Recently, documentary filmmaker and journalist Erin Kron collaborated with designer-printmaker-photographer Nathan Biehl on a Narratively feature about a very unusual house in rural Spring Green, Wisconsin.
The eccentric house is “the brainchild of self-trained architect Alex Jordan, who purchased land on the Deer Shelter Rock formation in 1956,” writes Kron.
“Jordan incorporated the rock’s contour into the base of the large house he constructed near the edge of the cliff, adding asymmetrical rows of canted windows looking out over the valley. He proceeded to fill the place with his extensive collections of kitsch …
“He took a ‘more is more’ approach, tallying up tarnished collectible penny banks, reproductions of gothic and samurai armor, stained glass salvaged from churches, ornate replicas of the crown jewels, while slowly adding on wings to the building so he could pack it all in. …
“The Organ Room is perhaps the strangest of all. In it seems to be just a gigantic pile of metal machinery. It includes, as its name suggests, a few organs (and a lot of organ pipes). But mostly, it contains a nightmare-like assortment of large wagon wheels, stage coaches, church bells, typewriters, copper kettle drums stacked up to the ceiling, and a giant engine with a huge propeller.”
Matt Schneider, the House on the Rock’s marketing manager, admits that he doesn’t understand the Organ Room. “He’s quick to add: ‘I mean, it’s a really, really neat… I like the room! It’s not that I don’t—it’s just that I understand it the least.’ ” More here.
I wonder. Maybe, like the so-called Music Room in my house, it started life as a room with an organ, and they just kept calling it that after its function changed.
Photo: Nathan Biehl
House on the Rock in Spring Green, Wisconsin.
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