|
Shofuso: Pine Breeze Villa |
|
You probably already knew that there is a Japanese house and garden in Fairmount Park, but do you know how it got there? Shofuso was built in 1953 in traditional 16th-century style as a gift to the Museum of Modern Art from the America-Japan Society of Tokyo on behalf of the Japanese people to the American people; a gesture of friendship and goodwill. The house was built of the finest materials available. It was built from hinoki cypress obtained with special permission from the national cypress forests, and the rocks for the garden were each hand-selected from the slopes of the Takayama mountains.
The house was on display at the MOMA from June to October of 1954, and from April to October 1955. It was visited by over 200,000 people before it closed. Philadelphia vied with other cities such as Chicago and Washington, DC to obtain Shofuso after it left the MOMA, and after eight months, Philadelphia was selected -- primarily because Philadelphia was the only city that offered a landscaped site complete with an intact pond garden: the garden originally installed in 1908 for the Nio-mon gate.
As fate would have it, the historic Temple Gate was destroyed by fire in May of 1955, leaving the garden waiting to become the site for Shofuso. The Pine Breeze Villa was officially given to Philadelphia in 1956, and opened to the public in 1958.
To learn more about Shofuso Japanese House and Garden, visit http://www.shofuso.com.
Interested in learning more about Shofuso and Philadelphia's unique relationship with Japan? Phila-Nipponica: An Historic Guide to Philadelphia & Japan, a bi-lingual collection of articles on the Japan-Philly connection published by the JASGP, is available for purchase in our online store!
|
