The Kaleva Bottle House in Michigan was built in 1941 by John J. Makinen using bottle wall construction. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Sites and is open to the public for guided tours. The walls provide insulation and are fire-resistant. The house is now a museum for Michigan history. Bottle houses can be found in other regions of the world.
The Kaleva Bottle House is a house in Kaleva, Michigan that was built of glass bottles. This remarkable structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Sites and is also listed by the State of Michigan as a historic site. Visitors to Kaleva often make time to visit the Kaleva Bottle House, which is open to the public for guided tours on certain days during the summer months and by special arrangement.
The house was built in 1941 by John J. Makinen, a Finnish immigrant who happened to own a bottle manufacturing company. As evidenced by the bottle bottoms, many of the bottles used in the Kaleva Bottle House came from the Makinen factory. To build the house, Makinen laid bottles on their sides and cemented them together, in a technique known as bottle wall construction. The bottoms of the bottles face outward and Makinen has carefully arranged the bottles to create colorful patterns and designs, writing the words “happy home” on the front of the house.
Besides looking pretty intriguing, there are some distinct benefits to building bottle walls. The walls of the bottles are very thick, by their nature, and provide a lot of insulation, which can be very useful in the Michigan climate. In the winter, a house with bottle walls would be warm, and in the summer, thick walls would help keep the house cool. The bottle wall construction is also very solid and fire resistant, although of course the house is covered in wood and fitted with wooden window frames inside.
Alas, John J. Makinen died before he could move into the Kaleva Bottle House, and the house was eventually acquired by the Kaleva Historical Society, which opened it to the public after an extensive renovation. The Kaleva Historical Society also uses the house as a museum, housing various artifacts of interest from Michigan history. Many of these artefacts are related to the Finnish Kaleva community and founders.
Bottle houses can also be found in other regions of the world, and people continue to build them or use bottle wall construction to create accents in their home. The Kaleva Bottle House has become especially famous thanks to the meticulous preservation of the structure and the efforts of the Kaleva Historical Society, which works hard to preserve the history of the region.
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