I realize that Alex Jordan's House on the Rock, in Spring Green, Wisconsin, has been covered thoroughly on the pages of this very blog before. But, while rummaging though dusty old photographs in my hard drive I remembered that Jim and I visited the place several years ago, and I never got around to putting the photos that I took up on the web in any capacity. This is in part because most of the pictures I snapped—during our endless, day-long walk through the attraction's dreamy, fluctuating, warrenlike corridors—came out too dark and blurry (I'm no wizard when it comes to dark settings and digital cameras). Nevertheless, eons later I've weeded out the ones that turned out okay enough, and uploaded them onto a 66-photo Flickr set. As I've said, images and stories of people's visits to House on the Rock have been on the internet for a while now...but I hope that some of my detailed pictures can at least offer a few unique glimpses of it, perhaps for people that can't visit the
actual place because they live in an iron lung or something like that.
Go here to see my pictures.
I kept the photos in the order I took them while walking through the house, so you can kind of know what to expect if you visit the place. In addition to the many omitted fuzzy photos, this set ends up covering only about 10% (or so) of the house itself as it was December and 1/3 of the place is shut down in winter because it's too expensive to heat.
In case you've never heard of House on the Rock, it's the kind of thing that you would have seen on That's Incredible!, if you're old enough to remember that television show. The enormous home was begun by an eccentric, enterprising, obsessive man named Alex Jordan in the 1940s. It started as a Japanese-style structure sitting on the edge of a large precipice (it was actually built by him as revenge for being scorned by Frank Lloyd Wright). Jordan liked to impress, had lots of money, and was also a collector of things from all over the world (big things...like plus-size taxidermy, whole warehouses full of discarded pipe organs, giant carousels, and animatronic angel choruses, etc.) and he just started building his maze-like home bigger and bigger and bigger, to contain everything. Soon, whole full-scale city streets (complete with real shops and vehicles) began to appear inside the house itself, and more stuff like that, and eventually the structure became THE BEAST of all architecture. It was later taken over by his son, who continued the madness. Anyway, his family owns it now (or something like that) and it's an attraction you can go see. Highly, highly recommended. It's the realization of what, as a child, you dreamed, fantasized...and hoped the inside of Wonka's factory must have looked like after seeing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971 version) for the first time, just much, much darker.
Alex Jordan liked animatronics, and his collections are robotically put to work in many of the rooms, which come alive when you put little tokens into these little slots (some just do it by themselves). We found the whole place mind-blowing. It's moderately priced and well, well worth it. Bring your walking shoes, and show up mid-morning so you don't miss anything and can really take your time browsing. There's no way to see it all in one visit. Like I said, we went during the winter when 1/3 of the place is shut down because it's so expensive to heat—so you might wanna visit in the spring or early fall (hmmm...I wonder if it's an oven in the summer?). Anyway, elsewhere on the web, here's House on the Rock's thorough Wikipedia entry, and you can find some great galleries and information here, here, here, here and here.
I was at House on the Rock in late October a number of years ago. Apparently, this is close enough to Christmas, so they had their 8000 Santa Clauses (figurines, trinkets, mannequins, etc.) interspersed throughout the "exhibits". They had a Santa surfing the wave under the giant squid/blue whale battle. Good stuff.
Posted by: Woody | June 24, 2008 at 04:18 AM
Thanks or sharing these. I first went to House on the Rock with my grandparents when I was a kid. Years later, I took a day trip and was horrified that it had fallen into such disrepair. Lots of things had been stolen, or worse, just destroyed by walk-by vandals.
I hear they've restored it a little, which I think is terribly important. Used to be, there were some 3D panoramas online. I'll have to go seek those out. I wish I could live there. Either there, or the Winchester Mystery Mansion.
Posted by: Jim | June 24, 2008 at 11:17 AM
Here's a friend's ridiculously enormous set:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22874721@N00/sets/72157603955996796/
Posted by: DJ Clem | June 24, 2008 at 02:31 PM
I live in Chicago and have been to the house on the rock several times. All I can say is GO. GO GO GO GO!!! You can not even begin to imagine what this place is like, even with pictures. Incredible.
And while you are in Dodgeville, WI, stay at the Don Q Inn Fanatasuites (http://www.fantasuite.com/room_themes.asp?LocationId=2). They even do tours of all of the fantasuite rooms every afternoon.
And... while you are passing through to get to Dodgeville, visit the Mustard Museum in Mount Horeb, WI (http://www.mustardweb.com/). They have hundreds and hundreds of mustards for purchase. And the best part is that you can sample any of them!
Posted by: Jeffrey | June 25, 2008 at 09:49 AM
Mark, you might find my coment intresting? I am 67 years old. When I was 17 a couple of my classmates from high school and I took a little summer trip for a week. We visited south west Wisconsin. We stopped for a hamburger in Black Earth and someone told us about this guy that was trying to build a house on a rock. So we decided to go take a look. When we found the place there wasn't anyone around. We got out of the car and started to look around. Now remember this was 1958. We weren't even sure what we were looking for? Soon this guy came up to us and started talking to us. He said his name was Alex Jordan and he was from New York and was building a house on this huge rock. He was in work close and was a little dirty from working. He said that he soon planed to open it to the public to visit. He also said that he had a few minutes to show us around because he had some local kids down at the creek getting some flat rock for what he was working on. He took us up to where he was living. At that time he was living in the rock. We thought it was the coolest thing we had ever seen. He explained that his next project was to build a bridge to a rocky point about 50 yards, or so it seemed to me,from the main rock. At that time there was a tree growing on this rock and he just built around it. I asked him where he put his septic tank? He said to me that was a question that he thought he would never be asked. He said that actually there were three of them already. He also said that we were one of the first people to visit the Rock. We offered to pay him and he charged us a dollar. He also said that we would never have to pay again if we returned for a visit. I WISH I had that in writing... To make a long story short, the boys were back from the creek and he had to go back to work. He told us to stay as long as we wanted. "Feel free to roam around anywhere you want to go". There were no barriers anywhere. We stayed for over three hours. Remember,1958 there was ONLY the Rock House. It was getting late and we had to go find a place to camp. I think we could have been there for another three hours with out any problem. I remember most where he slept. It was on a rock shelf in a little cave like room. This was over 50 years ago. I have been over half of the world, but that time talking with Alex Jordan is still one of my most remember able times of my life.
Posted by: Jim Mc Cure | August 16, 2008 at 01:28 AM
My wife and I have been visiting the House on the Rock at least once a year for the past ten years. Also visited back in the 1960's. We find it a very enjoyable experience. There are changes being made constantly. Most for the better. We do appreciate the maintenance of the various musical displays. On the down side, we went there June 13, 2013, and found, much to our dismay, that the lower restaurant was not open. Apparently it appears to be non-sustainable. We were told that it may be open on the weekends. This is one of our most enjoyable moments at the HOR as the lower eating facility is marvelous. Hopefully this will be operating on our next visit.
All in all, we encourage others to visit as this is quite entertaining. Don't plan on a one to two hour visit. Take your time and enjoy.
Posted by: Ron Yankee | June 20, 2013 at 08:46 AM