Frank Lloyd Wright and Midway Gardens

by Paul Samuel Kruty

Built in Chicago in 1914, Frank Lloyd Wright's Midway Gardens was a concert garden that included an indoor restaurant and dance hall, a five-tiered outdoor summer garden with band shell, a tavern, and a private club--a work of art on the grandest scale. Demolished in 1929, Midway Gardens is at the heart of a quintessential American tale, a great hybrid of Old and New World sensibilities, and a monument to the cultural use of buildings. 218 photos.

262 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had some great pictures of Midway Gardens and a detailed analysis of this project as compared with other entertainment gardens of the times. It also viewed this project in light of Wrights other public and private buildings, both before and after 1914 to put this building in context of his progression. I was very disappointed, however, to find a blatant error in one of his facts, and it made me wonder how many other "facts" in the book were incorrect. He stated that the Price Tower was built in Tulsa, OK, in 1952. The Price Tower was actually built in Bartlesville, OK, beginning in 1952 and was completed in 1956.

[Gwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

We toured Taliesin West in north Scottsdale in October 2010. A replica of a Midway Gardens stage caught my attention, and now I'm reading all about it. Midway Gardens is a defunct bandshell on the south side of Chicago that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The book must have been a thesis or dissertation project for the author. I really liked the photos and stories about the place in its heydey--Anna Pavlova danced on the stage. I wish I could step back in time and visit it on a summer's evening in the early 1900's.