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The Hills Are Alive ; Sprawling Twyckenham Hills Offers Range of Homes

Posted on: Tuesday, 9 November 2004, 09:00 CST

SOUTH BEND -- Twenty years ago, Debbie and Alan Johnson were renting a house in Twyckenham Hills. They liked the neighborhood so much that when the time came to buy, they did their shopping on the nearby streets.

"We looked around this neighborhood at several houses because we liked the area so well," Debbie. Johnson recalls. "We wanted sidewalks, and we wanted two bathrooms because we had three kids.

"We liked the school being close. We liked the mall being close but not in the back yard of the mall. We joined the pool about 19 years ago. All my kids swam, and my husband and I swam."

The Twyckenham Hills community pool has been a gathering place for much of the sprawling neighborhood south of Ridgedale Road, north of Byron Drive, east of Miami Street and west of Ironwood Road, where homes sell from less than $100,000 to more than $300,000.

"There are even little neighborhoods within Twyckenham Hills," says Matt Benedict, who moved into the area five years ago. "On one end of Woodmont there are very small, 1,000-square-foot houses on postage-stamp lots. You can go three miles away, and there are Frank Lloyd Wright houses."

Many prairie-style designs show the influence of Joseph Eicher, who built Wright-inspired homes affordable for the middle class, he says.

Andy Place, who developed the subdivision about 50 years ago, gave it a name that evokes Victorian English gardens and reserved land for the pool and the playground at its heart.

"You could probably have several houses in there, but he gave that land to the neighborhood," says Debbie Johnson, who is vice president of the neighborhood and was co-president last year. "The pool is a nice common ground. That's how we're technically officers of the neighborhood. It runs through the pool."

The pool and park host corn and sausage roasts, parties for kids and a swim team that sends swimmers to Riley and other area high schools. The park is open to everyone, whether or not they belong to the pool.

A Boy Scout last year installed playground equipment, with some financial help from a neighborhood grant, and the basketball court was resurfaced a couple of years ago.

"All these older kids used to swim at Riley," Debbie Johnson says. "It's almost like we're going through another generation. When I look around the pool, I see all these young people."

Chris Warter and Ken Turner open the pool in the spring, maintain it daily in the summer, and close it in the fall. Warter says the water is just one thing that attracted him to Twyckenham Hills when he moved from New Jersey 24 years ago.

"It's close to downtown, easy to get to and from, low crime and good neighbors," he says. "All three of my kids were swimmers at Riley High School They all started here at the pool on the Twyckenham swim team.

"It's kind of a thing that brings the neighborhood together. I love the water volleyball."

Warter remembers when the neighborhood nearly lost the pool. He had just ended his term as president 20 years ago when neighbors discovered that the floor of the pool had buckled -- the 10-foot end was only six feet deep.

The new president, Nancy King, was affiliated with a bank and managed to arrange financing to rebuild the pool, he says. "Had it not been for her, it would have closed 20 years ago."

Debbie Johnson says the pool is just part of the neighborhood's long-standing attraction.

"Andy Place was ahead of his time," she says. "He put double garages on a lot of them and family rooms. I remember when Dan Devine (a former Notre Dame football coach) lived in this neighborhood. Twyckenham Hills was the place to live."

The hills, left by melting glaciers at the end of the Ice Age, provide an unusual northern Indiana setting of rising back yards and steep driveways for some homes, as well as interesting vantage points for the residents.

"You can kind of see the Golden Dome from a certain spot," Debbie Johnson says.

Renewal of the former Scottsdale Mall as Erskine Village has residents looking forward to more shopping and dining choices -- but hoping the area avoids the congestion of some business districts.

"The thing I'm kind of concerned about is Ireland and this part of Ironwood turning into another Grape Road," Benedict says.

Tom and Ruthanne Rogers, who live across the street from the Johnsons, have their own pool and don't belong to the community pool, but they have plenty of other reasons for enjoying the neighborhood.

"We keep a lookout for the neighbors, the kids and everything," he says. "Everyone's a dog lover out here, too. When a dog escapes, everyone knows whose dog it is. We look out for each other. I know just about everybody on my road.

"We moved here from Portage, Ind. This is the neighborhood that caught our eye. We met a few neighbors when we stopped by. That's all it really took. It needed some work, but we saw the potential of the house."

Like the house, the neighborhood could use some fixing up, he says.

"It's a real nice neighborhood, but we're lacking some things," Rogers says. "I'd like to see our sidewalks cleaned up a little better, our curbs, more lighting, maybe speed bumps. The overall neighborhood is great. There's a lot of small things that could be done."

Rogers, who has his own construction company, enjoys helping out his neighbors with projects and having them over for picnics.

"We open our door," he says. "We have a cookout. It's OK to come outdoors. I went through a few neighbors on both sides of me -- three on the left side, four on the right -- because of property tax."

In the last couple of years, the Rogers family befriended Matt and Cindy Benedict, who bought a house they considered a bargain -- from the people who bought it in 1952.

"It looked like it was a decent house in a stable, respectable neighborhood," says Matt Benedict, who is from Massachusetts. "After the first year, we started getting tied into the neighborhood more.

"People are more low-key, not as standoffish as what we're used to. You know the people who live around you. You know what's going on, who's doing some remodeling or who has kids visiting or grandkids visiting.

"Everybody kind of understands this is a neighborhood."

Source: South Bend Tribune

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