The towns the city absorbed: Lowell and River Park

1837 — 1911

Two of South Bend's neighborhoods were once towns of their own: Lowell, on the river's east bank, was laid out in 1837 and named for Lowell, Massachusetts; its ground — between Washington Street and Cedar Street — held, from 1847, the land of St. Joseph's parish, the city's first. The town was annexed by South Bend in December 1866, as the government file carries the act; the History Museum's account dates the platting to 1846 and the annexation to 1867, and the variance is named here rather than resolved. "Lowell" and "Cottrell" — for Samuel Cottrell, who owned the adjoining parcels — still appear in the property descriptions of what is now the East Bank district, whose historic resources were listed in a National Register multiple-property listing in 1999. River Park, between South Bend and Mishawaka on the river's north side, was platted first on 7 April 1892 by Albert J. Horne and Benjamin F. Dunn, with the Fordham and Berner's Grove additions following; Timothy Edward Howard's county history of 1907 tells its incorporation whole: a petition filed 7 May 1900, an election on 23 May that favored incorporation, a remonstrance on which the county commissioners refused, an appeal, and the circuit court's order of 28 December 1900 incorporating the town of River Park, population then estimated at two to three hundred.

Potawatomi Park adjoined the town. River Park's end was a choice between two cities, and both cities' historians tell it: in August 1910 Mishawaka annexed River Park by council action; River Park remonstrated and the annexation was reversed; the town board ordered an election for 10 September on the question "Shall River Park be annexed to South Bend or Mishawaka?"; and in the November elections of 1910 the voters of South Bend and of River Park both approved the merger, and River Park became part of South Bend. By 1921 the former town had its own bank and building-and-loan association, and in March 1929 the council made River Park the city's Eighth Ward, an event the neighborhood's own newspaper, the River Park News, headlined in its issue of 28 March 1929. The neighborhood today runs, in its association's own bounds, from Twyckenham Drive to Logan Street and the river to the tracks north of Hastings Street, and holds the Potawatomi Zoo, the IUSB campus, Adams High School, Nuner Elementary, the River Park branch library and the Farmers Market, which has stood on Northside Boulevard since 1928.

Sources:

1. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana, Vol. 1 (1907) — "River Park" (plat of 7 April 1892; incorporation, 28 December 1900)
2. South Bend Tribune — "A History of River Park," 2006 (the 1910 election and merger), via the River Park Neighborhood Association — riverparkneighborhood.org
3. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History (City of Mishawaka) — the August 1910 annexation and its reversal
4. River Park News, 28 March 1929 — "River Park Wins Eighth Ward" (Michiana Memory, St. Joseph County Public Library)
5. Government and History Museum accounts — Lowell (1837 / December 1866; the Museum's variants, 1846 / 1867, named) — banked fragment; historymuseumsb.org
6. East Bank Ink — East Bank neighborhood history (the Lowell and Cottrell names in present property descriptions)