Oak Park Playground Field Houses Threatened With Demolition
It's hard to believe, but Oak
Park (known world-wide for its "historic preservation"??) is now seriously
discussing demolishing some or all of the Park District playground field houses
designed by Prairie School architect, John Van Bergen in the late 1920s.
Their reason is lack of maintenance and lack of funds.
Van Bergen
actually won the commission for these structures in a competition in which Frank
Lloyd Wright submitted the ridiculous designs for his famous
"Kindersymphonies".
Here is the text from my book:
In 1926,
the Village of Oak Park held a competition to design four "Playground Shelter"
houses to be built for $4000 each. Included among the entries was a design
for four "Kindersymphonies" by Frank Lloyd Wright. These "monuments to
himself" as John Van Bergen put it, could not have possibly been built
within the available budget. Van Bergen won the commission. Van
Bergen said that if he knew Wright had submitted an entry, he would not have
submitted one himself.
After the first four buildings were
completed, the Park District asked Van Bergen to design one more building for
Barrie Park in 1930. This last one was a playful design of medieval
character - different from the others, yet retaining common themes with those
earlier Prairie designs. Eugene Field was completed 1927, Robert Louis
Stevenson Hans Christian Andersen and Lewis Carroll in 1928, and James Barrie in
1930.
In 1966, the Village of Oak Park decided that the field houses
needed to be expanded and modernized. All the buildings are now covered
with a dull brown brick and have lost all their playful character.
Fortunately, the architect who was hired to do the changes, Jack Barclay of Oak
Park, took these photos before the buildings were altered. He must have
recognized that some important architecture would be lost. Thanks to him
we have this photographic record of four of the Van Bergen designed field
houses, the only photographs known to exist. The Stevenson
playground building was demolished completely at that
time.
Below are a few photos of the way the buildings used to
look.
Plan to visit them next time
you're in Oak Park before it's too late. They are usually open during week
days and after school hours. I can give you locations if you
like.
Copyright © 2002 Martin Hackl