Seeing the House on the Rock Again (With Different Eyes)

Reminiscing from those years

Years passed between the time I worked at the House on the Rock and the time I began to think seriously about what I had experienced there. Life has a way of filling in the space. You move on. You work, raise a family, and take on responsibilities. The strange edges of earlier experiences tend to soften or fade altogether.

But some places don’t fade. They wait.

Over the years, I returned to the House on the Rock with family and friends, especially on the free days set aside for locals. It was a chance to see what had changed and to quietly revisit the years I had worked there. Each visit carried a mix of familiarity and distance — the place was the same, but I wasn’t.

One visit stands out. A fellow home inspector and friend called me one morning and suggested we stop by before heading to Madison for one of our monthly training sessions. We arrived just before opening and walked around the main area outside the exhibit. There was an exterior deck on the far side of a glass door overlooking the duck pond, and we stepped out to take it in.

When we turned to go back inside, the door was locked.

There we were — two home inspectors, locked out of the House on the Rock.

After a moment of disbelief, I finally caught someone’s attention inside and waved them over. They pushed the crash bar and let us back in. It was a small moment, almost funny, but it stayed with me. Even after all those years, the place still had a way of quietly asserting its own rules.

On later visits, I noticed changes. Additions. Adjustments made over time. Even the carousel had been altered — the flying female angels now discreetly covered in ways they hadn’t been before. It was a small thing, but noticeable. Proof that even something as singular as this place wasn’t immune to shifting sensibilities.

With age, the House felt different. Not larger or smaller — just clearer. What once seemed merely unusual now felt deliberate. What once felt excessive began to look purposeful. I realized I hadn’t just been around a collection of objects; I had been inside a mind at work.

Alex Jordan had built something that resisted easy explanation. It wasn’t meant to be practical. It wasn’t meant to be symmetrical. It didn’t follow the rules most structures do, either physically or conceptually. And yet it endured.

With time, I began to see the difference between eccentricity and vision. Eccentricity draws attention to itself. Vision builds something that holds attention long after the builder is gone. The House on the Rock did the latter. It didn’t ask to be understood so much as experienced.

I also began to think about obsession — not in the negative sense we often use the word, but as a kind of sustained focus that refuses to let go. Very few people can carry an idea for decades and continue to build on it without dilution. Fewer still are willing to let the world see it, unfinished and unapologetic.

What Alex Jordan created wasn’t tidy. It wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t restrained. And maybe that was the point. Some creations aren’t meant to soothe. They’re meant to challenge, to overwhelm, or to mirror the inner terrain of the person who made them.

Looking back, I understand why I didn’t have the words then. Some experiences require distance before they reveal themselves. They ask you to live a little, to build and abandon a few things of your own before they make sense.

I don’t pretend to know exactly what Alex Jordan was trying to say. I’m not sure he wanted to say anything at all. But I do know this: he built something that continues to ask questions long after he’s gone.

And maybe that’s enough.