Gary Bathing Beach Aquatorium (Gary, Indiana)

 NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, 1921_construction, aviation museum, Prairie School (architecture)

People called Octave Chanute “the crazy man of the dunes” when he soared gliders above astonished sunbathers in Gary’s lakefront Marquette Park in the late 1890s. Now the Aquatorium sitting near the spot has been renovated to house an aviation museum largely in Chanute’s honor.

George Maher, the well-known Prairie-School architect and important influence on Midwest architecture, designed Gary’s Lakefront Park Bathhouse in 1922. With Corinthian columns, glazed English roof tiles, bronze light fixtures, and other fine appointments, it provided Gary’s beach lovers elegant places to change, shower, use the restroom—even rent a bathing suit. Second-floor galleries offered views of Lake Michigan and the Chicago skyline.

The Aquatorium closed in 1971, but the Society for the Restoration of the Gary Bathing Beach Aquatorium and Octave Chanute’s Place in History has raised more than $2 million to restore the building as a museum honoring the aviation pioneer and the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II—an African American wing of the U.S. Army Air Corps that became instrumental in integrating the armed forces.

The original bronze light fixtures remain, the walled gardens have been restored, and the Tuskegee wing is completed. The society is working to raise another $1.5 million to finish restoration of the massive building’s west wing, which will house the Chanute exhibits.

A statue of the Tuskegee Airmen is in front of the Aquatorium’s east wing.

www.aquatorium.org/