The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
May 22–24, 2015, and the year around it · downtown and the river
The weekend: The sesquicentennial of the incorporation of May 22, 1865 was the largest civic celebration in the city's modern record, and the first of its birthday parties kept at full documentation. The Birthday Weekend ran May 22–24, 2015: opening ceremonies on Friday, May 22, the dedication of the South Bend River Lights that evening from seven to ten with downtown fireworks and a torch relay that ceremonially lit the installation, and ten activity zones across both banks of the river. Ben Folds performed with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Tsung Yeh. City staffer Aaron Perri's report to the Common Council on May 26, 2015 is the count of record: "Nearly 60,000 people enjoyed the weekend," with more than a thousand volunteers — the city's own figures, printed as the city's.
The light that stayed: The celebration's permanent monument is the River Lights themselves: an interactive LED sculpture over the St. Joseph River, designed by Rob Shakespeare of Shakespeare Lighting Design in Bloomington, proposed to the city by Downtown South Bend in 2012, and built of more than eighty Martin fixtures in three parts — "Trio" on the west bank, "Forest" on the east, and the "Crescent" on the Jefferson Boulevard Bridge — hydroelectrically self-sustaining and billed, at its dedication, as the world's first interactive light display over a body of water. About $800,000 was raised for it in contributions. The yearlong celebration cost $1.2 million, of which the city contributed $150,000 and the rest was raised privately — the figures as the council record and the trade coverage carry them. Senator Joe Donnelly honored the 150th in the Congressional Record on May 20, 2015. Against the centennials the record does not show — 1923's souvenir volume with its date undecided, 1930 and 1965's silence — SB150 is what a South Bend birthday looks like with the paperwork kept.
Sources:
- City of South Bend, Common Council minutes, May 26, 2015 (docs.southbendin.gov) — Aaron Perri's report: nearly 60,000 over the weekend, 1,000-plus volunteers, and the celebration's costs.
- PLSN (Projection, Lights & Staging News) and the Martin Lighting case study — the River Lights' dedication on May 22, 2015, Shakespeare's design, the eighty-plus fixtures, and the installation's parts.
- Notre Dame Magazine, "A City Aglow" — the River Lights and the birthday weekend.
- Congressional Record, May 20, 2015 — Senator Donnelly's tribute to the sesquicentennial.