First established as a Japanese-style landscape for the 1876 Centennial Exposition, the current garden was designed by Sano Tansai in 1958 when the authentic shoin-style Japanese house was moved here from New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
For Philadelphia’s 1976 Bicentennial celebration, the garden was extensively renovated by Nakajima Kenji in the authentic Momoyama style of early 17th-century Japan.