Beer Can House

Beer Can House
The front of the beer can house on Malone Street
A shed at the Beer Can House showing how the walls are covered with flattened beer cans

The Beer Can House is a folk art house in Rice Military, Houston, Texas,[1] covered with beer cans, bottles, and other beer paraphernalia.

Houstonian John Milkovisch worked through the late 1960s to transform his Houston home at 222 Malone Street into the Beer Can House.[2] It is a folk art monument to eccentricity and recycling. The Beer Can House is now one of Houston's most recognizable folk art icons. It is covered with flattened beer cans, bottle caps, bottles, and other beer ephemera. The house is estimated to include over 50,000 beer cans.[3]

Milkovisch started his project in 1968 inlaying thousands of marbles, rocks, brass figures and metal pieces in concrete blocks and redwood, all of which were used to make patios, fences, flower boxes, and an array of other items. The result was a yard with no grass, as the entire front and back yards were covered with cement. When asked why he did it, John simply answered, "I got sick of mowing the grass."

Today, the Beer Can House is owned and operated by The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, a non-profit organization founded in 1980 to preserve and present works of extraordinary imagination and provide people the opportunity to express personal artistic vision.

On March 2004, John Milkovisch was named Man of the Week on Spike TV. In 2010 comedy news site Cracked.com said, "if there's ever a vote on who the awesomest guy ever was, John Milkovisch ought to at least be on the ballot."[4]

References

  1. ↑ Feser, Katherine. "Rice Military an eclectic 'urban center'." Houston Chronicle. Sunday January 21, 2003. Business 6. Retrieved on October 21, 2012.
  2. ↑ Blumenthal, Ralph (March 7, 2008). "A Man's 6-Pack Can Serve as His Castle.". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-03-08. From 1968 until his death 20 years later, Mr. Milkovisch, an upholsterer for the Southern Pacific Railroad, not only emptied 50,000 cans or more of his favorite beverage but also put the containers to good use, cladding his house and workshop with thousands of maintenance-free flattened beer cans (Falstaff was a favorite) and shading the sun with garlands of tinkling beer can tops and tabs.
  3. ↑ Ramit Plushnick-Masti (July 29, 2013) "House of cans: 1 man's quest to throw nothing away, even beer cans, becomes Houston landmark", WinnipegFreePress.com. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
  4. ↑ http://www.cracked.com/article/216_7-insane-true-stories-behind-worlds-most-wtf-houses_p2#ixzz17Fywd8gM

External links

Coordinates: 29°45′49.37″N 95°25′9.24″W / 29.7637139°N 95.4192333°W / 29.7637139; -95.4192333

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