The Enchanted Castle: Straight out of the Fairytale Books
Colleen Moore, a silent screen star of the 1920s (bigger than Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford in her time), was always fascinated by dolls and doll houses. As one of the most popular actresses in Hollywood, she had the resources to produce her dream house: a miniature “Enchanted Castle” of fantastic proportions. Moore hired more than 700 skilled craftsmen to help with the fairytale project, including surgical instrument lighting specialists, leading interior designers, Hollywood set designers, architects, Beverly Hills jewelers, and Chinese jade craftsmen. The price tag for this 10 X 8 X 7 foot palace containing over 2000 miniatures and decorated with real jade, ivory, gold, mother of pearl, diamonds, quartz, and precious stones, was nearly $500,000 (equivalent to nearly six million today).
The house has running water, circulated with a centrifugal pump. There are gilded fixtures with working spigots, fountains, and alabaster pools. Electric bulbs the size of a grain of wheat were made by the Chicago Miniature Lamp Company, a manufacturer of lighting products for surgical instruments. Priceless and rare objet d’art, including artifacts thousands of years old, decorate the house. In the library, Moore has 65 miniature books on display that were printed in the 18th century, along with the world’s smallest Bible, printed in 1840. Moore also commissioned one-inch square leather-bound books and asked prominent writers of the mid-century to record their thoughts in them. Just a sampling of the authors who complied include Noel Coward, Edgar Rice Burroughs, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Randolph Hearst, Arthur Conan Doyle, Sinclair Lewis, Irving Stone and John Steinbeck. The library’s “autograph book” contains the signatures of six US Presidents, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Winston Churchill, Charles DeGaulle, General Douglas MacArthur, Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Ford, Pablo Picasso and many others.
Where is the Enchanted Castle now? If you’d like to see it, the castle is on permanent display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
To learn more about it and how to visit (plus see pics!), click here:
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