The House on the Rock is a tourist attraction located between the cities of Dodgeville and Spring Green, Wisconsin. Opened in 1959, it is a complex of architecturally distinct rooms, streets, gardens, and shops designed by Alex Jordan Jr. Background Both of Jordan's biographers relate a story told by Sid Boyum, which places the inspiration for the house in a meeting between Alex Jordan Jr. and Frank Lloyd Wright, at some unspecified time between 1914 and 1923. Jordan Sr. supposedly drove with Boyum to Taliesin to show Wright the plans for a building, the Villa Maria in Madison. Jordan idolized the famous architect and hoped for his approval. Wright looked at the plans and told Jordan: "I wouldn't hire you to design a cheese crate or a chicken coop. You're not capable." Fuming, on the drive back on Highway 23, Jordan pointed to a spire of rock and told Boyum: "I'm going to put up a Japanese house on one of those pinnacle rocks and advertise it". Balousek says Wright "apparently didn't forget the incident", noting that Wright "complained publicly to Iowa County officials about the house the Jordans were building" and bought a nearby piece of property, "perhaps as a way to get back at Jordan". The House on the Rock's website has posted information questioning the legitimacy of Boyum's story for the following reasons: The Villa Maria was built in 1923 and was not designed by Alex Jordan, Sr., but by architect Frank Riley. Both Sid Boyum and Alex Jordan Jr. would have been less than nine years old when the meeting was said to have happened, while Frank Lloyd Wright would have been over 50 years old and likely wouldn't know about the young Sid Boyum. Frank Lloyd Wright was working on the Imperial Hotel in Japan from 1916–1922 and likely would not have been in Spring Green when this meeting was said to have happened. The legitimacy of this story is also questioned in the biography of Alex Jordan written by Tom Kupsh. Tom Kupsh's book lists many of the same reasons as The House on the Rock website and also states that "The first agreement (an extended lease) with the Christianson family, who owned Deer Shelter Rock, was made some 30 years later in 1953 and no sign appeared at the road entrance until The House on the Rock opened to the public in 1960."