Beer Can House: Houston's Best Kept Secret

I have friends who have lived in the Houston area their entire lives and never knew the Beer Can House existed. They were amazed when I told them about this strange and hidden treasure.

Yet hidden away in a suburban neighborhood of Houston (Malone Street off of Washington Avenue) lies a house that was redecorated entirely in beer cans. This story goes back to 1968 when John Milkovisch, a retired employee of Southern Pacific railroad, began decorating his patio with pieces of strange items such as buttons, marbles, brass, and rocks. He even dug up his lawn and replaced the grass lawn with debris of all kinds before covering it in cement. What a decorator he must have been and what a patient and understanding wife he had! I wonder if his neighbors were as understanding and what they must have thought at the time.

That was just the beginning! Next he decided to redecorate the house and began to replace the exterior of his house with his version of aluminum siding: flattened beer cans! Eventually, his decorating extended into the interior of the house, including the walls which were made of cylinders of beer cans of his favorite beers.

Evidently, John must have been a happy man because he drank a lot of beer. For the next eighteen years he drank about a six-pack a day that generated over 39,000 cans of beer. He then used the empty cans to decorate his house both inside and out. He even made curtains from the pull-tabs off the beer cans. He linked them into long streamers. It was almost like having wind chimes for curtains. On a breezy day they would make a musical, tinkling sound as they blew in the wind.

Although both John and his wife Mary have since passed away, the Orange Show Foundation purchased the property to restore the Beer Can home of John Milkovisch. The plans are to preserve the house for future generations and convert the interior into a public exhibition space to tell the story of John Milkovisch and his house.

Currently, until the restoration has been done, the house is not open to the public. You can still drive by and view the outside (there is plenty to see). The last article I read about this stated that there is a caretaker living in the house now.

If you are in the area, go check it out. Bring your friends who come to visit and give them something to talk about when they return home. After all, it's not every day that you see something like this, is it?