Southeast Side
Driving up the hill from Ironwood Road along the winding street reveals custom-designed homes arrayed beautifully on large, heavily wooded lots. This is not a typical, cookie-cutter neighborhood. Instead, Topsfield has been one of the most desirable neighborhoods on the southeast side for more than 30 years. Now, nearby retail-store and restaurant development has made this elegant neighborhood as convenient as it is attractive.
Not long after the apartments at the top of Topsfield Road were built in the 1960s, South Bend civic and business leaders started building homes on choice lots.
As the land filled, developer Dick Muessel kept adding streets to the north – Pimms Lane, Topswood Lane – and opening more lots on the leafy hillsides. (Deer Run, to the south, came some 20 years later; the 128-unit Topsfield apartments became condos in the 1980s.)
"The houses are set at comfortable distances along the streets, fostering an environment of friendly greetings and casual chats while the neighbors go about their own busy lives," one neighbor said.
"It's just a nice, quiet, really friendly neighborhood," the man added. "You're not right on top of people. Any day, whether it's a weekend or evenings after work, you see a lot of people running or walking the dogs." The young parents run with strollers or bring the whole family biking."
"When we first moved to South Bend, we knew nothing about the city," another neighbor said. "There was a house on Topsfield for sale. We knew it was in a good school district, and the Penn-Harris Madison school district was a big reason for our decision to buy"
When her family needed a bigger home, they built one block over on Topswood.
"We knew the neighbors and we really enjoyed the neighborhood," she said. "We wanted a home that we could personalize and our investment would be protected by the quality of the neighborhood. It is a great place to live. We've always had good neighbors. You're in the city, but the woods give a feel of being out in the country."
While out walking her Golden Retriever, another resident meets many of her neighbors. "We have a beautiful neighborhood. I know a lot of the people," she said. "In this area, there must be about six Goldens."
Her family built on Topswood more than 20 years ago, first noticing the neighborhood because her husband was doing some work at a house on Topsfield.
He did much of the construction and installed a long serpentine brick sidewalk across the shaded front yard.
"The thing that's so nice about this is you are 5 minutes from shopping at Ireland and Miami, 10 minutes from downtown, 18 minutes from the Grape Road area and we're secluded in here," the husband said. "It's like you're driving into your own private estate."
Home values start in the $200,000 range (for a fixer-upper) and go up to $700,000, with an average price being around $400,000.
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Department of Community & Economic Development
Division of Community Development
227 W. Jefferson Boulevard • Suite 1200 S
South Bend, IN 46601
574.235.9660 • Fax: 574.235.9469
