The country's most curious collection of kitsch

Jordan wanted to use his "attraction" to control the mood and focus of visitors, rather than just give them rare items to look at. Shortly after he opened the house to the public, Jordan replaced all the glass with blue-tinted panes covered in wooden stencils. Schneider explains that Jordan did this to stop guests from coming just for the scenic views of the valleys below, and to ensure that they would pay more attention to what was inside the house. (Another employee told me that Jordan just liked the way the blue, dusk-like panels made the figurines and stained glass inside the house stand out.)

The lack of scenery visible from much of the house is balanced by the extensive view of the valleys from the "Infinity Room." The novelty hallway is filled, floor to ceiling, with 3,264 windowpanes, and comes to a point and a slight incline at its end to give the illusion that it extends infinitely. As one approaches the end of the room, the floor sways with the steps of other visitors. It takes a lot of faith in Jordan's architectural ability to trust that the room won't collapse beneath you.

(More from Narratively: The dame of dictionaries)

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The next stop is the "Mill House," which Jordan added on next door to the House on the Rock. Aside from an ornamental mill wheel in front, the Mill House has very little to do with mills. Here, Jordan's collections become more and more random and cluttered. A room of antique firearms leads to a wall of toys, which leads to the "Streets of Yesterday" — a bunch of collections housed in fake storefronts, unrelated beyond their being generally "of old." In the "apothecary," old medicine bottles and dried tapeworm weight loss advertisements are on display, while nearby obviously new signs advertising things like "Opium in 3 oz. bags" hang. It's easy to lose track of time down there in the winding, windowless hallways, which lack both clocks and cell-phone reception.

In front of another display case filled with guns, a gray-haired man in blue jeans approaches Schneider. "Where did he search for all those antique guns? All over the world?" he asks, shaking his head. "Some of them look like they'd be some of the rarest guns in the world."

Schneider nods and replies without really answering the question: "Yeah, he had collectors that would find different things and ask him if he was interested." The origins of the pieces on display are mostly either unimportant or unknown. At the House on the Rock, the authenticity or significance of what you see isn't critical. The exhibits aren't so much about history or beauty as they are sheer wonder. Central to the experience is a sense of awe at "how big" or "how strange" the items filling every room are.

Read the rest of this story at Narratively.

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