Centennial Week, May 15–21, 1932: the birthday as an event

May 15–21, 1932 · citywide

The week: For its hundredth birthday, in the worst year of the Depression, Mishawaka staged a week. The program survives day by day in the commissioned history, and as an event calendar it runs: Sunday opened with an interfaith service in Battell Park and a carnival on Main Street with high-dive and high-wire acts. Monday brought a Costume Ball with a thousand participants, at which the Princess Mishawaka contest crowned Virginia Ainlay, a Mishawaka High School student. Tuesday the public schools held open houses and the high school gave a concert, a style show, and a dramatic performance. Wednesday joined the all-city junior-high track meet to the Pow-Wow and Bow-Wow Parade of children and their pets. Thursday held a civic luncheon at the Hotel Mishawaka and the dedication, before a thousand people, of the Daughters of the American Revolution's boulder and bronze plaque at the princess's supposed grave in Lincoln Park; that evening the historical pageant played in Lincoln Park before six to ten thousand. Friday was given to the ethnic city: Belgian and Italian folk dancing and musical groups, with demonstrations of Belgian bowling and archery. Saturday closed the week with a street parade of eighteen musical groups and more than a hundred floats before twenty-five thousand people, and a second performance of the pageant.

The counts and the claim: The week's crowds are enumerated at every step — a thousand at the ball, a thousand at the marker, six to ten thousand at the pageant, twenty-five thousand at the closing parade — and above them stands the Chamber of Commerce's estimate that one hundred thousand visitors had come to Mishawaka for the celebration, with the Chamber's verdict that Centennial Week was "the outstanding week of Mishawaka's history." The estimate and the verdict are printed as the attributed claims they are. The week's meaning — the city performing itself, ethnic programs as one of its seven days, celebration chosen in 1932 as a cultural act — is Culture's, told whole there; the fairs record carries the Main Street carnival as a fair-type event, cross-referenced there. This entry carries the week as what it also was: the largest multi-day gathering in the city's record, mounted by a factory city whose largest employers were fighting to survive.

Sources:

1. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — the day-by-day Centennial Week program, the Ainlay crowning, the marker dedication and its thousand, the pageant's six to ten thousand, the Saturday parade's eighteen groups, hundred floats and twenty-five thousand, and the Chamber of Commerce's estimate and verdict, quoted.
2. Culture section of this history — Centennial Week as the city's self-performance, the ethnic Friday, and the casting's meaning.
3. Fairs section of this history — the Main Street carnival of Centennial Week as a fair-type event.