| This is a study of Frank Lloyd Wright's Midway Gardens--a concert garden, private club and restaurant designed and built in 1913/14 on Chicago's South Side. Included are a comprehensive history and description of the building, an examination of its many sources, and a consideration of its international, national and local contexts.; Midway Gardens was commissioned by Edward C. Waller, Jr., to replace a defunct amusement park. Its arrangement as a concert garden was suggested by an amateur musician. The final design did not come easily to Wright: drawings survive at Taliesin West for a remodeling plan for the amusement park, and three separate versions of the Gardens. Also, many changes were made during construction.; Built of reinforced concrete and yellow brick, Midway Gardens was decorated with thin concrete blocks of patterned ornament; abstracted, figural sculpture modeled by Richard Bock and Alfonso Iannelli; and two murals by Wright. A more comprehensive mural program by William Henderson and John Norton was aborted, and designs for furnishings and china were never carried out.; Wright drew upon many sources for this work. Some elements derived from his earlier recreational buildings and projects, and from the World's Columbian Exposition, whose site it bordered. Wright's travels of 1909/10 in Germany, Austria and Italy acquainted him with European traditions of amusement architecture, terraced pleasure gardens, and urban drinking establishments. He was also influenced by beer gardens and a concert garden in Chicago. The sculpture more directly reflected the influence of contemporary German and Austrian artists.; Hopelessly underfinanced, Midway Gardens was sold after the second season, drastically altered by successive owners, and pulled down in 1929. Its failure resulted, not from neglect by Chicagoans, anti-German sentiment or Prohibition, but from the mismanagement and disinterest of its various owners.; Using dramatic horizontal and vertical planes to define interior and exterior spaces, Wright created terraces, towers, dining areas, club rooms, covered walkways and a roof garden. Inside the main block, he produced a complex spatial arrangement that was without precedent in his work. Wright's most richly ornamented building up to that time, Midway Gardens was a pivotal building between the unified expression of his Prairie style and his later, more diverse oeuvre. |
