HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
+ 1 further entry on record
Clement Studebaker's 1889 Mansion; Tippecanoe Place Restaurant Has Closed
620 W Washington St, South Bend, IN 46601
Research updated October 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
The former restaurant is closed; no current public dining price is offered.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Multi-story 1889 stone mansion with stairs to upper floors; the former restaurant’s main dining floor was accessible. Ask the property contact about current mansion access.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1889 · Studebaker Family Residence · Henry Ives Cobb Architecture · National Register of Historic Places · Gilded Age Indiana Mansion
Tippecanoe Place was built between 1886 and 1889 as the South Bend residence of Clement Studebaker, one of the founding brothers of the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company, which began as a wagon shop in 1852 and grew into a major U.S. wagon and later automobile manufacturer. The 40-room, four-story stone mansion was designed by noted Chicago architect Henry Ives Cobb and completed at a reported cost of $250,000. Clement named the house in honor of his friend Benjamin Harrison, the newly elected U.S. president, whose grandfather William Henry Harrison led American forces at the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe.
Clement Studebaker lived in the house from its completion until his death in 1901. According to Wikipedia and the Notre Dame Building South Bend project, the cause of death was natural; Clement was 70. After Clement's death, the house passed to his son George Studebaker and his wife Ada, who resided there until they declared bankruptcy in 1933 and were forced to sell. In the decades that followed, the mansion served as a home for the South Bend chapter of the Council of Catholic Women and other institutional uses, including a period as a school for hearing-impaired children.
In 1979, Continental Restaurant Systems purchased the mansion and invested approximately $2 million restoring the interiors and converting the building into a fine-dining restaurant, which opened in 1980. The Matteoni family acquired the operation in 2008; the restaurant operated until its closure. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is documented by SAH Archipedia as one of the most architecturally significant Gilded Age residences in Indiana.
Sources
Folklore connected to Tippecanoe Place clusters in two parts of the building: the fourth-floor ballroom, which Clement Studebaker used for formal dances, and the floor below it, where the family's nursery was once located and where the former restaurant's bar operated.
Local tradition holds that a fire in the nursery during the Studebaker residency severely burned a nanny and child, although this detail circulates primarily through ghost-tour sources and is not confirmed in the archival record. Visitors and staff at the restaurant have, since 1980, reported recurring sightings of a woman in white walking the upper-floor corridors, cold spots near the ballroom, and the sensation of being watched on the staircase. Bartenders working late shifts have described chills, peripheral movement, and one frequently retold incident in which a bottle is said to have flown from a high shelf moments after a worker dismissed the building's reputation.
Clement Studebaker himself died in the house in 1901, though contemporary records indicate natural causes at age 70 rather than the suicide that sometimes appears in folklore retellings. Writers such as Michael Kleen and the Saint Joseph Square student paper have documented these stories as part of the regional ghost-tour landscape rather than as historical fact.
Notable Entities
The former restaurant occupied Clement Studebaker's 40-room, 20-fireplace 1889 mansion designed by Chicago architect Henry Ives Cobb. The main dining rooms occupied the historic ground-floor parlors. The fourth-floor ballroom and the floor below (the former nursery, later the bar) are the two areas where staff have most frequently described unexplained activity since the restaurant opened in 1980.
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