BARTOW, Fla. — Have you ever heard of The Wonder House in Bartow?
Back in the late 1930s and 40s, before Disney, Universal and Seaworld, this house was a top tourist attraction in Central Florida.
Since then, it's been through several owners and then sat empty for years, slowly falling apart.
Now, a young couple is breathing new life into this old home and as history tends to repeat itself, they've opened the house up for tours to help offset the cost of renovations.
"Welcome to the Wonder House, we're going to be heading right up this way."
Drew Davis loves giving tours of his home.
The Wonder House was built in the late 20's by a contractor from Pittsburgh named Conrad Schuck.
Construction went on for years and caused so much curiosity that Davis says Schuck opened it to the public for tours in 1934.
"This is the reception room where Conrad first would have greeted guests when he was actually doing his tours. He would tell them initially about Florida history."
After several owners and then sitting vacant for years, the house fell into major disrepair.
Until a young couple decided to take on the challenge.
Davis and Krislin Kreis have been living in the house for 4 years, working to bring it back to its former glory.
And just this year, much like the original owner, Kreis says they started offering tours.
"We got our approval in March of this year and then we started doing tours at the end of June and we've been running them up until now."
The money from the tours goes right back into restoring the house and all its unique features.
"The Wonder House actually did have 16 porches. It was four stories above ground, two stories below ground and featured three escape tunnels. Only one of which we've actually located."
"Here, Conrad built in a little system where you could actually tap into the water in the walls and it would water all of the planters running around the entire house all at once."
Davis says the gadgets and inventions built into this home are just part of the reason it became such an attraction.
And a big reason Drew and Krislin want to preserve it.
"I would like to live in the house for the rest of my life. When I die, I want there to be something in place whether it's tours or just something where the house is more valuable as a house as a historical piece of property that others can enjoy and make that value higher than what it would be worth for developers to tear it down."
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