Leeper Park: The Water Works Ground, the First Planned Park

1895–1900; Kessler plan 1911–1915; renovated 2019

Lead: Leeper Park began as a well field. With the coming of the new century, Howard writes, attention turned to "the large tract on the St. Joseph river, at the foot of Michigan street, which had been purchased in 1895 by the city for the use of the water works department. The building of a pumping station on those grounds, and the sinking and capping over of numerous artesian wells, left the greater part of the tract suitable for use as an additional park, without interfering with its use for water works purposes. The grounds were accordingly graded, planted and improved as a park." The Historic Preservation Commission's staff reports fill in the mechanism: the first land was condemned in June 1895 for a second artesian well field and pumping station — the park's east section is Water Works ground still, over thirty six-inch artesian wells — and Herman Beyer, the city superintendent, first shaped the design, with curvilinear paths, plantings and water features.

The department's chronology dates the park's establishment to 1902, the same year its duck pond opened the city's zoo history, told in the Zoo chapter; the park was the city's second. It took its name in 1900 from David Rohrer Leeper — born near the present city limits 12 January 1832, a state representative and senator, and a mayor of the city — who died 27 November 1900, his residence in his later years lying just north of the river near the new park. "The beautiful stretch of ground along the river, including the island near the south shore, was accordingly named Leeper Park." In 1904 the park was extended north along the river from Michigan Street to Lafayette Street; in 1906 the city bought some four acres from Anderson and DuShane at the foot of North Lafayette Street as a further addition, Beyer reporting that it "forms a connecting link with the river shore drive (Marion boulevard) and Chapin Park." In 1905 Mrs. Mary P. Bugbee placed a drinking fountain in the park in memory of her husband, Almond Bugbee. The Navarre Cabin, the fur-trade relic the Architecture and Before the City histories follow, was moved into the park in 1904 and stood there a hundred and twenty years before its relocation out in 2024.

The park's second design is the famous one. The Historic Preservation Commission's reports describe Leeper Park as "the first planned public park in South Bend" — the first park stands at Howard, the first planned one here — and its plan as the work of George Kessler within his 1911–1915 park and boulevard system for the city, told in its own entry below: Kessler kept Beyer's features "through a skillful remodel," assigning the west section to active recreation, the central section to passive recreation and the eastern section to its water-works function, and his plan guided the park's development for a decade, with extensions of it carried into the 1920s and 1930s, some of them built with Works Progress Administration labor. The preservation record has since wrapped the park tight: a local landscape landmark under Ordinance No. 8734-96, listed in the Indiana Register in April 1999 and the National Register of Historic Places on 15 June 2000, and documented whole in the Leeper Park Cultural Landscape Report prepared by the Westerly Group for the Historic Preservation Commission in May 1998. The department renovated the park in 2019 — the chronology records the duck pond's removal and the return to South Bend of the renovated historic Studebaker Electric Fountain, the fountain John M. Studebaker's gift had first raised in Howard Park in 1906, which stands in Leeper Park today. The 2021 inventory lists Leeper Park at 25.72 acres, on Riverside Drive at the river's bend north of downtown.

Sources:

1. Historic Preservation Commission of South Bend and St. Joseph County, staff reports for Leeper Park certificates of appropriateness (applications 2019-0108 and 2023-1106A, City of South Bend document system): the 1895 condemnation and well field; Beyer's first design; "the first planned public park in South Bend"; the Kessler plan and the sections' uses; the landmark ordinance and the National Register listing of 15 June 2000; the 1998 Cultural Landscape Report.
2. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907–1908), read first-hand (the 1895 water-works purchase; the grading and planting; David R. Leeper's life and death, 27 November 1900, and the naming; the 1904 extension; the Anderson and DuShane purchase and Beyer's report of 1906; the Bugbee fountain of 1905).
3. City of South Bend Venues Parks & Arts, Master Plan Update 2021–2025 (chronology: Leeper Park established 1902; the 2019 renovation; inventory: 25.72 acres).
4. Zoo leg of this record (the duck pond of 1902 and the Leeper menagerie); Architecture section (the Navarre Cabin's moves, 1904 and 2024).