One of the city’s most beautiful and tranquil sites is about to get even more user-friendly. Next weekend, the Shofuso Japanese House and Garden, a popular Fairmount Park site, will unveil its new Sakura Pavilion — which will allow the attraction to offer year-round cultural and community programming.
The site is typically only open from April-October — as the 17th-century-style house lacks heating — but the pavilion will now bring the facility into its next stage of development.
With city funding and a grant from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the nonprofit Friends of the Japanese House and Garden undertook a construction project that included the restoration of two buildings on the property — which, along with two other structures in the area, are the only remaining buildings from the 1876 International Centennial Exposition.
“The Sakura Pavilion is going to give us our first year-round presence in Fairmount Park,” said Derek Finn, the out FJHG site and program manager. “Having this pavilion gives us options like doing tours in the winter, as well as workshops and other programs.”
The buildings were originally used as restrooms for visitors to the 1876 Horticultural Hall, where the modern Horticulture Center stands.
One structure will be dedicated to programming and the other will be used as a work area.
The expansion is also expected to enhance the site’s appeal for weddings and commitment ceremonies.
Finn said the attraction has hosted commitment ceremonies for same-sex couples in the past, but the lack of an indoor component made post-ceremony receptions challenging.
“Typically we could only do the ceremonies and not a full meal afterward, but now we have the space where we can do both ceremonies and receptions,” Finn said. “So we’re really excited to see even more couples having their events with us.”
Event bookings have already doubled for the coming year, he noted.
The house itself arrived in the city in the 1950s after being constructed by a Japanese designer for the New York Museum of Modern Art. The nationally ranked garden also dates to the 1876 exposition.
“It’s a really beautiful, unique location in Philadelphia,” Finn said. “You can’t find anything like it.”
Finn said the site attracts a diverse pool of tourists and locals and has always been popular with the LGBT community.
“We get a really good mix,” he said. “We got locals who visit because they just love the site, and then there’s people who say they’ve lived in Philadelphia their whole lives and have never gotten the chance to visit. Lots of people stop by when they’re visiting Philadelphia, and we always get people who stop here when visiting from Japan.”
Next weekend’s unveiling also kicks off the attraction’s cherry-blossom season.
Mayor Nutter will join with Consulate General of Japan in New York Fumio Iwai for the ribbon-cutting ceremony 11:30 a.m. March 31, which will include a ceremonial sake-cask breaking.
The opening weekend will include a photography exhibition, traditional Japanese drumming, storytelling and kids’ crafts from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. both days.
For more information, visit www.shofuso.com.