"The Bottle House of Boswell" a Boswell Travel Page by Darby2

This unusual roadside attraction was built from over 500.000 discarded embalming fluid bottles. In 1952, David H. Brown retired from 35 years in the funeral business. It occurred to Mr. Brown that there should be some practical use to put the bottles to. And, it was all started, to quote Mr. Brown, "to indulge a whim of a peculiar nature".

Link to map of this area
Mr. Brown travelled western Canada collecting bottles from many of his friends in the funeral profession, until he had acquired 500,000 of the square shaped bottles, weighing 250 tons in all.

The house itself sits upon solid rock. Built in a cloverleaf pattern with three main rooms, circular shape, 48 feet in length, 24 feet wide and with the upstairs room, it contains 1,200 sq ft of floor space.

Entering the grounds, the visitors are welcomed by a mountain stream trickling over a moss-covered water wheel which brings to life the dwarf inhabitants nestled around the wishing well.

Over 320 dozen flowers border pathways and entice visitors from the terrace over a bridge also built of glass bottles. A winding path beneath the bridge leads to the rocky lakeshore and a lookout called the lighthouse which offers a spectacular view of beautiful Kootenay Lake.

Tours of the estate are available seven days a week, May to October. Gift shop also located on property just 25 miles north of Creston on the shores of Kootenay Lake.

The Glass House
Box 64
Boswell, BC
VOB 1AO
Phone: 250-223-8372
Fax: 250-223-8332
Email: glasshouse@kootenay.com

There was another bottle house built in Duncan, B.C. by George Plumb.

George Plumb bought a site measuring just over an acre in 1962; a year later, he set to work with 5,000 bottles. A former carpenter, he built his little five-roomed house out of every conceivable type of bottle, collected from local industries and donated by neighbours and visitors. Over the years, he used a total of 200,000 bottles."

"The structures around the main building included a Leaning Tower of Pisa, a Taj Mahal, a well, and a giant bottle of Coca-Cola, all constructed of bottles and cement. Plumb surrounded his buildings with animals, some of them sculpted in concrete, others carved in stone. In the gardens, paths between low walls led past flower beds to a small waterfall, water-lily and fish ponds, a totem pole and a small studio. After his death the complex was run as a low-grade tourist attraction, but it has since fallen into disrepair." 1

NOTE: The Glass Castle by George Plumb in Duncan BC has been destroyed. The land was expropriated to widen the highway and when nobody was interested in purchasing and moving the buildings, it was bulldozed. There was interest in preserving the site - a number of articles were written in local papers at the time - but things fell through.