’s merchandise at the airport.  

Siberian punk, jazz and the classics

Perhaps Russia’s most famous punk band, Grazhdanskaya oborona (Civil Defence), was formed here in 1982. The band was active until 2008 when lead singer Yegor Letov died of heart failure at age 43. Letov is buried at the Staro-Vostochnoe cemetery. A sprawling graveyard with thousands of graves, fans should stop at the administration for help in locating his grave.

One of Omsk’s longest running live music venues is Jazz Cafe Party Piano . With live jazz and rock every night of the month, it’s legendary throughout Siberia. Take a taxi as it’s hard to find. Other options for live music include the Viking Folk Bar and Harat's Pub .  

How to get there

The southern and northern branches of the Trans-Siberian Railway converge here with about 10 trains going to or from Moscow on any given day (37-47 hours each way) and many trains travel to and from the Far East (4-5 days) daily. Aeroflot, Transaero, and S7 fly to Moscow daily (3 hours). Less frequent flights connect to Saint Petersburg (3 hours), Krasnoyarsk (2 hours), as well as Frankfurt, Hannover and Köln in Germany (5 hours). For more information check out aeroomsk.ru

Where to stay

Central hotel choices include Tourist with rooms starting from 1800 rubles (about $47) and Ibis Sibir with rooms starting at 4000 rubles (about $104).

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• Siberia's most thriving center, where urban and rural landscapes collide
• A traveler's guide to Novosibirsk, the unofficial capital of Siberia

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THE 10 BEST Omsk Sights & Historical Landmarks

Omsk landmarks.

• Monuments & Statues
• Points of Interest & Landmarks
• Churches & Cathedrals
• Architectural Buildings
• Arenas & Stadiums
• Sacred & Religious Sites
• Scenic Walking Areas
• Historic Sites
• Historic Walking Areas
• Government Buildings
• Military Bases & Facilities
• 5.0 of 5 bubbles
• 4.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• 3.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• Budget-friendly
• Good for Kids
• Good for a Rainy Day
• Good for Couples
• Honeymoon spot
• Good for Big Groups
• Adventurous
• Hidden Gems
• Good for Adrenaline Seekers
• Things to do ranked using Tripadvisor data including reviews, ratings, photos, and popularity.

1. Monument to the Plumber Stepanych

2. Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

3. Statue Lyuba

4. Achairsky Holy Cross Monastery

5. Tara Gates

6. St. Nicholas Cossacks Cathedral

7. Fire-Observation Tower

8. Love Statue

9. Omsk Fortress Historical and Cultural Complex

10. Buchholz Square

11. Monument to the Policeman

12. Batushkin Mansion (Kolchak's House)

13. Tobolskiye Vorota

14. Pedestrian Street of Chokan Valikhanov

15. Monument to the Children of Besieged Leningrad

16. Don Quixote Monument

17. Holy Cross Cathedral

18. Monument to Zhukov

19. Monument The Scales of Existence

20. Hungry Artist Art-Salon

21. Monument to St. Peter and Fevronia

22. Sculpture Deer

23. Seraphim Alekseyevskaya Chapel

24. Statue of Dostoyevskiy

25. Monument to Chokan Valikhanov

26. Omsk Gates

27. Church of St. John the Baptist

28. St. Nicholas Kazan Cathedral

29. Temple of St. Tatiana

30. Monument Cross bearing

What travelers are saying.

• Monument to the Plumber Stepanych
• Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
• Statue Lyuba
• Achairsky Holy Cross Monastery
• Fire-Observation Tower
• Love Statue