NEWS
South Bend Revives Studebaker Electric Fountain
Volunteers track down a beloved fountain, removed from South Bend’s Howard Park decades ago, and launch a campaign to have it restored and reinstalled.
Lost to Memory
Seems like it would be hard to misplace a 28-foot-tall cast-iron structure, but for decades, nobody knew for sure what had happened to South Bend’s Studebaker Electric Fountain. Rumors circulated: it had been scrapped for metal during World War II, it was stored in an abandoned factory, it had been broken up and sold. Turns out, much of the original fountain was hiding in plain sight, and a grassroots initiative aims to return the water feature to one of the city’s historic parks.
Crowds cheered in July 1906, when officials unveiled the grand fountain — a gift to the city from John Mohler Studebaker — in South Bend’s Howard Park. Manufactured by J.L. Mott Iron Works Company of New York, the fountain was a wonder to behold, a collection of cast-iron maidens, swans, turtles, and cherubs riding dolphins, towering to the top where a classical female figure lifted a vase spouting water. Colored electric lights illuminated the figures, and the fountain quickly became a favorite gathering place for people of all ages.
South Bend officials selected J.L. Mott Iron Works Company’s design No. 64 for the Studebaker Electric Fountain. (South Bend History Museum)
By 1941 the fountain was in bad shape, and city workers it dismantled it. Many folks thought it was lost for good, but one-third of the fountain wound up in the hands of the Seiler family, who displayed it in their Osceola yard for almost 50 years. In 2009, the family donated it to The History Museum, which had collected other pieces of the fountain over time, storing them in one of the last remaining Studebaker factory buildings.
Plans to rehab the factory and relocate the artifacts inspired volunteers to launch a campaign to revive the historic fountain. In less than eight months, they raised more than $600,000, including a $30,000 challenge grant from the Saint Joseph County Community Foundation.
McKay Lodge Conservation Laboratory of Oberlin, Ohio, will restore the remaining original pieces. Robinson Iron Corporation (Alabama) will recast missing pieces using J.L. Mott’s original molds. Georgia Fountain Company will light fountain with fiber optic “light bulbs” designed to duplicate the 1906 lighting scheme.
The city expects to install the fountain in Leeper Park in 2019. To learn more or donate to the project, visit www.studebakerfountain.org.
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