After 35 years the gazebo is needing some repair. The repairs will start this summer and be completed by Miles-Richmond in early fall.
The Gazebo is a prefabricated, copper roofed structure 12 feet in diameter which graces the Garden’s center. With the Garden on a tight budget in 1987, Dana Weigle, president of the local McDonald’s operations, came to the rescue. He had heard of the Gazebo plans in June of ’87 at the re-dedication of the E.G. Hill Garden, and he also knew that the amount needed to complete the project was not in the Board’s budget. Consequently, he offered the Gazebo as a gift from the McDonald’s corporation.
In making his presentation at the Gazebo’s dedication in September 1987, Weigle observed that Ray Kroc, the late founder of the McDonald enterprise, “left a legacy to his operators, and certainly with me…that we should give back to our communities some of the benefits we receive from them.”
To this day, the Gazebo remains the iconic structure in the city of Richmond which is easily recognizable by the community. It has a customized weather vane with the Golden Arches that sits atop that was made and designed by the Magaws of Boston Indiana. The weather vane is a one-of-a-kind unique addition.
