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Chapin Park Local Historic District Guidebook <br />Page 3 <br />THE KANKAKEE CANAL,WHAT DID NOT COME TO BE: 1835 -1855 <br />Chapin Park may not have become a residential area had not Alexis Coquillard’s attempt <br />to operate a canal and power race between the Kankakee and the St. Joseph rivers failed. <br />In 1835, Coquillard and his partner, Francis Comparet, purchased 230 acres north of South <br />Bend and borrowed $46,000 – about one million in today’s dollars – for its construction. <br />However, the engineering never produced the needed water flow: it was erratic and trav- <br />eled in the wrong direction. By 1845, Coquillard defaulted on the loan and the State Bank <br />of Indiana acquired the property as outlots. The vestiges of Coquillard’s Kankakee canal <br />can still be found in the southern part of the District between Marion and Navarre streets <br />where a diagonal line divides the lots. <br />A PICTURESQUE FAMILY ESTATE: 1855-1879 <br />After Coquillard’s death in 1855, Horatio Chapin purchased forty acres from the State <br />Bank. The property stretched from Navarre Street – formerly Perry Street – to the St. Joseph <br />River, and Lafayette Blvd to Heaton Street – now the alley between Forest and Leland <br />avenues. Ricketson Burroughs, farmer, brick manufacturer and city councilman, and John <br />Shetterley, farmer and wholesale grocer, became the Chapins’ neighbors. Burroughs <br />owned property south of Navarre and southwest of Portage; Shetterley owned property <br />west of Heaton Street. <br />By 1857, Horatio Chapin’s Gothic revival residence had been completed. Over the next <br />decade and a half, Chapin created a picturesque country estate worthy of Andrew Jackson <br />Downing’s praise. As depicted in the late nineteenth-century aerial views of the city, <br />Chapin planted gardens and an orchard and laid curving paths through the wooded prop- <br />erty. (He was known in South Bend for his horticultural knowledge.) <br />Mary and Andrew Anderson and Edward Chapin moved to the estate in 1871, the same <br />year their father passed away from a heart disorder. Oddly enough for a banker, Horatio <br />died intestate. His children spent the next four years settling the estate and may have lived <br />in their father’s house. In 1875, the estate was settled and Mary and Edward decided to <br />divide the property along the carriage drive (now Park Avenue). Mary received the prop- <br />erty to the east of the drive and Edward received his father’s house and the property to the <br />west. After the division of the estate, Mary and Andrew Anderson were free to build their <br />own residence overlooking the brook that once flowed across the property. They likely <br />built 710 Park Avenue between 1875 and 1877. <br />In 1875, Mary and Edward’s aunt and uncle, Emma G. and Marshall P. Chapin, joined the <br />younger Chapins on the estate. Marshall purchased a parcel from Mary Anderson the same <br />day she and Edward agreed to divide the property – June 3, 1875. He then probably built <br />720 Park Avenue. He worked for the State Bank from 1855 until 1862 and owned the <br />Knoblock grocery store with J. Kuhns after the Civil War. The Marshall Chapins moved to <br />60 Lafayette by 1878, but their house in the park did not remain empty for long as Mary <br />Anderson’s recently married daughter and son-in-law, Emma and James DuShane, became <br />the second residents. They lived in the house until 1905 when they moved to 710 Park.