Glass houses on the riverbend: the Potawatomi Conservatories

The working greenhouse came first. The conservatories in Potawatomi Park began as infrastructure: a Lord & Burnham greenhouse built in the 1920s as eight connected growing houses, raising the flowers and plantings for every park in the city system. The display houses came a generation later, and they came, like the theatre downtown, from Ella Morris: the Ella Morris Conservatory and the Muessel-Ellison Conservatory were built in the 1960s, gifts of Ella Morris and the Muessel-Ellison Foundation respectively, and the Arizona Desert Dome joined them in 1973, three climates under glass on the riverbend: tropical, temperate and desert, a winter field trip a South Bend child could walk in shirtsleeves. The houses closed in 2011 for a renovation of about 1.2 million dollars and reopened in May 2012, operated by the Botanical Society of South Bend.

The whole park is the article. Around the glass houses, Potawatomi Park stacks more of this section's subjects into one ground than anywhere else in the city: the zoo at its east end, the conservatories, the Kids' Kingdom playground, built by community volunteers, the splash pad that runs through summer, and the zoo's little train and carousel circuit. The park department's family map of South Bend has many pins, Howard Park on the river downtown, Leeper Park, the East Race, but Potawatomi Park is the dense one, the park where a family could spend the whole day inside one fence line and still not finish it. Individual installation dates for the playground, the train and the carousel are unfixed and are named as an open item rather than guessed.

Sources

1. Potawatomi Conservatories (potawatomiconservatories.org): original greenhouse built by Lord & Burnham in the 1920s as eight growing houses for the city parks; Ella Morris and Muessel-Ellison Conservatories built in the 1960s as gifts from Ella Morris and the Muessel-Ellison Foundation; Arizona Desert Dome built 1973.
2. Wikipedia, "Potawatomi Greenhouses": closed 2011 for renovation of about 1.2 million dollars; reopened May 2012; operated by the Botanical Society of South Bend.
3. South Bend Venues Parks & Arts park pages and local family guides: Kids' Kingdom playground built by community volunteers; splash pad; zoo train and carousel in Potawatomi Park (printed without installation dates, which are unfixed).