Shofuso Japanese House and Garden Tour

In recognition of Shofuso's Preservation Achievement Award for their work of Pebble Beach, the Preservation Alliance is excited to announce 2 special tour dates to visit the site after hours, led by former Shofuso Director and Associate Director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Frank Chance.

Shofuso is a traditional-style Japanese house and nationally-ranked garden in Philadelphia’s West Fairmount Park that reflects the history of Japanese culture in Philadelphia, from the 1876 Centennial Exposition to present day. It includes three garden areas, a natural pond stocked with koi, and the largest collection of murals by artist Hiroshi Senju outside of Japan.

The Japanese House was designed by Japanese mid-century modernist architect Junzo Yoshimura in 1953, as part of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Shofuso was reassembled at the current site in 1957-58, where there has been a continuous Japanese presence since the 1876 Centennial Exposition, when the first Japanese garden in North America was installed behind a small Japanese bazaar. Based on newly-discovered 1957 drawings made by Shofuso’s original garden designer, Tansai Sano, in 2020 Shofuso brought to life a traditional Su-hama Pebble Beach on the garden’s boat-landing shoreline. This archetypal Japanese Garden motif invokes the spirit of the pebble strewn shorelines of Kyoto’s Kamo River and the rocky coasts of Japan, by incorporating elegantly designed stretches of pebbled beach along a garden pond’s lowest contours.