I have many hundreds of photos of the Swiss Family Treehouse into Tarzan's Treehouse. Some of them start to look the same after awhile (particularly given the low resolution). The following ones nicely capture the change, though, and show some real live destruction!
The first two photos are from March 9, 1999, the day after it closed. You can see that hardly anything had yet changed:
I took this one on March 18. You can tell the sign was being carefully preserved for future sale:
A week later they were still filling up dumpsters with all that trash somebody had put on the tree thirty-seven years before:
By March 28, the ship's wheel still sat untouched, though the rest of the room was gone:
The final ones are from April 5, and show destruction in action! While a worker up above saws off a limb (yeah, you read that right), another one down below hacks at the base of the tree:
By hanging to watch the construction so much, I did manage to snag my own branch, courtesy of Bruce Gordon. He actually had to do a bit of scrambling to get it for me. And, of course, he offered no help for how to get it out of the Park! Rather than blithely try to walk out of there with a branch, I took off my sweatshirt and then carried that in my hands like I was holding a baby. Nope, nothing suspicious there! To my surprise, I encountered no problems. This is what it looked like when I got it home:
I just realized the anniversary of my branch acquisition is on Tuesday; I'll have to throw a proper celebration when I get home!
Hey, thanks for paying a visit to my blog, I've been a fan of your blog for a while now. This post is great and your idea on a restrospective on park "deconstruction" is really fantastic - and darn funny (branch acquisition! haha). I'm looking forward to more pictures soon and seeing what else you have to put up. Hard to believe that it was nearly 10 years ago that the Tree House was converted to Tarzan's playground... I must be getting old.
ReplyDeleteI know I say this all the time, but you're such a dork. But that's what I love about you :P
ReplyDeleteI have such fond memories of this attraction. When I was a kid I wanted to live in that treehouse so badly. Wait, I still want live there! My wife has equally strong memories about the SFRTH. I bought her
ReplyDeletea limited edition print of the concept art with one leaf from the original foliage, which is probably the single most successful gift I've ever given her. If I'd had a whole branch...wow!
Ooh, painful photos! I viewed them all through half-closed eyes to dampen the shock to my system. The Swiss Family Treehouse was my childhood dream home, as I'm sure it was for so many people.
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