Crooked Houses

 

No, you are not looking at a manipulated image or a deliberately distorted photograph, that really is what the house looks like.  It puts me in mind of the title of one of Alice Cooper’s albums: Welcome to My Nightmare.

The house is located in Sopot, Poland and was constructed in 1923.  It houses restaurants, bars and shops and is a significant tourist attraction.  It is also the most photographed building in Poland.

It is known as Krzywy Domek in Polish, which translates to The Crooked House. 

It is approximately 4,000 square metres in size and is part of the local shopping centre.

View a panorama, one where you can do 360 degree turns, up, down etc with your cursor at:

http://panoramy.zbooy.pl/360/show.html?max=1&p=sopot-krzywy-domek&lang=e&t=32

The house was designed by Szotynscy and Zaleski, who were inspired by the fairytale illustrations and drawings of Jan Marcin Szancer and Per Dahlberg.

Some further views of Krzywy Domek:

 ...and some other crooked buildings:

Located in the West Midlands, England and known as The Crooked House  (of course) and Siden House (“siden” meaning “crooked” in the local dialect), the above house was built in 1765 and was originally a farmhouse.  Today it is a pub.  The incline is a result of subsidence caused by mining.  It was to be demolished in the 1940’s but was purchased and made safe by a local brewery, its sinking having been arrested by buttresses.  The building's incline creates optical illusions of bottles and marbles rolling uphill.

Kids Crooked House is a business manufacturing a range of children’s playhouses, all crooked and cartoonish.  The business was started when dad Glen was disappointed to see his kids glued to the TV and computer, rather than playing outside.  With cousin Jeff, who also had a son of the same age, they built some playhouses modelled on the wonky lines of houses in cartoons.  Soon the other local kids wanted one too and a business was born.  Today they manufacture a range of crooked children's playhouses:

Crooked house, San Francisco.  Nahh, that’s not true.  The house is straight, the road is crooked, and the photographer turned his camera to align with the road, rather than with the house.

One that needs no identification

 

 

 

The Ettamogah Pub, a recreation of the cartoon pub of Ken Maynard.  There are now Ettamogah Pubs at a number of locations within Australia.  The pub as depicted in Ken Maynard's cartoons looked like this...

 

 

 ...and, of course ...