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NESCO Feast of Lanterns Festival - Indianapolis

The Feast of Lanterns is an annual festival that is held the last weekend in August prior to the Labor Day holiday. Festival events are located in and around beautiful, historic Spades Park, 1800 Nowland Ave, Indianapolis, IN 46202.

The land, formerly known as "Shoestring Park" for its linear shape, was donated to the city in 1898 by real estate developer Michael Spades. The park originally featured an octagonal stone bandstand with a tile roof. Older neighbors recall that a small basement room stored musical instruments and tennis racquets. Sadly, although residents fought to save the structure, it was demolished in the early 1970s and replaced with a metal gazebo.

An old gentleman who grew up across the street recalled that gangster John Dillinger used to play baseball in the park as a boy. Later, he said, Dillinger’s chauffeur lived on Brookside Avenue and the gang was known to gather in Spades Park in the 1930s.

In about 1909, the Brookside Civic League started a festival called the Feast of Lanterns. While lawn fetes with Japanese and Chinese paper lanterns had been sponsored by other groups including Woodruff Place, Broad Ripple, and the Indianapolis Canoe Club, the Brookside Feast of Lanterns was by all accounts the most spectacular and longest lived. Residents strung thousands of paper lanterns on the bandstand, bridges, and trees and illuminated them with candles and, later, electric lights. Surrounding homeowners also decked their porches with the colorful paper lanterns. Entertainment during the evening event included cake walks, car rides, a donkey cart, and musical and dancing groups. (Indianapolis Star, July 23, 1914, p.14)

Over sixty young girls performed a pantomime version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the 1923 Feast of Lanterns. Old photographs of the event have proven to be nearly impossible to find. (Indianapolis Star, August 1923) By World War II, the festival had only been held intermittently and finally faded away.

In 2003 neighbors in Windsor Park and Springdale Neighborhoods dreamed of a music festival in the park and stumbled upon old Feast of Lanterns newspaper articles, thus the festival was reborn six decades after it had ended. The festival has grown each year, despite losing the fragile paper lanterns to rain during the first five years, and is now sponsored by the Near East Side Community Organization (NESCO).

By 2010 the festival attracted approximately 6000 visitors to two stages of live entertainment, food court, arts and crafts, organization expo, and expanded attractions especially for children. In 2011 the festival events expanded to include the Lantern Ball the night before the festival and a Feast Parade prior to the opening of the festival site.

Historical information drawn from work by Joan Hostetler is co-owner of Heritage Photo & Research Services, a historic research, photo preservation, and digital imaging company