9 Unique Houses In Ohio Worth A Road Trip: A UFO, A Ship, A Mushroom And More

Ohio is full of weird and wonderful things.

The homes on this list are no exception. Far from your cookie-cutter, suburban houses, these unique homes range from 8-sided construction to straight-up part of a ship set on land.

If you’ve been searching for the perfect excuse for a road trip, this may just be it.

Nine of the strangest houses in Ohio are the Flintstone House in Painesville, the Mushroom House in Cincinnati, the Gregg-Crites Octagon House in Circleville, the Benson Ford Shiphouse at Put-in-Bay, the double Futuro house in Carlisle, the Pyramid House at Pyramid Hill in Hamilton, Loveland Castle, Piatt Castle Mac-A-Cheek in West Liberty, and the Westcott House in Springfield. Three are private homes you admire from the road, and two open their doors a few days a year. The Pyramid House, both castles, and the Westcott House are open for tours.

Flintstone House

Artist Wayne Trapp hand-sculpted this house out of foam and concrete over a wire frame in 1970, a commission from a family with eight kids who wanted a playful place to grow up. He named it Le Chant du Cygne, French for Swan Song. Everyone else calls it the Flintstone House. News 5 Cleveland reported that the sellers and Trapp both hated that nickname. Inside, the beds are built into the walls, there’s a ball pit, and the main bedroom has a sunken grotto tub. It sold in late 2023 for $380,000, the first time it had been on the market in two decades, and it’s still a private home. You can see it from Cascade Road. MTV’s Extreme Cribs featured it in 2011.
Location: 7245 Cascade Rd, Painesville, OH

Mushroom House

University of Cincinnati architecture professor Terry Brown built this one-bedroom house in Hyde Park with help from his students. Work ran from 1992 to 2006, and it was his studio and second home until he died in 2008. There isn’t a straight line on it. Cedar shingles bulge like a cap, a glass room hangs off the side, the windows look like faces, and a bright orange spiral staircase climbs to the door. It’s still privately owned with no tours. The sidewalk on Erie Avenue is as close as you get.
Location: 3331 Erie Ave, Cincinnati, OH

Gregg-Crites Octagon House

George W. Gregg finished this eight-sided brick farmhouse in 1856, when octagon houses were a short-lived national fad, and Circleville, a town originally laid out in a circle, was a fitting place for one. The Crites family farmed it for generations, and in the early 2000s the land was sold to make way for a Walmart Supercenter. The Roundtown Conservancy raised the money to lift all 480 tons of it and roll it half a mile down the road in February 2004. Restoration finally started in August 2026, chimneys first. Tours run a few times a year, and the conservancy posts the dates on its Facebook page.
Location: 440 Crites Rd, Circleville, OH

Benson Ford Shiphouse

The Benson Ford was a 612-foot Ford Motor Company freighter, launched in 1924 and named for Henry Ford’s grandson. It hauled iron ore and coal across the Great Lakes until Ford retired it in December 1981. In 1986 a Cleveland salvage owner cut off the forward superstructure and set it on an 18-foot limestone cliff on South Bass Island, and it’s been a house ever since. Inside are the walnut-paneled staterooms built for Henry Ford’s own trips, plus five bedrooms, five full baths, a galley, and a pilot house that looks straight out over Lake Erie. The Kasper family of Kasper Auto Group has owned it since 1999 and uses it as a vacation home. It isn’t a rental. The owners open it for two ticketed public tours each summer (2026’s were June 14 and August 9, $40 a ticket, with proceeds going to island charities), and putinbay.com posts the dates. The rest of the year, the best view is from the water. The Miller Ferry from Catawba Island is how you reach the island in the first place.
Location: 1191 Ashburn Ave, Put-in-Bay, OH

Futuro House

Locals call it the UFO house. The real name is Futuro, a prefab fiberglass pod Finnish architect Matti Suuronen designed in 1968 as a ski chalet that could be dropped anywhere by helicopter. Fewer than 100 were ever built. Carlisle has two of them, joined by a tunnel, which makes this one of the rarest sights on the list. One pod spent years at Dayton Wright Brothers Airport before it was trucked here in the early 1980s. It’s a private residence on State Route 123, visible from the road.
Location: 9961 Central Ave (State Route 123), Carlisle, OH

Pyramid House at Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park

Unlike the five houses above, this one is open most days. Harry T. Wilks bought the land in 1987 and built himself a 7,000-square-foot home underground, lit through a glass pyramid roof and finished in 1992. Then he kept buying the hills around it, cut in roads and trails, dug small lakes, and turned the whole 470 acres into a nonprofit sculpture park with more than 70 monumental outdoor pieces. Park admission is $10 for adults and $5 for kids 6 to 12. The Pyramid House itself is open noon to 5 p.m. every day except Tuesday, and there’s a docent inside to answer questions.
Location: 1763 Hamilton Cleves Rd, Hamilton, OH

Loveland Castle (Château Laroche)

Harry Andrews, a World War I veteran and Boy Scout troop leader, started building himself a medieval castle on the Little Miami River in 1927 and kept at it for more than 50 years. He pulled the stones out of the river, and when the river ran out, he cast bricks in quart milk cartons. He died in 1981 and left the castle to his Scout troop, the Knights of the Golden Trail, who still run it. It’s open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., seven days a week from April through September and weekends only from October through March. Admission is $5, and kids 5 and under are free. They take cards, but not $100 bills.
Location: 12075 Shore Dr, Loveland, OH

Piatt Castle Mac-A-Cheek

An hour northwest of Columbus, two Piatt brothers built themselves stone castles three-quarters of a mile apart in the 1860s and 1870s. Abram Piatt’s Mac-A-Cheek, begun in 1864 and finished in 1871, has three stories, a tower, painted ceilings and heavy carved woodwork. The family started giving tours in 1912, kept living in it until 1985, and still owns it. The other castle, Donn’s Mac-O-Chee, sold to private owners in 2019 and isn’t open. Mac-A-Cheek’s 2026 season runs daily through September 7, then weekends 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through October 25. The grounds are free. The self-guided house tour is $15 for adults and $8 for ages 5 to 15.
Location: 10051 Township Road 47, West Liberty, OH

Westcott House

Frank Lloyd Wright designed exactly one Prairie-style house in Ohio, and it’s 45 minutes from Columbus. Burton Westcott, who ran a car company, had it built in 1908. After his death it was carved into five apartments and spent decades falling apart, until a Springfield foundation bought it and spent five years and $5.8 million putting it back together. It reopened as a museum in 2005. Guided tours are $22 for adults and $14 for students, and they sell out, so book ahead on the house’s website.
Location: 85 S Greenmount Ave, Springfield, OH

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