The Billy Sunday Home was the residence of William A (Billy) Sunday, Helen (Ma) Sunday, their four children, and the family's live-in housekeeper and nanny. Located in the

Winona Lake Historic District The Winona Lake Historic District is located along the Eastern shore of Winona Lake in Kosciusko County, Indiana. Historically, it is perhaps best known as a major center within the evangelical Bible Conference Movement during the first half of ...

Kosciusko County Kosciusko County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of Indiana. At the 2020 United States Census, its population was 80,240. The county seat (and only incorporated city) is Warsaw. The county was organized in 1836. It was named for the Polish ge ...

, Indiana, it is a prime example of a

bungalow A bungalow is a small house or cottage that is either single-story or has a second story built into a sloping roof (usually with dormer windows), and may be surrounded by wide verandas. The first house in England that was classified as a b ...

built in the

Arts and Crafts A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...

architectural style. The Sunday family spent their summers in

Winona Lake Winona Lake is a town in Wayne Township, Kosciusko County, in the U.S. state of Indiana, and the major suburb of Warsaw. The population was 4,908 at the 2010 census. Geography Winona Lake is located at (41.220818, -85.817118). It is now contiguo ...

for several years prior to 1911, staying in a home called "The Illinois" located on a bluff overlooking MacDonald Island and the lake. In 1911 the family moved permanently to Winona Lake. The Illinois was lifted off its foundation and moved eastward across the street and a new bungalow was constructed in its place. The Sundays named the home Mount Hood. (They owned property in Oregon not far from

Mount Hood Mount Hood is a potentially active stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc. It was formed by a subduction zone on the Pacific coast and rests in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located about east-southeast of Portlan ...

and this was presumably the inspiration behind the name.) Many features of the home are typical of the Arts and Crafts Movement including the interior woodwork, shellacked

burlap Hessian (, ), burlap in the United States and Canada, or crocus in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean, is a woven fabric usually made from skin of the jute plant or sisal fibres, which may be combined with other vegetable fibres to make rope, nets, ...

wall treatments, light fixtures,

sleeping porches A sleeping porch is a deck or balcony, sometimes screened or otherwise enclosed with screened windows,Inglenook An inglenook or chimney corner is a recess that adjoins a fireplace. The word comes from "ingle", an old Scots word for a domestic fire (derived from the Gaelic ''aingeal''), and "nook". The inglenook originated as a partially enclosed heart ...

, a cozy seating area that surrounds the fireplace. Helen Sunday outlived all four of the children as well as her husband. By the 1950s, when Helen lived in the residence alone, the home was already becoming something of a pilgrimage site for admirers who wanted to see where the famed evangelist had lived. Helen thus began to provide informal tours of her home. In 1957, the year she died, a recording of Mrs. Sunday describing the details of the home was made and the published transcript has served to verify the fact that the home's interior, other than some rearranging, has been largely preserved as it was when she lived there.Helen Amelia Thompson Sunday, ''"Ma" Sunday still speaks: A transcription of the tape recording she made shortly before her death'' (Winona Christian Assembly, 1957). Helen willed the home, along with everything in it, to the Winona Christian Assembly. When the assembly grounds were purchased by

Grace College and Theological Seminary Grace College & Seminary is a private evangelical Christian college in Winona Lake, Indiana. It has six schools: The School of Arts and Sciences, The School of Behavioral Sciences, The School of Business, The School of Education, The School o ...

in 1968, Mt. Hood became part of Grace Schools. Most of the manuscript materials from the home were collected by the Grace College and Seminary library and these became th
Billy Sunday Papers
the originals of which are housed in th
Morgan Library Archives
Prior to 1998, the home had never been professionally curated. With the creation of th
Village at Winona
and the renaissance of the

, however, a professional curator was hired to oversee restoration of the home and curate a new Billy Sunday museum and visitor's center, which was built near the Sunday property and opened in 2000. The visitors center educated guests about the historical significance of Billy Sunday and a team of volunteers led tours through the home. Although multiple efforts were made to organize the setup as a state-run historical site, this never materialized and when the principal donor removed funding from the operation, the museum and visitor's center closed in 2010. Currently, the home is curated by th
Winona History Center at Grace College
which also offers tours.

External links

Village at Winona

Winona History Center

References

{{Reflist Buildings and structures in Kosciusko County, Indiana Bungalow architecture Historic house museums in Indiana Museums in Kosciusko County, Indiana