THE LONELIEST HOUSE IN THE WORLD
ON AN ASHEN, late-November day, 60-mile-per-hour winds frothed the waters of Lake Michigan, cowed a stand of evergreens, and violently rippled the stem-to-stern protective house-wrap covering the House of Tomorrow. Though the structure maintains its iconic layer-cake silhouette against the gray sky, beneath the insulation, much has changed since it arrived here in 1935. Years of exposure to the elements have yielded thick brown rust on the exterior steel porch railings, while the metal railings inside, kept bone-dry by preservation efforts, remain their original stark white. Previously encased in glass, the home is now darkened by protective plywood blotting out the sun, save for one temporary pane.
The one-of-a-kind architectural wonder has been in survival mode for more than 80 years. Constructed as an attraction at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, the house has weathered its share of storms and strong wind advisories, plus a move across state lines and bouts of both neglect and restoration attempts gone wrong. Still, it stands. Not bad for a model home that took less than three months to construct and was never meant to endure beyond the exposition, much less be inhabited.
When it debuted, the dodecagonal (that’s 12-sided) glass-and-steel home, with floor-to-ceiling glazed single-pane windows on its second and third floors, offered
