page_title: House on the Rock
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: House on the Rock / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: A view of the Infinity Room jutting out over the Wyoming Valley, from precisely .75 miles away to the North East at the official overlook station.
context_page_description: The House on the Rock is a tourist attraction located between the cities of Dodgeville and Spring Green, Wisconsin. Opened in 1959, it is a complex of architecturally distinct rooms, streets, gardens, and shops designed by Alex Jordan Jr.
context_section_description: Both of Jordan's biographers relate a story told by Sid Boyum, which places the inspiration for the house in a meeting between Alex Jordan Jr. and Frank Lloyd Wright, at some unspecified time between 1914 and 1923. Jordan Sr. supposedly drove with Boyum to Taliesin to show Wright the plans for a building, the Villa Maria in Madison. Jordan worshipped the famous architect and hoped for his approval. Wright looked at the plans and told Jordan: "I wouldn't hire you to design a cheese crate or a chicken coop. You're not capable." Fuming, on the drive back on Highway 23, Jordan pointed to a spire of rock and told Boyum: "I'm going to put up a Japanese house on one of those pinnacle rocks and advertise it."
  Balousek says Wright "apparently didn't forget the incident", noting that Wright "complained publicly to Iowa County officials about the house the Jordans were building" and bought a nearby piece of property, "perhaps as a way to get back at Jordan."
  The House on the Rock's website has posted information questioning the legitimacy of Boyum's story for the following reasons:
  The Villa Maria was built in 1923 and designed by well-known architect Frank Riley, not Alex Jordan, Sr.
  Both Sid Boyum and Alex Jordan Jr. were born in 1914 and would have been less than nine years old when this story was to have happened. Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) would have been over 50 years old and unlikely to have known the nine-year-old Sid Boyum.
  Frank Lloyd Wright was in Japan working on the Imperial Hotel project from 1916–1922 and would not have likely been in Spring Green when this story was to have happened.
  The legitimacy of this story is also questioned in the biography of Alex Jordan written by Tom Kupsh.  Tom Kupsh's book lists many of the same reasons as The House on the Rock website and also states that "The first agreement (an extended lease) with the Christianson family, who owned Deer Shelter Rock, was made some 30 years later in 1953 and no sign appeared at the road entrance until The House on the Rock opened to the public in 1960."
caption: The House's "Infinity Room" is visible from an overlook off of Highway 23, almost a mile (1.6 km) away
exif: {}