This Unique, 'Scaly' Minnesota House Looks Like Something Out Of A Cartoon

Minnesota is home to some very unique pieces of architecture that really capture the imagination and hold some real history in the world of building design.

From a Flintstones-style dome home in Duluth to a "floating house", and even a gas station designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, there are a lot of one-of-a-kind structural gems scattered across the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

While the photo above doesn't do it much justice, this Southwestern Minnesota home is another one of these architectural wonders that bucked design norms and has a cool story at the same time.

Referred to as the Jacob Harder House, this circular home is one of only two homes designed by architect Bruce Goff to be built in Minnesota. Goff, who was from Kansas, saw most of his designs built in Oklahoma, with others built in Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois.

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The other Goff design was the Glen Harder House, which was also built in Mountain Lake, but was destroyed by a fire in the 1990s. The Glen Harder House drew design influences from Asian architecture, using lots of angles and straighter lines than the curved Jacob Harder House. You can see photos of it here.

Bruce Goff had a design portfolio of around 500 projects, with only about a quarter of them actually getting built. Goff was one of only a few U.S. architects Frank Lloyd Wright considered to be creative, according to an article in Life from 1951. In the article, they explained that Goff liked to use circles in his designs, saying circles are "informal" and "friendly".

The Jacob Harder House was built in the 1970s, designed for the parents of Glen Harder. Using a largely round design, it plays into Goff's love of circles. Described by A Guide to the Architecture of Minnesota as looking “somewhat like a pregnant spaceship, sheathed in fish-scale shingles which really look more like chicken feathers.”

This house still stands in the southwest part of Mountain Lake, catching the eye of locals and visitors as they pass by.

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Page through the photos in the Instagram post below, and you'll see what they mean.

You can get another perspective of the green, scaly-looking home by paging through this Instagram post, below.

If you want to take a peek inside of this home, it isn't an easy endeavor as it is a private residence and there is only one photo I could find online. The second photo in this tweet from Midwest Modern offers a glimpse inside from under the main dome of the house.

Beyond that, you could draw some conclusions though from some of the interiors of some of Goff's other designs, as seen below:

And now, for another unique Minnesota architectural design - known as a "hobbit house", check out this underground home in Hastings, Minnesota: