‘Home is in the heart.’ What’s next for The Crooked House, 16 years after the Milesburg project started
Sitting only 5 feet from the curb, a restored stone hearth from the original home and the foundation for a facade sculpture can be seen from Market Street.
The Crooked House at Homecoming Park began as Benjamin Fehl’s graduate studies project at Penn State. The architect and creative director from Philadelphia planned to finish his thesis and move away.
Sixteen years later, the project has had many beginnings, stories, sequels and has dubbed Fehl as “that guy” in Milesburg. In the latest step of the journey for Fehl and his public art project, The Crooked House was recently granted 501(c)(3) nonprofit status and is a first-time recipient of the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau Tourism Grant.
It all started for Fehl in 2004, when he purchased a 163-year-old carriage house with the intention of restoring it. But the former home of Abigail Miles, a niece of the town founder, began to lean as layers of wallpaper and finishes were removed over a six-week period — peeling back enough to uncover a stone fireplace inside a wall and eventually, removing the front of the house.
With the new nonprofit status and financial boost — which joins grants the project has received from The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Puffin Foundation and others — Fehl and the house’s board of directors have set their sights on remaining construction work and public access to the unique sculptural installation.
“We are very excited for this new chapter of The Crooked House project,” board president and Milesburg native Jennifer Spence said in a press release. “The nonprofit status will give us the tools necessary to keep growing and sharing this project with the community, visitors to the region, and others who want to be involved.”
A house at its most basic — a door, windows, roof and fireplace — resembles a child’s drawing, Fehl said, and The Crooked House — a life-size sculpture — examines the “essence of home.”
“It’s not about memorializing a home for somebody that’s famous,” he said. “But rather, memorializing the home itself. I think that’s one of the most important things that we have in our life. It’s transient — home is in the heart. You can take it with you; it’s not a physical thing.”
Just as Paris is made up of more than the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, Centre County is more than Penn State sporting events, Fehl said.
“You come to State College for a football game or the Arts Festival, and that’s the big event,” he said. “But if it wasn’t for all the little things — the coffee shops, the people and the parks — then, nobody would come.”
The Crooked House is just one piece of the whole, and he hopes the project will give reason to visit Milesburg, come back and explore the outlying pockets of the county.
“I don’t think (art) should just be in galleries or in our home,” Fehl said. “Milesburg, I think, was an ideal place for that. It’s a rural community that isn’t exposed to abstract art. They have the Doughboys statue, but they don’t have something like this, and I’m hoping that it will help bring people to the area as a stopping point and build up the community and Centre County’s network of artwork.”
Though progress has been delayed “slightly” due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Fehl hopes the project will wrap up within the next year. Until then, visitors are welcome to sit and have lunch on temporary benches outside of the home, use chalk to draw on an interior wall or sign the guestbook.
Although the finish line is much closer than years ago, Fehl’s original plan to leave Centre County has changed.
“I think I’ll stick around,” he said with a smile.
For more information on The Crooked House, visit http://www.thecrookedhouse.net/.
This story was originally published June 28, 2020 at 8:00 AM.
