Summer Casino – Park Restaurant | Bar | Dancing

Built outside the city limits in 1822, the villa initially served high society, who retreated to their country estates for the summer, but did not want to give up dancing, gambling, and the company of their peers. Adapting to the changing times, the Park-Restaurant opened in the Sommercasino in 1930 – which, however, was not financially viable given the competition from the Stadtcasino in the center of Basel. Before a foundation took over the building and converted it into Switzerland's first youth center in the early 1960s, it was used as a refugee shelter between 1938 and 1946.

Along with Otto Baumberger from Zurich and Emil Cardinaux from Bern, the Basel native Burkhard Mangold (1873 – 1950) is one of the most prolific and trailblazing pioneers of the modern Swiss poster, having spent his most formative years during the heyday of Art Nouveau in Munich. Nevertheless, he remained receptive to developments prompted by shifts in the zeitgeist, which is why his original poster designed for the opening of the Park-Restaurant in May 1930—one of his final four or five—can be attributed to Art Deco due to its comparatively much more restrained composition and restriction to the three primary colors, an era that, even during the economic depression starting in the late 1920s, was associated with glamour and extravagance.

You might also be interested in:
Summer Terrace – Stadt Casino Basel