Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens creator Isaiah Zagar has died

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Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens creator Isaiah Zagar has died.

Zagar was known locally and internationally for his exterior tile mosaics that transformed neighborhoods.

Emily Smith, the executive director of the organization, announced Thursday morning on Instagram that Zagar died from complications of heart failure and Parkinson’s disease. He was 86.

“He was unlike anyone we have ever met and will ever meet,” Smith wrote in a statement. “In his lifetime, he created a body of work that is unique and remarkable, and one that has left an everlasting mark on our city.”

Zagar was born in Brooklyn, New York, where he studied art at Pratt Institute and met his future wife, Julia. After a three-year stint in Peru as part of the Peace Corps, the couple moved to South Street in 1968 and became part of the community effort to thwart a highway project through that neighborhood.

In the 1990s, he began building Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, an immersive art environment on a formerly vacant lot on South Street. He used broken dishes, bicycle parts and other found objects as his materials. The site cemented his reputation as an artist with an ambitious and eccentric vision.

After giving the Magic Gardens over to a non-profit organization to run as a visitors attraction, Zagar turned his attention to another immersive mosaic project in a garage on Watkins Street.

Zagar is also known for his elaborate mosaic work that wrapped the former Painted Bride Art Center in Old City, a project that consumed him for nine years. The building was demolished in December after a lengthy court battle.