This book may seem tangential to the interests of this list, but I
sensed a possible connection when I read of the end of the era of
commercial pleasure gardens in Chicago and the shift to opulent ballrooms,
a shift which seems to have coincided with the onset of National
Prohibition.  Could this be a case of prohibition contributing to changes
in patterns of commercial leisure and, a more remote but intriguing
possibility, to swings in architectural taste?

*******************************************
Jack Blocker
History, Huron College, University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario N6G 1H3 Canada
(519) 438-7224, ext. 249 /Fax (519) 438-3938

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1999 18:18:39 +0000
From: Maureen Flanagan <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: H-NET Urban History Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Review: Kruty, Frank Lloyd Wright and Midway Gardens

Posted by Peter C. Baldwin <[log in to unmask]>

Paul Kruty. _Frank Lloyd Wright and Midway Gardens_. Urbana and Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 1998. lii + 262 pages. 237 illustrations.
Notes, bibliography and index. ISBN 0-252-02366-8.

Reviewed for H-Urban by Peter C. Baldwin <[log in to unmask]>
DePaul University

This impressively researched and extensively illustrated volume examines
one of Frank Lloyd Wright's major pieces of public architecture, a
"concert garden."  In this book, Paul Kruty shows that the Midway
Gardens occupied a unique place in the development of Wright's style.

The Midway Gardens was constructed in 1914 in Chicago's South Side,
close to the University of Chicago and the site of the 1893 World's
Columbian Exposition.  An intricate arrangement of interconnected
towers, multi-level dining areas, terraces and courtyards, Midway Garden
was designed to be a center for musical performance and fine dining.  It
opened to enthusiastic local acclaim, but soon underwent some
unfortunate alterations before being demolished in 1929.

Kruty's book is a celebration of what he calls one of the most
extraordinary monuments in the history of American architecture. (p.
243)  The book makes good use of a range of source material, including
photographs, Wright's sketches, correspondence, and published writings,
as well as articles in local newspapers and architectural journals.
Kruty, an associate professor of architecture at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, lovingly examines the building from a
variety of perspectives.  His five chapters are organized by topic and
can be read almost as free-standing essays. Nevertheless, none of these
chapters lifts the book much above its narrow focus and laudatory
agenda.  For this reason, despite being an admirable piece of
scholarship, the book may have limited appeal to urban historians

The introduction includes an imaginary tour of the building by a group
of visitors.  This description is a bit confusing because of the
author's breathless rush to describe the building's many wonders, and
because of the complexity of the architecture itself.  Still, it is
generally helpful in giving an impression of how the building might have
been experienced.  Most notably, it shows the peculiar pattern of crowd
circulation in the building, a point to which Kruty returns later in the
book.

The first chapter is a chronological narrative of the building's
history.  After a few brief paragraphs about Wright's career and stormy
personal life in the early 1910s, Kruty discusses the ambitious hopes of
the Midway Gardens' developers, the speedy design and construction of
the building, and its initial success as a musical venue.  The owners
had overextended themselves in building such a elaborate complex, and
soon found themselves in serious financial trouble.  In 1916, they were
forced to sell the property.  The new owner, a brewery, renamed it
"Edelweiss Gardens," and made revisions in both the architecture and the
entertainment to cater to what Wright disparagingly called "a hearty
bourgeois taste."  Here, it would be interesting to know more about the
people who came to the Gardens.  Kruty indicates that Midway Gardens
fell out of favor with Chicago's upper crust once it came under new
ownership, but he says little about the customers of Edelweiss Gardens
or its successor, Midway Dancing Gardens.  He focuses instead on making
some relatively minor revisionist points about the Gardens' continuing
financial woes and ultimate demolition.

The book could have been enriched by more information about the
development of commercial leisure, but the second chapter does provide
at least some of this context.  Kruty shows that, while the Gardens'
exuberant complexity, ornamentation and statuary suggested a new
architecture of pleasure, this architecture had historical precedents.
Kruty gives a general overview of pleasure gardens, and a more specific
discussion of amusement parks and beer gardens in Chicago and Germany.
These antecedents, as well as the presence of the high-brow Ravinia
music park in the northern suburbs, prepared Chicagoans for the opening
of the sophisticated concert garden that Wright designed.  As it turned
out, Midway Gardens came at the end of the era of commercial pleasure
gardens in Chicago; the trend in the 1920s was toward opulent ballrooms,
and an attempt to adapt Wright's creation for this purpose was a
failure.  The influence of Midway Gardens on amusement architecture was
therefore limited.

The third chapter, based on painstaking examination of Wright's jumbled
sketches and plans, recounts in great detail the evolution of his
design.  This chapter, though primarily of interest to architectural
historians, will undoubtedly remain the definitive account of Wright's
work on this project.

The fourth chapter is an insightful analysis of the place of Midway
Gardens in Wright's oeuvre.  Kruty argues that Midway Gardens was both
the culmination of Wright's Prairie Style work, and a major turning
point toward a period of daring experimentation.  The author notes
similarities between Midway Gardens and Wright's previous work: the
placement of twin towers framing the central block, the long row of thin
pillars, and the hovering horizontal roof slabs, for example.  The
design differed from Wright's previous work in its greater use of
abstract ornamentation, the greater complexity of its spaces, and the
exaggerated contrast of vertical and horizontal elements.  Also, in
contrast to Wright's previous work that employed distinct vocabularies
for houses and public buildings, Midway Gardens synthesized the two.
"...Our understanding of the complex building gains much by seeing it as
a synthesis of the twin worlds of public and private, of Unity Temple
and the Robie House.  With its paradoxes of large, open spaces and
intimate corners, of formal plan and picturesque circulation, and with
its simultaneous separation from its surroundings and unity between
interior and exterior space, Midway Gardens combined public and private
worlds" (p. 184).

Kruty does not explore this intriguing point as thoroughly as he might
have.  He demonstrates Wright's synthesis of public and residential
architecture by examining specific design features: roof forms,
overhangs and so forth.  However, it would have been interesting to
consider the implications of this synthesis.  We know that Wright's
residential architecture reflected specific views about family life,[1]
but what did this semi-public building reveal about his views on
commercial leisure?  What kind of human interaction did he hope to
promote within this space?  Were Wright's expectations in harmony with
those of the initial customers of Midway Gardens?  Were they at odds
with those of the Edelweiss or Midway Dancing Gardens customers?  If
Wright did not fully answer these questions himself, then perhaps some
suggestive possibilities could be developed by considering the thoughts
of his contemporaries, or of those who observed the scene at the
Gardens.

The book's fifth and final chapter argues that Midway Gardens is truly
an original work of architecture, influenced only tangentially by
parallel designs being developed in Europe.  Wright was aware of the
decorated modern architecture being designed in Germany and Austria by
architects such as Joseph Maria Olbrich, but this awareness only
"confirmed his own growing preference for more decoration," which,
according to Kruty, he executed in his own unique style (p. 217).
Despite its uniqueness, Wright's decorative and complicated work can be
placed within a general trend of "architectural Expressionism," distinct
from the stripped-down International style that later dominated the
field.  The emergence of the International style "meant that, by the
1930s, Midway Gardens had lost its meaning to younger architects of the
modern movement and, thus, had ceased to play a role in the mainstream
of twentieth-century architecture..."(p. 233).  It retained relevance,
however, for a stubborn minority of American architects who continued to
explore expressive decoration.

By more closely exploring the context of commercial recreation, the
author could have enhanced the relevance of this book for urban
historians.  Nevertheless, the book is a success on the more modest
scale that Kruty has chosen.  Its scrupulous scholarship, its careful
examination of the building's design, and its insightful analysis of
Midway Gardens' place within Western architecture make the book a
valuable contribution to the study of Frank Lloyd Wright's work.


[1] Robert C. Twombly, _Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life and Architecture_.
New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1979.

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