The (Golden Pyramid) House is on Fire
6In Illinois, Jim Onan is famous for his garage company, the theme hotel he built in Gurnee (which I think is long-closed), a tv commercial for a senior community he built which featured a game room with a gigantic mural of Dogs Playing Poker, and BUILDING A GOLD-COVERED PYRAMID HOUSE AND LIVING IN IT.
Last month, it caught fire and one side is damaged. According to son Rocko, they will rebuild.
Here’s an article about the fire:
https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20180717/fire-burns-off-a-side-of-gold-pyramid-house-in-wadsworth
Here’s a video of the home in more gold-plated times:
You can tell it was decorated in the early '80’s.
I am very proud of Jim Onan for having such a weird dream and making it happen, and then living in it for 30-odd years, and happy it didn’t burn down entirely. We need more dreamers and eccentricity in the world.
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Cool house. We have an igloo house here.
@sammydog01 Fantastic! Have you been inside?
@mossygreen Nope, it’s private. You can see it from a bridge- it’s right on the river. This article has some photos.
http://www.modernrichmondtour.com/blog/mrt-recap-shearman-associates-igloo-house.html
@sammydog01 Aw. It looks pretty stunning all around. Thanks for the link!
I love theme homes!
Currently watching Amazing Interiors on Netflix. Normal looking houses on the outside, extravagant/weird/wonderful on the inside.
Anytime I go to a theme park that has a castle type theme or the walls look like stone with flickering lantern lights, I imagine how nice it would be to have that in my own house.
@RiotDemon Oh yeah, love those flickering lanterns. Then you get some hidden spot lights in complementary colors behind key pieces of furniture to really make everything POP and suddenly you’re in a '60’s Vincent Price horror movie.
If I were fabulously wealthy, I would recreate the set of the Night Gallery episode “The Return of the Sorcerer.” It has a giant mural of the Ace of Cups card from the Thoth Tarot deck. Which is not in this picture:
@mossygreen this one?
@mossygreen just looked up that episode:
Did the set have a fire pit? Haha.
@RiotDemon Yes indeed.
It’s a great episode, one of the best of the series (helps if you love Vincent Price and Bill Bixby). It’s just so weird in that perfect Night Gallery way.
@mossygreen @RiotDemon Vincent Price was my favorite actor when I was a kid.
@mossygreen @sammydog01 never heard of the show. Sounds fun.
I watched another episode of the Amazing Interiors show. It features an entirely pink interior. My eyes were hurting. The article isn’t as eye searing.This is an older interview, so her house is updated a bit from this:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/1389688/woman-who-wears-pink-clothes-lives-in-a-pink-house-and-even-owns-a-pink-dog-has-officially-been-named-the-worlds-pinkest-person/
Is it @Barney’s cousin?
@mossygreen @RiotDemon I got curious about tarot wall stickers, and found these. There are more, and hey, they’re removable…
@mossygreen @RiotDemon @sammydog01
Yuck, pink.
@Barney @RiotDemon @sammydog01 Pfft. Amateur.
@Barney @mossygreen @RiotDemon @sammydog01
Oh that’s just so, so wrong, but in a good way.
@OldCatLady I love wall vinyls. I have a giant cherry blossom tree in one room. I only paid $6 for. It was tough to put up all the pieces.
We have the Cape Romano Dome House down here in Florida. Or, I should say we did. What’s left of it is now steadily sinking into the sea. It has an interesting backstory, which you can read on its Wiki page here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Romano_Dome_House
@PooltoyWolf That is tragic and beautiful.
@mossygreen I know, right? Really sad that someone tried to save it, but failed. It was at the time a technological and ecological marvel, but now just a husk of its former self. At least some photos of the interior in its heyday have survived!
WE have this one. It was on the market in May for a mere 1.5M.
@cf1 That one looks like it was built to avoid the Hounds of Tindalos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hounds_of_Tindalos
But was it Anthroposophists?
@mossygreen I found an older article that explains the why of the house. I had forgotten the Gaudi influence.
Mushroom House
Another interesting Florida home in Miami. Built by hand, but no one knows how.
https://coralcastle.com
/image Coral castle house exterior Miami
@RiotDemon That is an ancient alien pyramid according to your potential future House of Representatives delegate.
@sammydog01 lol, hadn’t heard.
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/miami-herald-endorses-bettina-rodirguez-aguilera-who-claimed-alien-abduction-10647753
There’s a few out our way. Here are two of the strangest.
Oddly enough, they are across the street from each other.
@2many2no Top one reminds me a little of Niki de Saint Phalle.
I drive by this house several times a week. There’s a now a big blue tarp over it.
Having just been inside late last year, I can say the early 1980’s decorations are still there. The house looked exactly the same inside as in that youtube video.
@zachdecker Hey, that’s right, we’re in the same general vicinity. I went to a pizza place you recommended in a thread somewhere. Was it Kaiser’s?
@mossygreen Yep.
I still haven’t made it to Quonset.
Usually these unusually constructed houses have to be financed in full by the owner up front.
Normal financing won’t touch these projects, since the resale value is believed (by money persons) to be somewhere between zero and completely unreliable.
This happens even is the construction design is obviously proven-superior (such as hurricane-proof, or fireproof, or tornado-proof, or incredibly cheap to heat/cool/maintain).
Houses are supposed to be “conventional” even if that sucks.
/image “weird house”
/image “tire house”
