10 Facts That Prove Florida Is America's Craziest State

By Susan S /

4. Xanadu House €“ Kissimmee

Labelled a home of the future, the Xanadu House of Kissimmee appeared to be made of wasp spit and Styrofoam. Part of a franchise, the strange Who-ville house had cousins in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. Marketed as low-cost and energy-efficient, the Florida house designed by Roy Mason was the most popular with over a thousand visitors a day. Opened in 1983, the future soon passed the Xanadu House by. By the 1990€™s the Xanadu€™s cutting edge technology was antiquated. It used mismatched video and stereo components that were easily upset by the whir of a camera, the fake fireplace€™s VHS was splotchy, and the rooms were so small it could have doubled as a vacation home for the dwarves of Gibsonton. As the community around Kissimmee continued to grow because of Disney, it became interested in real energy efficiency and €œhomes of the future.€ In 1996, the Xanadu house closed its Styrofoam door. It was bulldozed in 2005 to make way for some other roadside curiosity or another gated community.