Lower Greenville’s Taco Cabana Tango Frogs Will Live On at Truck Yard
Earlier this year the iconic frogs fate was up in the air. But artist Bob Daddy-O Wade s amphibian work will endure in Lower Greenville.
By Rosin Saez
Published in
Food & Drink
December 18, 2020
12:03 pm
Those jazzy frogs are one of the first things I noticed on my inaugural drive up Greenville Avenue. I had just arrived in Dallas and wanted to get a feel for the area in which I now lived. I hopped in my Subaru, rambled up Ross Avenue, and hooked a left onto Greenville.
To my left, there it was: a shuttered building, no signage that I can recall, but at the top three anthropomorphic amphibians having a blast. Turns out, they were the last ones to leave the Taco Cabana party when the restaurant closed.
Famous ‘Tango Frogs’ moving to new home on Lowest Greenville in Dallas
The restaurateur who commissioned the art some 40 years ago, Shannon Wynne, shares stories about the frogs’ wild history.
Three of the original Six Frogs Over Tango sculptures will be moved from Taco Cabana to Truck Yard in Dallas. The frogs, a source of fascination and legend, once graced the roof of a nightclub in the 1980s named Tango.(Michael Ainsworth / Staff Photographer)
Dallas Morning News readers was, “Where are the ‘Tango Frogs’ going?”
They’re referring to a sculpture of six dancing frogs created by artist Bob “Daddy-O” Wade. They’d been atop the building at 1827 Greenville Ave. starting in the early ‘80s, when it was once a nightclub called Tango. Three of the frogs were re-installed at Taco Cabana in 2014 and remained there throughout 2020, while Taco Cabana sat vacant.
The frogs were designed by Texas-based artist Bob Daddy-O Wade who was known for his large sculptures in Texas and beyond. Wade also designed Izzy, the giant Iguana sculpture housed on a roof at the Fort Worth Zoo.
Wade, who died a year ago at age 76 at his Austin home, according to the Austin American-Statesman, said in 2014 that he was happy to see three of his frogs headed back to Dallas. A little slice of North Texas history returns to Lower Greenville Thursday night. I m proud to collaborate with a forward-thinking company like Taco Cabana that s helping bring the arts back to the Lower Greenville community and fun to its guests, Wade said.