Café Brauer
- Style
- Prairie School
- City
- Chicago, IL
Café Brauer, also known as the South Pond Refectory, is a 1908 restaurant pavilion designed by Dwight H. Perkins at the edge of the Lincoln Park Zoo lagoon. Financed by the Brauer family, who ran it as one of Chicago's most popular restaurants in the early twentieth century under longtime proprietor Caspar Brauer, it has been called an outstanding example of the Prairie School and perhaps the finest expression of Perkins' design philosophy.
the building
Green roof over the lagoon. The building is known for its low green roof and red brick walls set at the water's edge, with a second-floor ballroom overlooking the lagoon.
A building of second acts. After the original restaurant closed in the 1940s, the second-floor ballroom reopened to the public in 1947 as a recreation room for square dancing and waltzing. By the 1960s much of the building had been reduced to storage and a small cafeteria.
the style
Perkins designed Café Brauer in the Prairie School idiom; critics have called it an outstanding example of the style and perhaps the finest expression of Perkins' own design philosophy.
More on Prairie Schoolsignificance
Café Brauer is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and recognized as an official landmark within Lincoln Park.
nearby
- Lion House - Lincoln Park Zoo
- Henry Gerber House
- Ann Halsted House
- Eugenie Lane Apartments
- Reebie Storage Warehouse
- Building at 399 West Fullerton Parkway