Issue 48  July 1st 2025

Friends of OA+D Launching Soon — Help Keep Organic Design Alive

At the Organic Architecture + Design Archives, our mission is simple but urgent: to preserve and share the stories, drawings, and ideas of visionary architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Bruce Goff, Paolo Soleri, and many others. These priceless archives are fragile—and increasingly at risk.

Across the nonprofit world, longstanding funding sources are disappearing. Foundations are scaling back. Grants are being eliminated. Economic shifts are forcing many arts and cultural organizations to cut back or even close their doors entirely. OA+D is not immune to these challenges. As traditional support dwindles, the responsibility to preserve and protect this irreplaceable design legacy falls more than ever to individual supporters — people like you who believe that organic architecture and design matters.

That’s why we’re launching Friends of OA+D, a new subscription-based membership program designed to ensure this vital work continues. This is your opportunity to directly support the preservation of rare documents, photographs, and original drawings — and help share the stories of some of the most visionary architects and designers of the modern era.

As a Friend of OA+D, you’ll receive:

• An auto-renewing subscription to our flagship publication, The Journal of Organic Architecture + Design — filled with rare stories, images, and insights not found anywhere else.

• Specially-designed limited-edition thank-you gifts for members-only.

• Insider updates and invitations to OA+D events and programs.

Multiple membership levels will be available for monthly giving — allowing you to choose how you support this work and how large an impact you want to make.

Full details and enrollment launch in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

From The Archives

This month we feature a recent and exciting acquisition: A 3.25 x 4.25 Inch film negative featuring Frank Lloyd Wright's now-lost Midway Gardens. Dated on the negative "April 3, 1917," It was originally taken by documentary photographer Charles Medin and part of his estate.

Midway Gardens opened in 1914 (demolished 1929) and was a 360,000 square feet indoor/outdoor entertainment facility in the Hyde Park neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. Edward C. Waller Jr. commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design and build the Gardens in 1914. Although business was strong at first, Waller never had enough funds to back both the construction and upkeep of Midway Gardens and declared bankruptcy in March 1916. At this point, Midway Gardens was purchased by the Schoenhofen Brewing Company and renamed "Edelweiss Gardens" (as seen in the large billboard sign attached to the building in the photograph).

Edelweiss Gardens continued through World War I (closing briefly in 1918) and stayed open as a dry establishment after Prohibition took effect. In 1921, the building was sold once more, to the E. C. Dietrich Midway Automobile Tire and Supply Company and renamed "The Midway Dancing Gardens". Finally, in October 1929, Midway Gardens was closed permanently and demolished.

We are pleased to add this rare view to the growing number of items in the OA+D Archives associated with this lost Frank Lloyd Wright work. If you have archival materials related to Midway Gardens, Frank Lloyd Wright, or any other organic design items that you're interested in donating to preserve at the OA+D Archives, please let us know by contacting us at info@oadarchives.org.