Over the past 30+ years I have had the pleasure of visiting the House
on the Rock in Spring Green, Wisconsin many times.  It is set in the
scenic Wyoming Valley west of Madison.

During one of those early visits when I was about 12 years old, I got
to meet its owner and creative genius, Alex Jordan.  He was wearing
workman's clothes and was standing near the Double Mills Violano
Virtuoso.  He noticed my intense interest in the instrument and asked
my parents, my brother, and myself to accompany him to the workshop.
He told us that in the workshop there were many additional instruments.
At this point we did not know who he was.

To my amazement, the workshop was filled with original mechanical
musical instruments!  There was a Wurltizer Harp, 15 or so Mills
Violanos, a Welte Style 2 orchestrion, an 87 key North Tonawanda band
organ, a Weber Otero, a Mortier Orchestrion, numerous large Mortier
dance organs, brass trumpet band organs and on and on.  Alex proceeded
to explain and demonstrate nearly every working instrument!  What a
thrill!

As was my custom when visiting collections I taped the tour with a
cassette recorder.  At the end of the tour I pointedly asked him his
name and he said he was Alex Jordan, the owner.  After that initial
contact I kept up with him over the years and visited the House on the
Rock nearly every year.

During that early visit, Alex had just completed the Street of
Yesterday.  He placed mechanical instruments here and there along the
street.  He got the idea for the street from the visiting the Street of
Yesterday in Milwaukee's city museum.  At that point he was collecting
everything from antique guns, to carriages, to steam engines, to
antique cars, music machines and more.  He was literally collecting
collections with the cash generated from admissions.

Alex knew that if he wanted to bring back the visitors, he had to add
something new each year.  The Street of Yesterday started a path that
got longer year after year as you went from building to building.  Each
stop along the path was another music machine fantasy or collection.
Each year you HAD to go back to see what was new!

As time went by, Alex learned the fine art of extracting all the
quarters from one's wallet!  He told me that he timed the average
tourist attention span while watching an instrument.  He said it lasted
about 30 seconds.  Thus many instruments were timed to play for this
short period then shut off.  The next person coming along would start
it up again, while you had moved on to the next instrument or display.
Alex would purposely wander around the complex dressed in workman's
clothes listening to the comments of the tourists!

Is The House on the Rock a museum?  Absolutely _not!_  At least not in
the traditional sense.  Most museums are stiff, stuffy, snobby places
that have to be subsidized to exist and ultimately go broke due to lack
of visitors.

On the contrary, The House on the Rock is an entertaining tourist
attraction that draws hundreds of thousands of paying tourists each
year.  Alex Jordan did not care about getting an award from a museum
association.  He did not care about getting accolades from collector
groups.  He was concerned with attracting people to pay admission to
go through his unique creation, the House on the Rock.

It can be said that Alex Jordan was part artist and part P. T. Barnum
the showman.  He capitalized on imagination and the inherent curiosity
of the public.

Is such a presentation idea new?  No!  Years ago in the mid-1800's,
before he ever thought of a circus, showman P. T. Barnum built a
collection of curiosities in New York City called Barnum's Museum.
The collection was gathering of believe-it-or-not oddities like the
Fiji Mermaid that was half fish, half monkey sewn together.  The place
even had automatons and music machines.

Early on, Barnum discovered the public's fascination with mechanical
music and was probably the first American to put some mechanical
instruments on display in a public attraction.  Barnum's attraction
was such a success and was so crowded that he had to hang up a sign
which read, "See the Egress".  When people followed that sign, they
went to a door which was an exit to the street!

The same ideas were expanded on by various showmen at Coney Island
from the side shows to the exotic dioramas at Dreamland and Luna Park
which recreated everything from Burning of Rome to the Sinking of the
Titanic!  Alex Jordan's first curiosity, the House, was enhanced with
additional curiosities that started with the old mill and Street of
Yesterday and led over the years to various music machine displays, a
huge fantasy carousel, a pipe organ room, doll house display, doll
carousel, the great whale and nautical exhibit, etc.  Each display was
illuminated with just enough light so that reality merged into one's
imagination.

As a consequence of all this expansion, the curious public came by the
thousands to the point where The House on the Rock became Wisconsin's
top tourist attraction; a distinction it holds to this day.

What about the music machines you say?  Well in my opinion the heyday
for pneumatically operated music machines at the House was the decade
of the 1970's.  During this period, Alex Jordan, employed the talents
of outstanding pneumatic craftsmen like Dave Ramey, John Hovancak, and
Art Reblitz.

I remember the thrill of seeing the newly finished Mikado for the
first time.  The Mikado was a Mortier that was transformed into a
fantastic oriental mechanical orchestra.  The visual animation was
stunning.  A photo of this instrument is in the FOPS "On Display" book.
John Hovancak did most of the mechanical work and Art Reblitz arranged
the music.  The Ritual Fire Dance as performed on this machine was an
absolute thrill!

The riverboat calliope display was another great machine set around
a modified Tangley Calliaphone.  The Franz Joseph machine with the
exposed brass tubas and other instruments initially played Wurlitzer
150 rolls and was put together by Dave Ramey, amongst others.

Alex did get caught up in his own fantasy creations.  For the public
he made up histories of the large fantasy musical creations.  Alex
succumbed to the P. T. Barnum temptation to emulsify the truth in the
name of enhanced attraction appeal!  To the uninitiated like Iowa
farmers, those "stories" made their eyes widen and eye teeth fall out!
Those "histories" even made it into the House on the Rock booklets
which ultimately did not pass muster with the "truth in advertising"
legal authorities!

This brings to mind one funny episode during the 1972 MBSI Convention
tour of the House on the Rock.  I remember Alex Jordan telling the
glamorous Franz Joseph concocted ownership story to wide eyed MBSI
members in front of the huge instrument while Dave Ramey standing
behind the instrument told the real story of its construction at the
workshop!  Naturally this conflict caused a few sparks!

The House on the Rock is an unheated summer attraction.  Consequently
there is no climate control at the House on the Rock!  This, combined
with heavy use by hundreds of thousands of visitors, ultimately took
its toll on the majority of pneumatically operated instruments.  Also
Alex's restorers had moved on to other opportunities.

Being budget minded, Alex in the early 1980's discovered that the
instruments could be operated by computer control.  The instruments
would "look" like they were operating and the music would be created by
synthesizers coordinated with the visual operation.  He discovered that
the public did not know the difference.  Once set up in this new
format, Alex found it was less costly to keep the display running.
Those of us who were pneumatically minded found this transformation
disappointing.

Toward the end of the 1980's, Alex's health started to fail.  He was in
a race against time to complete various displays such as the nautical
whale display.  He even mentioned to me the possibility of selling the
place.  He also allowed me to sell for him some of the instruments such
as the Philipps Style 3 Paganini, Welte 2, Mortier Orchestrion, among
others.  I discussed the sale of the place with the Six Flags
Corporation whom I was consulting for at the time.

In 1988, Alex finally sold the House to Art Donaldson.  As I remember
the price was around $17,000,000.00!  Mr. Donaldson owned a sign company
and other attractions in the Wisconsin Dells area.  Mr. Donaldson kept
Alex on until Alex's death in 1989.

Mr. Donaldson has spent a fortune upgrading the House on the Rock.
Being a businessman, he added restaurants, gift shops, and a hotel.  He
made the place accessible by the handicapped.  I have encouraged him on
the music machine front.

Mr. Donaldson and I even went on a Treasure Hunt through the complex
where I pointed out to him the numerous original mechanical instruments
lurking in various corners of the attraction.  Following my suggestions,
he had the Model A Hupfeld Phonolizt-Violina restored by Siegfried
Wendel.  Much more work needs to be done on the rest of the remaining
collection.

The following are just a few of the original instruments still at the
House on the Rock:  a Welte Orchestrion, a Steinway Duo Art reproducing
piano, a Link nickelodeon, a Seeburg KT, a Gebruder Bruder 80 keyless
fair organ, a Hupfeld Phonoliszt Violina Model A, a Mills Double Violano
Virtuoso, a Tangley Calliaphone, several early barrel orchestrions, and
number of number of disc and cylinder music boxes and monkey organs.

As a music machine enthusiast, The House on the Rock is well worth a
visit.  Purists may want to sit in the car.  The curious will definitely
be entertained!  Remember, you have to keep it in perspective that it
is a "tourist attraction" and not a museum.  In fact, as I have
previously stated, it is a very successful tourist attraction, indeed!
It is a place where your imagination can run away with you.

If you keep your eyes open, you will notice unusual things everywhere!
On one visit, I remember noticing the exaggerated breasts on the
"angels" in the carousel room.  I commented on this to Alex Jordan who
had made the angels out of female mannequins to which he had attached
Styrofoam wings.  He confided to me that he had made a "nipple mold" to
"enhance" the mannequins.  He was quite pleased that I noticed the
enhancements!

Oh, by the way, the House on the Rock sells the best tasting fudge in
Wisconsin!

For additional information check out the House on the Rock website:
http://www.houseontherock.com/index.htm

Tim Trager
Trager@idt.net