Have you been looking to get off campus and explore some of Wisconsin’s finest attractions? Do you enjoy the feeling of being trapped in a vivid nightmare, unable to escape from outlandish horrors? If you answered yes to both these questions, then you’ve got a great day trip in your future: The House On The Rock.
Located 50 miles west of Madison, The House On The Rock is a classic roadside oddity. It’s hard to categorize as a specific type of attraction — the sprawling complex includes an architecturally unique private home, a Japanese garden, an indoor carousel and a 200-foot fiberglass model of a whale fighting a squid, among other things.
According to their website, The House On The Rock traces back to the mid-1940s, when Madison resident Alex Jordan began constructing a personal retreat home on the land. Working without any predetermined plan, Jordan constructed a bizarre residence that conforms to the landscape, wrapping around the rocky outcropping at severe and unpredictable angles.
As local interest increased, so did Jordan’s ambitions for the construction. Nearly 30 years later, he and his team expanded the property to include several cavernous warehouses, each housing thousands of different artifacts and attractions.
The original house is the first stop in the tour, and provides only a small hint of the oddities to come. The design of the home speaks to Jordan’s irrationality — it is illogical, a helter-skelter assembly of small, angular rooms, each without a clear purpose. Hallways and ceiling heights shrink to proportions unfit for most human beings, creating an uncomfortable, labyrinthian effect.
Visitors can’t help but feel like Jordan’s creation is the perfect setting for a bad dream. Surreal and illogical, it seems this house could only have been comfortable to Jordan himself. There is a sad redundancy in the house’s layout, with consecutive common rooms and sitting areas that all fail to create any cozy sense of home or community.
The tour continues through a cavernous system of warehouses which magnify the madness of Jordan’s original dwelling. Constructed to house all manner of eccentric trinkets, this section of the property is by far the most unnerving. These winding passageways alternate smelling like a urinal and a salt mine, and their dim lights eerily illuminate the exhibits packed inside.
Jordan’s humongous collections of antiques and exotic trinkets are curated seemingly without logic or pattern, appearing more like a fictional depository for unwanted oddities rather than a purposefully-arranged attraction.
Old pipe organs and decaying calliopes are situated at all-too-frequent intervals throughout these surreal halls. Their jaunty, off-kilter tunes play constantly and in torturous disharmony. These old carnival tunes layer over each other in the worst way, creating an awful cacophony that exacerbates the madness of Jordan’s hellish potpourri of peculiarities.
This gaudy carnival of clown puppets and automated organs soon begins to feel like an overwhelming drug trip. Walking through the increasingly absurd attractions is like following Jordan’s descent into madness as the commercial success of his operation ballooned his lunacy to unfathomable levels.
Finally reaching the exit brought an unforgettable sense of relief. After several hours surrounded by this utterly overstimulating environment, to stand in comfortable silence away from the previous horrors brought immeasurable pleasure. The initial house was disjointed and bizarre, but in a rather quaint and controlled way. Immersion in Jordan’s ghoulish maze of curios truly tested my sanity.
While the experience wasn’t the most enjoyable, going to The House On The Rock is recommended to anyone of semi-hardened mental constitution. The degree of immersive madness that Jordan created is awe-inspiring. Touring the facility is an utterly surreal experience. It was nearly impossible to believe that anyone, let alone one man operating on sheer whim, could create such a freakish and ludicrous environment. The House On The Rock transcends boundaries — it fails as a place of diversion and amusement, but still stands as a stunning success in the most unusual way.
