Thirty-five years ago, the Lighthouse Place Premium Outlets were built, adding a major outdoor shopping attraction to the South Shore of Lake Michigan that remains vibrant to this day.

Long before the 120-store outlet mall went up at 601 Wabash St. in downtown Michigan City, the site was home to one of the biggest and most productive freight train car factories in the country.

Some people have forgotten, or aren't aware, that Michigan City built many of the freight cars that crisscrossed the country in the 19th and 20th centuries, ferrying goods all around the nation.

A new permanent exhibit at The Barker Mansion in Michigan City hopes to change that.

The museum in a grand English Manor-style home dating back to 1857 at 631 Washington St. will debut its new permanent exhibit, "The Haskell & Barker Car Company and The Legacy of Freight," in December. It features a massive 3D model of the factory and its 37 buildings that was built to scale and is so large it occupies an entire room.

The exhibit aims to tell the story of the Barker Family and its influence in Michigan City, Indiana, and the railroad industry. It's a rich and storied history.

"John Barker and John H. Barker had a dominance in the railroad industry in the late 1800s and early 1900s," Barker Mansion Programs and Events Director Michele Gustin said. "They even got government contracts during the Civil War for their freight car company. By the 1900s, they were the largest employer and largest factory complex in the state of Indiana. The Haskell & Barker Car Company developed an assembly line 50 years before Ford. In 1910, Catherine Barker, daughter of John H. Barker, was one of the world’s youngest heiresses."

The Barker Mansion has been closed for all of 2022 for a major restoration project. The museum will temporarily reopen after a Dec. 1 VIP party so people can come to see the new exhibit during the month of December.

"A missing piece is why they built the Barker Mansion, how did it get to be there," said Alline Matheson, a Barker Welfare Foundation board member, the granddaughter of Catherine Barker and the great-granddaughter of John H. Barker. "The car works burned down in the 1970s. This is an opportunity to bring it to life."

John Barker, a merchant and grain broker from Andover, Massachusetts, bought into a freight car company in Michigan City in 1855. It eventually became known as The Haskell & Barker Car Company after one of the original partners retired. He also built the grand mansion, a popular cultural site in downtown Michigan City that offers tours, hosts lectures and gets rented out for weddings and other galas.

"The mansion is close to where the car works was," Matheson said. "It was a three-minute walk, just a hop, skip and jump from the factory. But a lot of people don't know about or have the slightest awareness of the car works. They can learn about it from the exhibit."

The centerpiece of the new permanent exhibit is the 3D model created by Purdue University Northwest students that enables people to see how big the factory was and what it looked like. The Barker Mansion has long had a relationship with the university, which once had a campus there before it moved to nearby Westville.

"It's breathtaking," Matheson said. "It's impressive how they put the model together to tell the story of the Barker family. It's done exactly to scale. You can't walk inside it. But it gives you a sense of the whole scope of the car works and how enormous it was, how all-encompassing it was. It's fascinating to see."

The exhibit also features historical black-and-white photos of The Haskell & Barker Car Company, which was bought by the Pullman Car Company in 1922 and operated by Pullman for nearly a half-century.

"It's the story of a family, a company and the growth of Michigan City and the Region," Matheson said. "There's so much history, and it's still a living history."

The Barker Welfare Foundation still supports many community causes around Michigan City, such as the YMCA, a park bandstand and initiatives helping the homeless. Catherine Barker established the Barker Annuity Fund in 1924 with proceeds from the sale of the Haskell & Barker Car Company to the Pullman Company after learning Haskell & Barker employees didn't qualify for Pullman pensions and then created the Barker Welfare Fund in 1934 to fund nonprofit groups in Michigan City and New York City.

The Barker family, which still runs the foundation, recently took back the mansion from the city so they could fund the extensive restoration project designed to preserve its original grandeur for future generations. They cleared out one of the rooms on the first floor and converted it into an exhibition space.

"We decided it was important to tell the story of the factory and why the house was built," said Susan M. De Maio, executive director of the Barker Welfare Foundation and managing director of the Barker Mansion. "People don't realize how important the Barkers were and how influential they were. We're trying to tell our story a little bit better."

The exhibit also tells the story of the workers, including immigrants, women and the oldest employee who was fondly known as "Old Man Kent." It features oversized photos of what Michigan City was like in the 19th century when many immigrants arrived to work at the factory, for instance showing Gilded Age scenes of the Michigan City Harbor and Zorn Brewery.

The exhibit shows what went into the freight cars, such as mailbags, barrels, crates, flour, corn, grain and whiskey. The freight later included vegetables and other perishables after the cars were eventually refrigerated.

"The railroads were huge to the country back then, getting things out west," Gustin said.

Based on factory blueprints and old photos, the 3D model features foundries, ironworking shops, woodworking shops and other operations.

"It has an assembly line long before Ford did," Gustin said. "Purdue Northwest students designed, fabricated and put together the electrical components of the model," she said. "You press a big red button and a train goes through. It's awesome. It's a showstopper. When people see this 3D model, they won't believe it was here."

The 100-acre factory once employed 3,500 workers and produced 15,000 freight cars a year, some of which are still in existence. It had its own fire department, baseball team and band.

"It was a city within a city," De Maio said.

The exhibit will open to the public Dec. 2 and remain open from Tuesday through Sunday throughout the month of December. The Barker Mansion will then close again for future restoration and is expected to reopen for normal operating hours sometime later in 2023, likely later in the summer or early fall.

"It employed people from every walk of life and paid good wages," De Maio said. "The factory was one of the biggest employers. It's surprising more people don't know about it. We want people to be able to come and see the history. It's an amazing exhibit."