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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. All the buildings are now covered with a dull brown brick and have lost all their playful charcater. 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.
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