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United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number a Page Walker Field Shelterhouse St. Joseph County IN Rum Village Park was a forested area at the southwest edge of South Bend that had been set aside for a "natural Indiana landscape" park. Relief workers in 1933 built a system of roadways through the park, which was meant to be kept for picnicking, hiking, and similar pursuits. In 1937 the idea of placing a modern circular swimming pool surrounded by a sand beach --a design that had been installed in other Indiana cities using WPA labor (e.g., Madison) --at Rum village was forwarded, but the notion died. The following spring the South Bend City Council authorized the board of park commissioners to purchase one city block immediately north of the park, approximately 4.2 acres, across Ewing Avenue for a playground and playing fields. The land cost $7500, to be paid over five years, interest-free. Since no down payment for the land was required, the full appropriation of $10,000 could be used for equipment and materials. WPA would provide the labor. The focal point of Walker Field would be the multiple -purpose shelter house that served the several types of playing fields. The configurations, locations, and purposes of the various playing fields have changed somewhat over time, but the shelterhouse, even though much vandalized, is still used on occasion. Its wading pool, certainly the most beautiful of its type in the county, is not. Wading pools were particularly favored in New Deal park and playground development. They provided a means of getting cool and splashing about in fun, and were vastly less expensive than swimming pools. Several wading pools, most of which were far more modest, were constructed in South Bend and Mishawaka, but all closed in the 1950s because of polio fears. Many of these were later torn out --there had been one at Leeper Park in South Bend, for example --but, happily, this one has survived. Architect Otto Julius (O.J.) Goffeney (1887-1941) designed the attractive but functional building to house restrooms, storage rooms, and a concession stand, with a large wading pool off the rear (north) in an atrium -like setting reminiscent of a Roman villa. The use of fieldstone so typical of northern Indiana WPA projects was dictated as much by necessity as design; fieldstone was a readily available local material and its use, along with concrete rather limestone, kept the costs down. That Goffeney was hired to design a WPA project does not