Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens

Isaiah Zagar once described his art as “a spider web,” designed to “trap people and change how they look, feel and dream.”

His web—his masterwork—can be found at Philly’s Magic Gardens, a floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, indoor-outdoor labyrinth of mosaic art in the heart of Philadelphia.

The attraction, created over several decades, almost defies description. Captivating? Yes. Provocative? Yes. Inspirational, entertaining, outlandish? Yes, on all counts. Because almost every square inch of the onetime art studio and grounds is covered in mosaics: Picasso-esque portraits, cartoony figures of people and animals, sunbursts and starbursts, and more. It’s all made of the stuff we usually throw out: shards of glass, shattered crockery, and broken bits of glass, tile, clay, and glinting mirrors, in a riot of shifting colors.

This is not an art museum or gallery, but a fully immersive experience that surrounds you on all sides, including overhead and underfoot. I’m glad I took the kids. Inside, we roamed around, open-mouthed, like earthlings who had landed on another planet. Outside, we got lost in a maze of mosaicked bridges, tunnels, and grottos, crowned by a chandelier made entirely of bicycle parts, and statuary from the artist’s world travels. We were also charmed to see whole families of birds flitting in and out of nests built into a mosaicked wall.

Isaiah Zagar was born in Philadelphia, raised in Brooklyn, and studied painting and graphic design at New York’s Pratt Institute. But his definition of art changed after he visited one of the first and most famous “art environments,” the House of Mirrors in Woodstock, New York. The brainchild of pop artist Clarence Schmidt, the sprawling, seven-story structure was embellished with found objects like mannequins, lawnmowers, guitars, saw blades, and Rheingold beer cans. For Zagar, the visit was transformative. “When I saw what he did, my heart just began to beat,” he later wrote. “I didn’t even know that it was art … It was on the periphery.”

After a stint in the Peace Corps, he returned to Philly with his wife, Julia. There, the couple became key figures in the South Street Renaissance of the 1960s and ’70s. Julia opened the Eyes Gallery, selling folk art from Latin America (it’s still a going concern, more than half a century later). Isaiah adorned the gallery walls with mosaic art. When he ran out of space there, he moved on to his studio, filling the walls, ceilings, and floors. Then he branched out, to two adjoining vacant lots.

The artistic experiment almost ended when the lots’ owner got wind of it. He gave Zagar an ultimatum: buy the property or see his art destroyed. Luckily, the community pitched in, raising $300,000 to save the Magic Gardens. In 2008, the nonprofit opened to the public.

It would be impossible to see and appreciate every detail of the space—you couldn’t do that in a dozen visits—so give yourself an hour or two to explore. You’ll find curious quotes and fragments of poetry embedded in the mosaic art. Zagar also added the names of artists who have inspired him: not just Schmidt, but Simon Rodia, Mary Nohl, Nek Chiand Saini, and James Hampton.

Others contribute to the experience, too. The bicycle-wheel chandelier is by an artist named Warren Miller. There is also an indoor gallery with rotating exhibits; on the day we visited, London-based Stephen Wright was the featured artist. We loved his bejeweled masks, tapestries, and textile figures, made with vivid fabrics and cast-off jewelry. In a nice touch, a table and chairs were set up with art supplies, so youngsters and grownups could indulge in the creative impulse.

Your trip to the Magic Gardens will plop you right in the middle of Philly’s South Street Headhouse District. I hadn’t visited in years, and it was a revelation: the neighborhood is friendly and walkable, packed with boutiques, galleries, performance venues, and restaurants. It’s close to Washington Square West, Society Hill, the Italian Market, and Broad Street. You could spend a whole day here and not see it all.

Philadelphia Magic Gardens draws about 100,000 visitors a year. As Isaiah Zagar hoped, it may change the way some of them see the world, and reconsider what has value in our throw-away society.

“It’s all about being creative,” says Magic Gardens events manager Allison Boyle. “I think that’s what people usually take away—yes, Isaiah is an exceptional person, but he was using accessible materials. Anyone could do the same thing to make art like this.”

Zagar’s purpose—perhaps the purpose of all artists—can be summed up in an epigram on the wall of an outdoor grotto: “I built this sanctuary to be inhabited by my ideas and my fantasies.”