Battell Park's built fabric: the monument, the bandshell, the rock garden

1879–PRESENT · 400 WEST MISHAWAKA AVENUE

The district: The Battell Park Historic District, listed 11 January 1996, counts two contributing buildings, one contributing site, two contributing structures and one contributing object in its eleven documented acres — the park the parks record of this history carries whole: established in 1881 on the ground McClunnie laid out in 1879 for Robbins Battell, on the tract once reserved for the north race of the Indiana City that was never dug. The parks record also owns the laying-out's settled negative — the claim of a famous landscape designer's hand fails on Mishawaka's own evidence, and the designer of record is McClunnie, hired in 1879 — and this chapter does not re-argue it. What stands here is the park's built fabric, at building size.

The Soldiers' Monument: The district's contributing object is the city's oldest civic monument: a soldier figure eight feet tall on an ornamental shaft, thirty-two feet overall, cast by the White Bronze Company of Detroit for $1,460, erected by the Mishawaka Soldiers' Monument Association and dedicated on 18 September 1884, a time capsule sealed in its cornerstone holding local newspapers, the association's members' names, the city officers, coins and business cards. The dedication rode the fifth annual reunion of the Soldiers and Sailors of Northern Indiana — more than ten thousand people, the largest gathering yet to visit Mishawaka. The marker-database transcription of its inscriptions credits "the citizens of Penn Township" with the raising and names Shiloh, Mobile, Chickamauga and Vicksburg on it; both attributions stand as their records give them. The monument's own course is a small history of civic care and its limits: leaning west by 1894 and realigned by its maker; the Civil War cannon that stood west of it reportedly thrown over the embankment into the river at some point after 1957; leaning severely south by 1967 on a cracked and settling base, when the Mishawaka DeMolay restored and straightened it on a new concrete base — losing, in the work, the original carved stone base and its battle medallions. After Memorial Day 2019 it was taken to Ohio for restoration and returned before Memorial Day 2020 to a new base and a Veterans Plaza built west of its old ground, and rededicated that Memorial Day.

The bandshell and the WPA work: The district's second structure is the bandshell: built between 20 May and 15 August 1927 by the Hay Weaver company for some $20,000, Classical Revival in brick, limestone and concrete under a copper dome, its designer recorded as unknown — the unknown printed here with the building, as its nomination carries it — and dedicated on 28 May 1928 to the city's World War I veterans. The remaining fabric is the Depression's: the WPA rock garden and wading pool of 1936–37, the five-tier cascading rock garden with its waterfall, small pools and arched bridge, and the brick restroom and storage building of 1918 complete the built inventory the nomination counts. The state's marker for the park, erected in 1997, carries the monument of 1884 and the bandshell of 1927 in its text — the park's two set pieces, named on the ground where they stand.

Sources:

1. National Register nomination, Battell Park Historic District (1995), prepared by Adrian Scott Fine, read first-hand in the parks pass — the district's counts and acreage, the monument's casting, cost, dedication and capsule, the bandshell's dates, builder, cost and unknown designer, the rock garden and the 1918 building; listing 11 January 1996, #95001541, sometimes dated 1995 in secondary sources from the nomination year, both dates printed in the parks record.
2. The parks and river record of this history — the park whole, the 1879 laying-out and its designer settlement, the monument's twentieth-century course and the 2019–20 restoration, carried there.
3. Historical Marker Database — the inscription transcription, the Penn Township credit and the four battle names, and the cannon's reported fate.
4. Indiana Historical Bureau — the Battell Park marker (1997), 400 West Mishawaka Avenue at Charlotte Street.