Rose Park and the New Deal in the parks

1934 — 1941

The Depression built Mishawaka's second generation of parks, and Rose Park is its dated first work: At the southwest corner of West and Fifteenth Streets, Rose Park was developed in 1934 by the Civil Works Administration and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration — softball diamonds, playground equipment and a comfort station, in the city's commissioned history's accounting — the earliest New Deal park work in the record, a decade and more before the postwar neighborhood parks. Read together, the New Deal entries are the parks system's second founding: Battell was a gift, Rose Park and its fellows were a jobs program, and between the two the city acquired the green structure it still keeps. The supervised-playground movement that remade American city parks in those same decades — playground directors, organized play, the playground as a civic institution — has no dated Mishawaka course in the sources reached; Janice Bridges's Indiana's Princess City: The History of Mishawaka 1832–1932 (1976), cited in the Battell nomination's bibliography, is the named settling source for the years it covers.

Sources:

1. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — Rose Park's development in 1934 by the C.W.A. and F.E.R.A.; the WPA works at Battell, Central Park and the golf course; the reservoir caretaker's residence.
2. National Register nomination, Battell Park Historic District — the rock garden and wading pool as WPA work; Bridges's Indiana's Princess City (1976) in its bibliography.