Howard Park: The Dump That Became the First Park

1878–1899; the rink era 1958/1959–2017; rebuilt 2017–2019

Lead: South Bend's first park was its dump, and the man who made it a park wrote its history himself. Timothy E. Howard, a councilman in 1878 and later the judge whose name the park carries, records in his county history that the subject of parks was first broached in 1878, and that the grounds considered "consisted of an overflowed swamp waste along the east side of the St. Joseph river, extending from Jefferson street to Division street. It was at first but a dumping ground; but, in the course of years, the unsavory locality has become the most beautiful spot in South Bend, and is known to the public as Howard Park." The mechanism was deliberate from the start. A resolution Howard himself moved directed the city attorney to examine the city's title to the tract — bounded by Cottrell Avenue, Division Street and the river — "with the view of finally filling, leveling and planting said ground, and thus, in time, converting the same into a public park or pleasure ground for the use of the citizens of South Bend." The title proved tangled: the tract lay in Heck's Addition, held adversely to the city, and through the winter of 1878–79 the city quieted it piece by piece — John and George Beck quitclaimed their interest (the city offered sixty dollars on 3 February 1879 and the purchase was made), Mayor Lucius Tong, Jonathan P. Creed and Charles LaCoss quitclaimed four more lots, and on 17 February 1879 the city engineer was directed to mark the park's boundaries. On 17 March 1879, on Howard's motion, the common council adopted Ordinance No. 524, "establishing the city park and placing the same under the control of the city marshal." The Parks Department's own chronological history carries the same founding in one line: "1879 — Ordinance passed to establish Howard Park as South Bend's first park."

The making took twenty years. On 5 April 1880, again on Howard's motion, the board of public improvements was authorized to plant fifty trees, elm and soft maple, on the narrow ridge near the river bank; the maples all died, Howard records, but many of the elms "have grown and flourished, and now afford grateful shade in the summer weather." The city bought the Semortier property, lot 170 of Cottrell's First Addition to Lowell, and on 4 June 1883 vacated the avenue between that lot and the river, greatly enlarging the ground. All the while the filling went on — street cleanings covered with fresh earth until, Howard says, "the filling, or 'made ground,' is, in places from ten to fifteen feet deep" — and for fifteen years, 1878 to 1893, "the 'City Park' was little more than a by-word among the people, and in the city press." On 5 November 1889 Alexis Coquillard — the founder's nephew and heir — deeded the city four lots of Cottrell's First Addition as a gift for the park, among them lot 200, fronting St. Louis Street, which let the walks and driveways connect directly to that street; his larger gift, and its unraveling, is told with the gift parks below.

Improvement, when it came, came through the new park board: elected 8 June 1891 (its course is told in the park government entry), the commissioners reported on 5 October 1891 that steps should be taken to improve the park, and on 10 July 1893 took what Howard calls "the first important action looking to the permanent improvement of the grounds," recommending a $5,000 appropriation for a sea wall along the river front. The council took until 25 June 1894 to pass it, as Ordinance No. 949. The name came the same winter: on 26 February 1894 the city engineer, William M. Whitten, asked the council to name the park so he could letter it on his new map of the city, and suggested the name of the councilman who had secured the ground; "the council accepted Mr. Whitten's suggestion, and by a unanimous vote ordered that the tract should thereafter be known as 'Howard Park.'" On 25 February 1895 the commissioners asked that the park cease to be used as a dumping ground, and the city procured other ground for the purpose — the east-bank tract by the new Sample Street bridge that Howard lists among the river parks as La Salle Park, a bayou ground that "will be only a park in name until the bayou in the river at that point has been filled up." The commissioners then secured a landscape artist, John G. Barker, under whose hand, Howard writes, "the former swamp began at last to assume the fair outlines of a pleasure ground." After the cleanup the park opened to the public — in the words of the department's own history of the site, "with an official name of 'Howard Park,'" on 18 August 1899, the date the park's in-ground historical marker also carries: "Howard Park is South Bend's first and oldest park that was officially dedicated on August 18, 1899." The department's modern telling compresses the long making into the line that the ground "wasn't considered an actual park until June 1894" — the month Ordinance No. 949 passed — and the two tellings are printed here as they stand, the dated acts of 1879, 1893 and 1894 and the dedication of 1899 each at its own place in the sequence.

The park's furniture came by gift. In its new addition the city erected in 1906 "the beautiful Studebaker fountain that was donated to this park by Mr. John M. Studebaker, who is greatly interested in the development of this park" — the park marker dates the gift to July 1906 — and in the summer of 1907 Calvert H. Defrees placed a bronze drinking fountain in the park. Sunday band concerts drew thousands. The twentieth century rebuilt the park twice. The department's chronology records the Howard Park administrative building completed in 1939 as part of the WPA program; the ice rink and community center that followed are dated a year apart by the two departmental tellings — the park's marker puts the ice rink and multi-purpose facility in 1958, and the department's history of the park says ground was broken on the rink and community center in 1959, the rink then spanning fifty-eight years of skating.

The 2014 master plan named Howard Park a high-priority site; the recreation center was demolished in 2017, and the rebuilt park — a 16,000-square-foot ice trail and pond looping over a bridge, an accessible playground, a LEED-certified community center and a restaurant, designed by Alliance Architects with landscape architect Kevin Clark of The Lakota Group — held its grand reopening on 29 November 2019 under the banner "Welcome Back, Howard Park," at a renovation cost the project's certification account puts at $18.8 million; the park's community center building was afterward certified LEED Gold, and the design team estimated 100,000 visitors in the first two months. The executive director who led the reopening, Aaron Perri, framed the design as a walk through the eras of American park history — the south lawn for the pleasure-ground age Howard himself had named in 1878, the riverwalk for the age of Olmsted and Kessler. The department's 2021 inventory lists Howard Park at 11.49 acres; the design team described a 12.75-acre site. Both figures stand as their sources give them.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907–1908), read first-hand: the parks section and the detailed history of Howard Park at its close (the 1878 resolution; the Heck's Addition title settlements of 1878–79; Ordinance No. 524, 17 March 1879; the 1880 tree planting; the 1883 enlargement; the Coquillard deed of 5 November 1889; the board's actions of 1891–1895; the naming of 26 February 1894; Ordinance No. 949, 25 June 1894; John G. Barker's layout; the Studebaker and Defrees fountains; La Salle Park as the successor dumping ground).
2. City of South Bend Venues Parks & Arts, Master Plan Update 2021–2025 (the department's chronological history: the 1879 ordinance line; the 1939 WPA administrative building; the 2017 demolition; the 2019 grand reopening; the 2021 inventory: Howard Park, 11.49 acres).
3. South Bend Venues Parks & Arts, "A Second Vision for South Bend's First Park" (published 3 February 2020) and "Welcome Back, Howard Park" (grand opening, 29 November 2019): the June 1894 telling, the 1959 groundbreaking, the fifty-eight-year rink, the rebuilt park's features.
4. Howard Park historical marker, transcribed in the Historical Marker Database (dedication 18 August 1899; the Studebaker fountain, July 1906; the rink and multi-purpose facility, 1958).
5. The Lakota Group, Howard Park case study (12.75-acre site; Alliance Architects and landscape architect Kevin Clark; the 100,000-visitor estimate); LD Construction news account of the LEED Gold certification (the $18.8 million renovation).