Philadelphia's Magic Gardens

Philadelphia's Magic Gardens is a folk art environment and gallery on South Street, and the largest work by the mosaic artist who created it. It covers three city lots and combines indoor galleries with a large outdoor labyrinth, about 3,000 square feet of mosaic in all.

The surfaces are covered with a varied mix of materials: kitchen tiles, shards of mirror, bike wheels, Latin American art and china plates.

Much of it reflects the artist’s travels, with objects from Latin America, India, Morocco, Iran, China and Indonesia. Other art environments left a mark too, including The Ideal Palace in France, Watts Towers in Los Angeles, the Rock Garden in India and Las Pozas in Mexico.

The artist and his wife moved to South Street in 1968, when the city planned to clear the area for the Crosstown Expressway, a highway. The neighborhood was desolate and dangerous. They were among the first to arrive and begin changing its image, opening a gallery that became the first building he covered in mosaic.

He bought the building that now houses the Gardens in 1994 and fenced off the two vacant lots next door to keep out garbage and vermin. Over the next fourteen years he began building the Gardens there. In 2002 the owner of the lots wanted to sell because property values on South Street were rising, and the artist bought them together with members of the community.

That purchase created Philadelphia's Magic Gardens, which opened to the public in 2008 with a mission of inspiring creativity and community engagement. The gallery hosts artists from around the world, from ceramics and mosaics to outsider art, and the organization runs educational programs, performances, tours and mosaic workshops. He continues to make mosaic murals on Philadelphia's streets, and hundreds can be seen in or around the South Street area.