The Beer Can House

In the Montrose neighborhood of Houston stands a modest frame house covered from foundation to roofline in flattened beer cans, tens of thousands of them. The creator was John Milkovisch, a retired Southern Pacific Railroad upholstery worker who began the project in nineteen sixty-eight as a way to avoid mowing his lawn. He embedded beer cans and marbles into concrete to pave the yard, then started covering the house itself.

Over eighteen years Milkovisch replaced siding, fencing, and garlands with aluminum cans, creating a wind-chime symphony audible from the sidewalk. He died in nineteen eighty-eight. The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, a Houston nonprofit dedicated to folk and outsider art, acquired the house and restored it. It is now open for tours, a surprisingly touching monument to one man's retirement project.