John J. Makinen Bottle House

A house built with over 60,000 glass soda pop bottles

Photos 

Overview Looking Southeast

At first glance, this looks like any house in your neighborhood, but on closer inspection, you'll see 60,000 bottles that comprise the walls of this unique dwelling.

Mr. Makinen was a Finnish immigrant who operated a soda bottling company. (Seeing that the house is in Michigan, perhaps I should say he operated a pop bottling company?) The bottles, of course, all came from his company.

Photo taken by J.R. Manning in August 2020

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Map 

National Register information 

Status

Posted to the National Register of Historic Places on July 9, 1987

Reference number

87000423

NR name

Makinen, John J., Bottle House

Area of significance

Architecture

Level of significance

National

Evaluation criteria

C - Design/Construction

Property type

Building

Historic function

Single dwelling

Current function

Museum

Period of significance

1925-1949

Significant years

1939; 1940

Tags 

Update Log 

• August 14, 2020: New photos from J.R. Manning
• August 3, 2020: Updated by J.R. Manning: Updated GPS Coordinates

Sources 

• Wikipedia
• J.R. Manning - Lugnuts969 [at] gmail [dot] com
• National Register database - Reference number 87000423 (Search for documents)

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