One of the two stages of our Future Goals plan focuses on one of Bottle Village’s most remarkable surviving original structures—the Round House and Rumpus Room.

Created by artist Tressa “Grandma” Prisbrey, the Round House is an approximately 25-foot-diameter sculpture and one of the few substantially complete original structures remaining at Bottle Village. To create it, Grandma excavated nearly two feet below ground level to form its base and floor, giving visitors the feeling of stepping down into a world entirely of her own making.

Our goal is to carefully reinforce and stabilize the Round House and the Rumpus Room so that its original features and decorative elements can be restored as closely as possible to the condition in which Grandma left them.

Whether visitors will ultimately be able to enter either sculpture will depend upon further structural and preservation studies. If direct access is not possible, we plan to install a live video feed, allowing visitors to explore the interior from the new Visitor Center and experience details that might otherwise remain unseen.

Come explore this extraordinary three-dimensional space, and be sure to follow the links to historic photographs showing the Round House’s remarkable interior artistic tableaux as they appeared before the 1994 Northridge earthquake.