Halcyon House

"It came from Halcyon House in Washington, DC," a museum curator once told me about an old Italian doorframe now in the Fralin Museum of Art. "It's one of the oldest houses in the capital but Mark Twain's nephew bought the property and built and built and built on it. There was just so much in it that things had to come out and this was one of those things."

Much like the famous Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, Mark Twain's nephew felt compelled to expand his house to no end. According to a note left at the Fralin, he built rooms inside of rooms and staircases to nowhere. The nephew apparently believed that so long as he kept putting up and tearing down, he would never die. He, however, did pass on and the end result of his labor was a Frankenstein's monster sort of place that is still completely fantastic to see.

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