Wonder House is a large concrete property located in Bartow, Florida. It became a tourist attraction in the 1930s and remained so until the 1970s. In recent years it has once again opened its doors to the public.
The History Of Wonder House
In 1877, Conrad Schuck was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he grew up to be a successful building contractor and stone quarry dealer.
In 1926, while in his late 40s, Schuck was told by doctors he only had a year to live, so he packed up his bags and moved his family to sunny Florida.
After settling in Bartow, Florida, he began the construction of Wonder House, not knowing if he would live long enough to see the building completed. Because Schuck didn’t anticipate living very long, he didn’t make any blueprints.
After excavation for the house began, he found that he was soon digging into bedrock. Being a stone dealer by trade, Schuck decided to use the rocks to his advantage, he decided to build his four-story home out of concrete over stone, reinforced with railway steels that he purchased locally.
The ground floor was built with 18-inch thick walls, made almost entirely from the land it was built on. However, because Schuck never felt that his house was truly finished, he never actually lived in the property.
Despite not living in the property, he opened his house to the public in 1934. Tours of the home were 25 cents, and he continued to keep the house open for tours until 1963. Wonder House was then sold a year later to the DuCharme family.
Schuck lived until 1971; he was 94 years old when he died, more than 40 years on from when he was told he had just a year to live.
Schuck’s Design Of Wonder House
The floor plan of Wonder House is designed in the shape of a cross, with each of the rooms opening up to two porches. This plan was to provide a cross draft in each room to help with the Florida heat in the days before air conditioning.
The porches were designed with hollow concrete columns, which would gather rainwater from the roof and supply cooling insulation as well as supply water for the planters.
Underneath the property, which they dug 22 feet down, was once a pump room; however, the pumps are no longer in use. Above that, at 12 feet below ground level, is a storage room that was created for fuel and pipes which were laid to feed the terrace pool.
One of the unique features of Wonder House is the living room ceiling, constructed with removable panels; each one could be taken down and redecorated separately without the need for decorating the entire ceiling at the same time.
Another unique feature is one of the third-floor porches which features and 8 x 10-foot fishpond. The tiles used on the fishpond were imported from seven different countries, smashed to bits, then a mosaic created by Schuck himself.
In total, Wonder House features eighteen rooms, three full baths, two half baths, with at least four doors in every room, many with crystal doorknobs.
Back in the 1930s, Schuck decorated the house with an interesting collection of oddities; this included jarred snakes, taxidermy, and a coffin.
The House After the Death Of Conrad Schuck
The DuCharme family were the next owners of Wonder House and, actually, the first people to truly live in the home. After purchasing the property in 1964, they finally completed construction. The family didn’t make many structural changes. However, they did add air conditioning, enclosed one of the porches to create a breakfast room, and remodeled several bathrooms.
The DuCharme family continued the tradition of house tours for the first few years of living there, opening their house to the public at Christmas up until 1972.
In 1999, Lucy DuCharme passed away, leaving the property vacant; it was then purchased by Chuck Heiden and his wife, Helen. They lived in the house until 2011 when they divorced; the house then fell into foreclosure and was abandoned in 2012.
Between 2012 and 2015, the house was purchased and abandoned by two further buyers before finally being purchased by Drew Davis and Krislin Kreis.
Wonder House Today
In 2015 Drew and Krislin made it their mission to restore Wonder House to its former glory. They purchased the property at auction for only $162,750.
Fans of the Netflix show ‘Amazing Interiors’ can watch the restoration process on the show. The house had no electricity, water leaks, and a severe termite infestation.
Their efforts finally paid off in 2019 when the city of Barstow approved a zoning variance allowing the couple to open their home to paying guests on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
Tours of Wonder House must be booked in advance and cost between $20 and $25. No photographs can be taken inside the property, which means there is very little of the interior that we can show you; if you can’t get to Florida and want to see the interior, check out the Netflix show.
If you like Wonder House, check out Mystery Castle and Tolstoy Park, both of which have similar stories to this property. In both instances, the owners were told they didn’t have long to live, moved somewhere new, built a house, and lived for decades longer than expected.
