Fire damages circus section of House on the Rock in Wisconsin
SPRING GREEN, Wis. (CBS) -- A fire damaged a section of the famous House on the Rock attraction in southern Wisconsin Friday morning.
The House on the Rock reported on its website that a fire broke out in an orchestra bandwagon in the Upper Circus area of the attraction. Speaking to CBS affiliate WISC-TV in Madison, House on the Rock human resources director Nancy Schaaf said staffers called the fire department and contained the blaze.
On social media around 10:30 a.m., Iowa County, Wisconsin Sheriff Michael Peterson wrote that his office received a report of smoke at the attraction. The Dodgeville and Spring Green, Wisconsin fire departments rushed to the scene, and a mutual aid box alarm was also pulled, according to the sheriff's office.
The Mineral Point Fire Department also responded to the scene, WISC reported. By the time the sheriff's office posted its notice, the scene was under control and fire crews were leaving.
WISC noted that the circus portion of House on the Rock is in the third of three sections of the attraction, and the fire happened before guests arrived there. Professionals will assess the area, WISC reported.
The House on the Rock has closed parts of its third section following the fire. Section 1—which includes the Original House, the Gate House, the Infinity Room and the Japanese Gardens, and Section 2—which includes the Mill House, the Streets and Music of Yesterday exhibitions, the Spirit of Aviation, the Heritage of the Sea and the Carousel—will remain open.
The Organ Room, Inspiration Point, and Doll Carousels in Section 3 will also remain open. But the Circus Room, the Dollhouse Room, and the Galleries—the last of which features the gun and armor collections—are closed due to the fire, according to the tourist attraction's website.
As described on the House on the Rock website, the Circus Room where the fire started houses "all things circus, from miniature circus displays to the enormous circus wagon with an automated 40-piece band and an 80-piece orchestra. The pyramid of the elephants is also a long-time favorite."
A popular attraction that defies description
Located on Deer Shelter Rock in a somewhat remote area about an hour west of Madison—and about 10 minutes from Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin, with which it is sometimes confused—the House on the Rock has long been a popular tourist attraction for Wisconsin and the Midwest as a whole. Billboards advertising the enigmatic attraction have been spotted from Chicago to Dubuque, Iowa, over the years.
The attraction was the creation of Alex Jordan Jr., who began construction in the 1940s and originally set out just to build a vacation house at the site, according to CBS News.
"The house was like no house that was ever built. People kept coming to see what he was doing because at the time, you could see it from the highway," friend Betty Long was quoted by CBS News in 2004, "and they would drop in on him and ... he let them."
Soon enough, Jordan began charging an admission fee—and began constructing a succession of new buildings to house his eccentric and eclectic collection of items. The House on the Rock opened to the public in 1960, with new sections opening over the following decades until the tour of the entire attraction measured 2.5 miles.
The often bizarre nature of the masses of collections at the House on the Rock has left some visitors fascinated, others unsettled.
"An indoor Main Street, with shops and houses built to nearly life scale but all darkened and empty of life. A vast carousel, full of every animal except horses. A towering diorama of a whale and squid locked in mortal combat. Rooms full of musical instruments that robotically play themselves," Jay Gabler wrote for The Tangential in 2014. "Did I mention the doll houses?"
The attraction is also known—among many other things—for its "Infinity Room," a cantilevered corridor that "tapers to a knife's point 15 stories over the forest floor," as Roadside America puts it.
An assortment of automated music machines—some simple player pianos, others hulking carousel-style organ creations with animatronic characters—are found throughout the House on the Rock.
The Gladiator Calliope's selections include "Entrance of the Gladiators" and "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee." The Mikado—with its ostentatious assortment of lights, statues, and fans and an animatronic figure at a kettledrum in the center—plays a rendition of Camille Saint-Saëns "Danse Macabre" that may evoke the Beatles song "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" with its circuslike Mortier band organ tones. An actual Beatles song, "Octopus's Garden," plays on a music machine in the Heritage of the Sea exhibition.
The Streets of Yesterday exhibition at the House on the Rock is sometimes called an eerie and surreal counterpart to the Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibition at the Milwaukee Public Museum, or the beloved Yesterday's Main Street at Chicago's Griffin Museum of Science and Industry. While the Wisconsin Historical Society calls the House on the Rock main street a "nostalgic faux downtown," Gabler calls it "deeply unsettling" and an example of creator Jordan's habit of "consciously trying to disorient and overwhelm" with its mockup storefronts full of cluttered collections.
The Organ Room—featuring pipe organ components, theater organ music, and a maze of catwalks and spiral staircases—was first envisioned as "a trip into Dante's Inferno," Gabler wrote.
Real antiques and ornate fakes created by local craftspeople appear alongside each other all through the massive warren of structures that make up the House on the Rock.
The carousel at the House on the Rock, billed as the "world's largest" with its 20,000 lights and 289 creatures, is not open for rides—only for viewing. An assortment of topless female angel mannequins hover overhead, and the only exit—leading to the aforementioned organ room—is through a giant demon head, Roadside America notes.
The House on the Rock is prominently featured in Neil Gaiman's 2001 novel "American Gods." In an especially vivid scene in the novel, Shadow, Mr. Wednesday, and two other characters mount creatures on the carousel—which transports them to another dimension.
Parts of the "American Gods" TV series were also filmed at the House on the Rock.