On planning our route across country a few things had been speculative, and this visit to House on the Rock was one of these. Mark had seen this come up on one of his searches on the internet and it looked great fun, but it was no indication of the experience to come. The House on the Rock is pretty descriptive of the attraction in one sense – it was the brain child of a man called Alex Jordan, who was born and bought up in Wisconsin and spent his childhood in Madison, WI. He used to visit the countryside and found this place in the rolling hills of Wisconsin, with rocks he used to climb and picnic on. As time went on he decided he wanted to spend more time here and leased the land from a farmer and began to build a house in and around the rocks. People wanted to see what he was doing so he started to charge admission and then used these proceeds to develop the house and build his eclectic collections. He died several years ago but the house is now in trust and is a major attraction in the area.They offer 3 different tours and we decided to take all three, not really knowing what to expect. We are going to give a description here of what we saw but it will give no justice whatsoever to the house and its collections. It was truly a sensory overload and one of the most amazing experiences any of us have ever had.
The first tour takes in the original house which is built around a 150 foot outcrop of rock. It is literally built around the rock and some of the trees still grow through the house. It covers several levels and is full of nooks and crannies, decorated in a Asian style. One of the rooms is called the infinity room, and is a 210 foot long room that is cantilevered and stretches out away from the house 156 feet above the ground below. When you are out at the end you are literally standing in the middle of nowhere – a little spooky. Throughout the house there are collections of musical instruments; pianos, strings and woodwind, which are automated to play tunes – it is a most surreal experience to hear these play. If the tour of the house was not enough you leave the original house and go into the mill house which starts with a stunning sitting room, with tiered seating looking down on a huge open fire. A truly baronial setting. This leads onto the second tour.
The first experience is a recreation of a Victorian street, with shop windows displaying the most amazing collections of china, dolls, wood carvings etc. At the end of the street is a humungous steam organ with dozens of moving characters. From here you move into a collection dedicated to the sea – as you enter this cavernous room you are confronted by a huge model (and when we say huge we mean huge – it must be 200 feet long and 100 feet high) of a whale battling with a monstrous octopus. You go up a ramped walk way with displays of the most detailed and huge models of ships through the ages and collections of materials from ships like the Titanic and Lusitania such as menus, ships instructions etc. There are then several other collections equally amazing but there is too little room to cover it here. The final exhibit is a giant carousel, some 80 feet across and containing 20,000 lights, making it the largest indoor carousel in the world.If this was not enough we had the third tour to do. The first room is called the organ room, and it is probably the most stunning and evocative room. It is a cavernous space and through it you travel through many levels. The basis of this room is the collection of huge pipe organs, but these are supplemented by other large structures made of copper and iron, forged to look like electro-mechanical gizmos developed for some sinister and possibly evil purpose. There are other things in the room that are clearly weapons and there is even a horse drawn hearse. The displays invoke feelings that are dark, mysterious and evocative – and at the same time present emotions that are dangerous and erotic. After this room things calm down with displays of doll houses, circus collections, automaton and finally a doll carousel.
All of this took us 5 hours to cover fully and we could have gone around again and missed more than we saw on the first time around. It is simply too much to take in and is truly a sensory overload and a mesmerizing experience. The imagination of the creator Alex Jordan, and his attention to detail is awe inspiring – we cannot understand why more people don’t know about this place. Of course we recommend this as a place to visit – and they are still working on it build a new Japanese garden, a visitors’ centre and another exhibit.
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