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"House On The Rock" Museum in Wisconsin
By John Farrell

This appeared today on the Dixieland Jazz Mailing List :

  "For those of you interested in mechanical music machines, the
'House On The Rock' museum, in Spring Green, Wisconsin, has several
orchestrions.  These were made for large congregations of people
like the World's Fair at Chicago of the turn of the last century.
In this case a whole collection of instruments: violins, cellos, bass
viols, flutes, saxophones, drums, etc., and pianos are played with
a perforated roll and vacuum actuators.  If you have never seen one,
it's worth the visit.  Spring Green is about 40 miles west of Madison.
The museum was collected by a Chicago attorney who bought other
people's collections and brought them to this place to amaze his
friends.  He died in the 1960's or so and the State of Wisconsin now
operates the museum.  As I recall, one of the orchestrions played
'Limehouse Blues'."

A follow-up posting said :

  "The House On The Rock is the world's biggest collection of Junk,
but a lot of it is actually Fake Junk!  The original builder was a
failed student of Frank Lloyd Wright who built the house in a fit of
spite, then he and his son filled it with collections of stuff.  I
spent 3 or 4 hours wandering through this monstrous "museum" with my
sister-in-law (an exhibit designer with the Smithsonian) and we were
amazed at how bogus the place was.  It is a truly bizarre experience.

  "Yes, there are a lot of interesting mechanical musical devices
there, and it is well worth a visit if you are in the area, but take
everything in with a _huge_ grain of salt."

John Farrell
http://homepages.tesco.net/~stridepiano/


(Message sent Thu 23 Nov 2000, 07:45:33 GMT, from time zone GMT.)

Key Words in Subject:  House, Museum, Rock, Wisconsin

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