Honeywell Center - Wabash, Indiana




The Honeywell Center's
programs are made
possible by the support
of generous individuals
and businesses.


















 

 



Mark C. Honeywell was born in Wabash in 1874. He spent his childhood growing up in Wabash and in Florida. As a young man, he had a myriad of jobs... in the citrus and bicycle business, for example, and in his father’s Wabash mill. He graduated from Eastman Business College in Poughkeepssie, New York in 1891. In 1899, he married a Wabash girl, Olive Lutz.

Mr. Honeywell developed a hot water heating system. In 1905 he installed, in his house located close to the Honeywell Center, what was thought to be the first such system in America. The idea of hot water heating came from England. Radiators first came from there and molds were made from them in Wabash. His business, M.C. Honeywell Heating and Sanitary Work, became Honeywell Heating Specialties Company. By 1906 the company was making thermostats and automatic controls for heating systems.
 
By 1927, company sales were more than $1.5 million and 450 people worked in the Wabash factory. Mr. Honeywell’s competitor was W.R. Sweatt and his Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company. The two companies had patents which blocked each other from further growth. They merged to form Minneapolis Honeywell Regulator Company with Mr. Sweatt as Chairman and Mr. Honeywell as President. Today, Honeywell Inc. is a multi-national company with 93,000 employees.

As a leisure interest, Mr. Honeywell developed the “Honeywell Gardens” north of Wabash in the early 1930’s. There he raised chow dogs, employed 14 gardeners to maintain thousands of flowers, trees and other shrubs, and he built a number of graceful, stone and timber structures. An amateur photographer, Mr. Honeywell and his small film crew photographed wildlife and flowers and many other subjects. His studio is now the clubhouse of the Wabash Country Club.
 
He built a country home, called the Lodge, near the Studio. One room, with a field stone fireplace, pecky cypress interior, and a timbered ceiling and balcony was patterened after Hawthorne’s House of Seven Gables that Mr. Honeywell visited in Salem, Masachusettes. An English Tudor music room was finished with hand-hewn oak posts and beams, stucco walls, and a mural of an English inn.

Olive Lutz Honeywell died in 1939 at their Miami Beach home shortly after a fall at Boca Chita island. Boca Chita was a small island Mr. Honeywell had purchased in Biscayne Bay, 20 miles south of Miami.
In that year in Wabash, Mark Honeywell made a commitment to build the Honeywell Memorial Community Center, dedicated to his late wife and to his parents. He established The Honeywell Foundation, Inc. in 1941 to operate the Center. Final completion of the Center, begun in 1940, was delayed until 1952 due to the shortage of materials needed for the war.

The Center reflected a change in his philosophy toward organized recreation. As a youngster, Mr. Honeywell noted later, “I had no playmates for many miles around. I played alone; I made largely my own playthings. Before reaching teenage, I had grown to be an independent youngster.” Later, he realized that many children were “growing up in a different environment” and needed the help of organized programs. The Center’s recreation facilities reflect the appreciation that Mr. Honeywell had for the activities operated by Wabash Community Service, now known as the Wabash County YMCA.

 In the late 1950’s he donated his country estate to the Foundation.

Over a long and productive life, Mark Honeywell contributed much to American industry and to his native Wabash. He was an independent, innovative, competitive businessmen with a keen interest in details and excellence. At the same time, he had a deep concern for his fellow man and left a legacy that is benefiting thousands of people every year.

In 1961, the Foundation donated an Olympic-size, outdoor swimming pool to the City of Wabash.

The Foundation operated the Honeywell Gardens as a public facility until 1975, when the board decided to build a planned public golf course and residential development on the property. Mr. Honeywell had a strong interest in golf. With the City of Wabash, the Foundation established the Honeywell Golf Course as a beautiful 18-hole public facility. The course, which opened in 1980, was named one of the ten best public courses in Indiana by the Indianapolis Star in 1990.

Mr. Honeywell’s former Lodge was moved and remodeled to become the course pro shop and
snack bar.

The Honeywell Golf Course is located off State Road 15 North, less than one mile north of US 24 bypass in Wabash (260) 563-8663.

Home construction at The Gardens, a 59-lot development adjacent to the golf course, began in 1994. For information about lots and home design guidelines, contact the Honeywell Center (260) 563-1102.