Hidden treasures abound at house of history

Hammargren's collections draw thousands of curious onlookers during annual viewing

Clockwise from top, Hammargren sings as he plays the Liberace piano. A Clark Gable dummy leaps from a plane in Hammargren?s yard. Hammargren walks through the Liberace Easter egg. The doctor?s current project is a model of Stonehenge. The collection also includes a model of the Thomas & Mack Center at UNLV. Onlookers admire the memorabilia in Hammargren?s home during the open house on Nov. 2. The staircase at the top of the photo once was used by Liberace. PHOTOS BY MARLENE KARAS/VIEW PHOTOS BY MARLENE KARAS/VIEWClockwise from top, Dr. Lonnie Hammargren stands among various space vehicles at his home, 4318 Ridgecrest Drive. He opened his home to the public on Nov. 2 in honor of Nevada Day. Hammargren looks through a telescope on the roof. Inside, there is a stained-glass dome and miniature buildings. PHOTOS BY MARLENE KARAS/VIEWClockwise from top, Dr. Lonnie Hammargren stands among various space vehicles at his home, 4318 Ridgecrest Drive. He opened his home to the public on Nov. 2 in honor of Nevada Day. Hammargren looks through a telescope on the roof. Inside, there is a stained-glass dome and miniature buildings. Clockwise from top, Hammargren sings as he plays the Liberace piano. A Clark Gable dummy leaps from a plane in Hammargren?s yard. Hammargren walks through the Liberace Easter egg. The doctor?s current project is a model of Stonehenge. The collection also includes a model of the Thomas & Mack Center at UNLV. Onlookers admire the memorabilia in Hammargren?s home during the open house on Nov. 2. The staircase at the top of the photo once was used by Liberace. PHOTOS BY MARLENE KARAS/VIEW Advertisement

It all started with an innocent little butterfly collection. Over the years, it has grown until it nearly fills three houses and spills out onto the grounds. The collection now includes harpoons, a bathysphere, an iron lung, a Batmobile, a cosmonaut's life mask, two desks and a staircase that were owned by Liberace, a working planetarium and Bugsy Siegel's toilet.

A sign outside proudly proclaims that this is the House of Hammargren, established June 21, 1972, but it goes by several names. Another sign reads Castile Del Sol, but that's only the name of the original house. The compound now includes three homes, two of which are connected by bridges and walkways.

These days, the owner prefers to call it The Hammargren Home of Nevada History.

Any tour of the place can only scratch the surface of the oddities and treasures within. The same can be said of its owner, recently retired neurosurgeon Dr. Lonnie Hammargren. His patients have included headline entertainers, motorcycle daredevils and boxers, even though he is a vocal critic of the sport. He was a combat surgeon in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit in Vietnam. He is an astronomer and historian, and from 1995 to 1999, he was the lieutenant governor of Nevada.

For what it's worth, he's also the honorary consul to Belize.

"I've been working on the collection for 65 years," Hammargren said. "I think it went from just collecting to being a museum around 1975."

Hammargren came by much of the collection by simply going places that were being torn down and asking for items, according to friend and business associate Bob McCaffery.

"He used to beg and grovel, but now a lot of times, they just call him up and say, 'Come and get it.' They love him at the crane company," McCaffery said.

The museum reflects Hammargren's eclectic interests, often in multiples spread across the property. The planetarium with its dome and precision projector is augmented by an open-air observatory in which he has carefully marked the position of the sunrise on the summer and winter solstices. Hammargren's homage to an even more primitive celestial observatory, Stonehenge, has been under construction for years. Currently, he is waiting for a shipment of salvaged copper plates for that project.

Just off the kitchen is the Teddy Roosevelt Room. Hammargren's resemblance to the former president has been featured prominently in his political campaigns. A giant water tank can be viewed through faux portals in the room. Like much of the house, it has gone through many changes and has a rich history behind it.

As Hammargren tells the tale, the tank was used in a dolphin show at the original MGM, on the site of the current Bally's.

"What they used it for was a dolphin act with a girl who swam in a very sensuous way with the dolphin," Hammargren said. "I'm not sure if the animal rights or the feminist organizations would put up with that today."

The casino wanted the tank out of there, but it was only a tiny bit shorter than the doors, so there was no way to wheel it out. It was offered to Arby Alper, who built what is now Henderson Executive Airport. He rolled it out on a bed of sand, which functioned as millions of tiny ball bearings. Hammargren ended up with it to settle a debt. It went in an area in his yard that had previously held the old basketball scoreboard from the original court at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

"I used to tell people I had a shark tank in the backyard," said Hammargren, referring to former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian's nickname, Tark the Shark. "Now, I've got an actual tank."

The tank was featured prominently during the filming of his wedding to his wife, Sandy, by the television show "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," in part because he got the original tank performer to return, sans dolphin. As if that wasn't strange enough, the performer bumped and cut her head on the tank, creating a bloody spectacle for the cameras that even Hammargren couldn't have engineered.

Hammargren has a penchant for acquiring unusual items and making them even more unique. The tank for instance, is decorated with giant Roman columns, and the display inside changes depending on where it is viewed from.

"From the living room, you can call it what you want," Hammargren said. "From the front on the outside, it's a model of the Parthenon. From the other side, it's the Lincoln Memorial. From over there, it's the Nautilus, and from the other side, it's undersea Atlantis."

In what has become an annual tradition, Hammargren opened his house to the public on Nov. 2. Sale of refreshments and a $5 per person donation requested at the door will benefit the Living Grace Home for homeless pregnant teens. The admission cost didn't slow down the crowds, as vehicles were parked for blocks in all directions from the compound.

Hundreds of visitors wandered the labyrinthian structure. Although Hammargren intended to highlight three particular collections, it was hard to see that for all the crowds and artifacts. The spotlighted collections were the Howard Hughes exhibits -- in honor of the 62nd anniversary of the flight of the Spruce Goose -- the European Space Agency's Columbus Laboratory exhibit, and signs and memorabilia from four recently imploded Las Vegas hotel/casinos.

The event was not so much a tour as an open house, with volunteers peppered throughout answering questions as best they could. It was a cheerful and raucous event, as performers sang on a makeshift stage outside and visitors explored every nook and cranny of the place, including a few that weren't part of the tour. At one point, a couple of young men carrying beer strolled through a desert tortoise enclosure. The third house, for reasons of familial privacy, was closed off from the tour.

Hammargren hopes that the museum will continue on after he's gone. In fact, he doesn't intend to leave.

"I've got my tomb in the cellar," he said. "I've looked into it, and it's perfectly legal to be buried on your own property here."

The tomb is below the original house and is accessed through an underground garage full of even more of the collection, including the basket from the hot air balloon featured in the 1956 film "Around the World in 80 Days," Evel Knievel's Messerschmitt motorcycle, and a rare boat-tail Rolls Royce that was retrofitted to cross streams of water.

"It was made originally in England, sort of like a modern Humvee. It was made to patrol in India and kill the natives," Hammargren said. "This was a military Rolls Royce. They're so rare that many Rolls Royce collectors say they don't exist, but they're wrong."

The tomb contains a sarcophagus that opens and closes via a pulley. Inside is an iron lung. The tomb is decorated with ancient Egyptian-style paintings, featuring an Egyptian neurosurgeon with a nude nurse. "This is my ego ideal, a person named Imenhotep," Hammargren said. "He was the first known physician by name, and the first known astronomer by name, and first known architect by name."

Hammargren estimated that around 4,000 people attended this year's open house.

"It was a great success," he said, adding that he intends to do it again next year.

To keep up with Hammargren's plans and ever-growing collection, visit his Myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/hammargren_lasvegas.

Contact Sunrise and Whitney View reporter F. Andrew Taylor at ataylor@viewnews.com or 380-4532.