Tiffany Glass Mural "The Dream Garden"

East of the Curtis Center is a one of a kind mural and gazing pool called “The Dream Garden”.

Designed by Louis C. Tiffany and based on a Maxfield Parrish landscape, it took 6 months to install in 1916. The mural is 15 feet by 49 feet made up of 100,000 pieces of glass in over 260 color tones making it arguably the largest Tiffany piece in the world (though the Tiffany art glass dome located in Preston Bradley Hall in the Chicago Cultural center certainly has a claim.) Dream Garden was the largest glass mural in the country until 2007 when it was surpassed by the Wing Lung Bank Mural in Alhambra, CA.

Though there was an attempt to sell the mural for 9 million dollars to a casino owner in the late 1990s, Philadelphia designated the mural a “historic object” putting a stop to the sale. Eventually, ownership of the mural was handed over to be jointly shared by four Philadelphia cultural institutions.