Long story short, the house was built by Alex Jordan, an artist who started the house as a small studio retreat atop a sixty foot rock chimney in the 1940s. As time went on, visitors came to see the house and he decided he may as well charge admission. He put most of the money back into the house and began to expand it. It is now a huge complex that houses his collections, a huge carousel, a giant organ room, gardens and more.
There are self guided three sections to tour, which you can purchase separately or as a package for a discount. We chose to just do one section due to money and the fact that I had a feeling I'd get overstimulated if we tried to do all three. I mean, there's a lot of stuff in that place. Even the bathrooms had collections in them.
First stop on the tour was the Asian Garden. This was my favorite part of the tour, because the aesthetic was the most pleasing to me. The interior of the house was very dark and claustrophobic. Low ceilings and dim lighting, a lot of passageways and stairways. I wish it hadn't been raining so we could have spent more time in the garden.
One of the most well known features of the House is the Infinity Room. It's a huge cantilevered windowed room that juts out over the Wyoming Valley.
Behind me in the picture above is a glass table that gives you a view of the forest floor below.
All in all, I think the tour was worth the admission, and I'd love to take a trip back to see the other sections. I'm particularly interested in the carousel and the organ room. Alex Jordan seemed like an interesting man. One of those guys like Howard Hughes whose genius was thoroughly mixed with madness. When we were leaving, Trevor said the same thing he said about Hughes after we saw The Aviator: "If he'd been around today, they'd have pumped him full of meds and he wouldn't have achieved anything."
I've got one more post to wrap up our trip! If you missed them, take a look at Part 1 and Part 2.
I would love to tour those gardens. Beautiful!
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