The Dynamo Food Factory & Café is creating a street-side satellite. Beginning this month, the café’s caterer, Shiraz Events, will transform the Bridge Tender House located on the sidewalk in front of the museum into a scaled-down version of the full service restaurant inside the museum. The Bridge Tender House will serve sandwiches, coffee and other beverages, and the café’s signature cupcakes to passersby. In addition, servers in the Bridge Tender House will be a source of information about the museum and will dispense Wolfsonian collateral materials along with local information flyers and maps. Inside the museum, the café has been granted its liquor license, and is now serving wine and beer.

“This is a fantastic development for us. The Bridge Tender House is a wonderful part of our collection that, in its new incarnation as a food depot and information center for passersby, will add to our outreach and interaction with the public,” notes Wolfsonian director Cathy Leff. The hexagonal, stainless-steel Bridge Tender House was built in 1939 for the Northwest 27th Avenue Bridge. Designed in the Art Moderne style by Harrington & Corteyou, the structure was saved from demolition in the late 1980s when the bridge was reconstructed, and it was donated to the collection by the Florida Department of Transportation. In recent years the Bridge Tender House has often housed installations by contemporary artists whose work expanded on themes in the museum’s collection.

Bridge Tender House for the Northwest 27th Avenue Bridge, 1939
Designed by Harrington & Corteyou, Inc., Kansas City, Missouri
Steel, wood, glass, iron, metal
131½ x 199 inches
The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of the Florida Department of Transportation 1993.5.1