Showing posts with label tourist attractions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tourist attractions. Show all posts

Friday, February 22, 2013

The Palace of Depression


No, this is not the story of Disney Studios in the year 2000.  This is the story of a strange place my mother visited as a child during the Great Depression of the 1930's.

In Vineland, New Jersey, a stone's throw from where my mother grew up, there was an eccentric genius named George Daynor who purchased a junk yard, then proceeded to build a house out of the junk. The result was a whimsical compound he called "The Palace of Depression".  It must have been art, because the neighbors hated it.  Apparently they preferred a yard of random junk to its organized arrangement.