U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and her husband, Jesse Barrett, placed their six-bedroom house in South Bend, Indiana, on the market March 31 and already have a pending offer on it. The home was listed for $899,900.
Amy Coney Barrett had been a law professor at Notre Dame Law School near South Bend before she was chosen for a judgeship on Chicago’s 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017. She was appointed to the nation’s highest court by President Donald Trump and has served since October. Jesse Barrett is a South Bend native and an attorney at a law firm that has offices in South Bend and Washington, D.C.
The Barretts’ 4,232-square-foot home is in South Bend’s Harter Heights neighborhood. Built in 1915, the house has six bedrooms, five bathrooms, hardwood floors, a living room with a fireplace flanked by built-in bookcases, French doors that lead to a sunroom, a finished lower level, a kitchen with an island and stainless steel appliances, and a primary bedroom suite with a large walk-in shower. Outside on the 0.29-acre property are a fenced rear yard, a covered deck, a large patio and a detached, two-car garage.
“We moved here in 2002 when Amy got her teaching job at Notre Dame, and we have lived in this house since then,” Jesse Barrett said. “It’s a 1915 Arts and Crafts style house, and my recollection is that it was built by someone in the school of Frank Lloyd Wright. We raised seven children here and we put an addition on and we did an awful lot of work to it — we redid the kitchen, we added bathrooms. It’s kind of a part of us. It’s sad to leave it, but we’re excited that hopefully someone else can raise a family in it and have the same experience.”
Barrett noted that from 1990 until 2004, his uncle and aunt had owned the William H. Copeland House on Forest Avenue in Oak Park, which Frank Lloyd Wright had designed a remodel for in 1909. The Copeland House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
“I had spent time (at the Copeland House) growing up, and they still owned it when Amy and I were dating, so we loved that style and history,” he said. “This house (in South Bend) was up for sale when we came back (to South Bend), and Realtors thought we were a little crazy for buying an old house near campus that needed work. They said, ‘Why don’t you move to Granger or go with new construction?’ (But) it was important for us to be within walking distance to campus and to our kids’ schools, and we never thought we’d leave.”
Barrett said it is “to be determined” whether his family will maintain another residence in South Bend, in addition to a new place in the D.C. area.
“I anticipate we’ll be coming back a fair bit. We just don’t know (yet) what our life is going to look like,” he said. “We would certainly like to keep ties to South Bend. I was raised here, and we have a lot of family here.”
Listing agent Pat McCullough of Irish Realty said that the buyer with the pending offer is a university professor.
“The area has frankly exploded,” McCullough said. “People love the combination there of being close to Notre Dame and also the proximity of being within walking distance to downtown South Bend. It’s a very hot, hot market.”
The house had a $3,217 property tax bill for the 2020 tax year, according to Zillow. The Barretts bought the home in 2002 from Patricia Paszkiet, who was the widow of Eugene Paszkiet, who had been the head football trainer at the University of Notre Dame for 31 years. The Paszkiets had bought the house in 1965.
Amy Coney Barrett isn’t the only onetime 7th Circuit judge with real estate for sale these days. As Elite Street exclusively reported in March, Joel Flaum, a semiretired 7th Circuit judge, has his three-bedroom, 2,200-square-foot condominium unit on the Gold Coast on the market for $1.1 million.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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