Ruthmere: The House Named for a Lost Child
Near South Bend, Indiana
Albert and Elizabeth Beardsley built this Beaux-Arts mansion in Elkhart between nineteen oh-eight and nineteen ten, and they named it Ruthmere, combining the name of their only child, Ruth, who died at seven months old, with a word meaning sea, reflecting the home's closeness to the water of the Saint Joseph River. The thirteen-thousand-square-foot house was designed by Chicago architect Enock Hill Turnock and filled with European antiques and custom furnishings. The Beardsley fortune came from Elkhart's pharmaceutical and industrial economy. After both Beardsleys died in nineteen twenty-four, the mansion passed through family hands and was restored between nineteen sixty-nine and nineteen seventy-three and opened as a museum.
