Keeping Wonder Alive
Inside the ongoing restoration of Bartow’s legendary Wonder House.
Photos by Jordan Randall
August 26, 2025 seemed like any other Tuesday morning for Bartow Fire Chief Jay Robinson.
He was in the process of finishing his normal morning routine for a day on shift at the station when suddenly a voice entered his head: You don’t want to go to work today.
On a sunlit afternoon in Bartow, Krislin Kreis sits beneath a vaulted ceiling painted dark blue and dusted with gold stars. Her voice carries through the rooms as she describes the details—the hollow rain-collecting columns, the mosaic floors, the stories hidden in the walls. She smiles, half tour guide, half caretaker. “It’s not just a house,” she says. “It’s an idea someone refused to give up on.”
That idea belongs to Conrad Schuck, a Pittsburgh contractor and stone quarry dealer who moved his family to Florida in the 1920s after doctors told him he had one year to live. Determined to leave something behind, Schuck began constructing a home nestled at 1075 Mann Rd that would defy time. He called it the Wonder House.
The Original Wonder
Built with concrete, repurposed railroad steel and bedrock pulled from the property itself, the four-story home consisting of more than 5,700 square feet became one of Florida’s strangest landmarks. Schuck never drew blueprints, he built straight from imagination. Once the centerpiece of his 14-acre estate, the Wonder House remains unlike anything else in the area.
The walls measure 18 inches thick at ground level, and the entryway ceilings are adorned with interchangeable hand-painted oil murals. Even the home’s basic functions were genius for their era: rainwater was collected and fed through the house by gravity, and the architecture was engineered to draw in natural cross-breezes that kept it cool during hot Florida summers.
By the 1930s, Schuck was hosting tours of his eccentric creation, earning the house a reputation as one of the state’s roadside attractions. As Krislin likes to say, “It was Disney, Bok Tower and the Wonder House.” Despite what doctors predicted for Schuck, he ended up living until 1971; he passed away at the age of 94. He and his nine children spent over a decade building the house—and never lived in it.
“It’s not just a house. It’s an idea someone refused to give up on”
A Modern Keeper
Nearly a century later, the Wonder House still inspires fascination, and it’s largely thanks to Krislin. A TV and digital photography teacher at Union Academy in Bartow, she and her then-partner Drew Davis purchased the property at auction in 2015. At the time, it was uninhabitable: no plumbing, no power, no furniture and plenty of mystery. At the time, Lloyd Harris, a Bartow historian and chairman of the Polk County Historical Commission, was an advocate for keeping the house alive. “It’s certainly tragic that a house of that historical significance is falling into ruin,” said Lloyd in an article in The Ledger. “It’s another old home that, if something isn’t done, is headed for destruction. In years to come, people will wonder how we lost that treasure.”
They moved in anyway.
Since then, the pair has worked tirelessly to restore the 20-room home to Conrad’s original vision. Though the two separated in 2022—Drew now lives on the bottom floor—Krislin remains the driving force behind the restoration. “People make too much of a big deal about it,” she laughs. “We both still love this place. It’s bigger than either of us.”
Her life before the Wonder House could fill a novel of its own. Originally from Estonia, Krislin once worked in marketing for the fashion brand Chico’s in South Florida. She’s also, in her words, “a mermaid by trade,” occasionally performing for birthdays and those close to her at Florida’s famed Weeki Wachee Springs. These days, she spends late nights sanding floors, rewiring lights and piecing together the home’s past through old photographs and stories shared by Schuck’s descendants.
When she’s not leading tours or working on renovations, she’s teaching middle schoolers how to see the world differently—through a camera lens or a story. “I tell my students that history is alive,” she says. “And I get to prove it every day when I come home.”
Restoring with Purpose
When Krislin first began peeling back paint and replacing fixtures, she found layers of renovations that didn’t align with Conrad’s vision. “Everyone before me had added their own ideas,” she says. “But I want to bring back his; the innovation, the craftsmanship, the weirdness.”
She’s learned to do much of the work herself: electrical wiring, flooring, yard work. The rest she hopes to tackle with help from local tradespeople willing to teach her. “There’s so much knowledge in this community,” she says. “If people want to share it, I’m happy to be a student.”
One of Krislin’s favorite parts of the house that is easily overlooked: the hundred-year-old cardboard stencils Conrad’s grandchildren used to pattern the floors. She talks about them with the same energy most people reserve for art museums. “You realize how far ahead of his time he was,” she says. “He didn’t have money or tools, but he built things that still work a century later.”
The front grounds of the Wonder House are lush with greenery: towering trees, flowering plants and even a papaya tree or two swaying in the breeze. Just past the driveway, two small bridges guide you into a thicket of dense foliage. Tucked among the greenery near the bridges, there’s a whimsical little well that hides in plain sight, almost as if it’s waiting to be discovered. And if you’re anything like the resident dog, Joan of Bark, and look closely enough, you’ll notice hints of something even more mysterious below—secret tunnels woven beneath the property.
Restoration here is a constant process of rediscovery. In the kitchen, Krislin’s favorite piece is Schuck’s rotating cupboards—cabinets that spin on different mechanisms, allowing you to rotate the inner shelves as well as the outer cabinets. Upstairs, she’s preparing to restore the fish pond on the balcony, a shallow ornamental pool where fish once swam just steps from the living space.
Her guiding principle through it all: “What would Conrad do?”
The home originally constructed in the 1920s and 30s by Conrad Shuck has one of a kind windows and floors, vast outdoor porches and even a casket, which pays homage to the fact Shuck reportedly displayed a casket in his home as a reminder that doctors told him he had one year to live—but he ended up living for more than five more decades.
“I don’t think of myself as the owner. I think of myself as the keeper. My job is to make sure it keeps being a place of wonder.”
Surviving, Teaching, Restoring
Like many small attractions, the Wonder House faced uncertainty during COVID-19. Tours stopped, income slowed and repairs stalled. But Krislin refused to give up.
“The house has survived a century of hurricanes, termites and neglect,” she says. “It wasn’t going to lose to a pandemic.”
Today, tours have returned, often themed around holidays. Tours take place throughout the year, mainly on weekends, with $25 adult tickets directly supporting the home’s restoration. Visitors come for the architecture but stay for her storytelling. The Wonder House even caught national attention when it was featured on Netflix’s “Amazing Interiors” in 2018.
Krislin is quick to clarify that she doesn’t lead ghost hunts; she shares “intrigue,” the whispers and folklore that have become part of the Wonder House’s identity. “People love the mystery,” she says. “But what keeps them coming back is the creativity behind it all.”
Keeping the Wonder Alive
Decades after Conrad Schuck first began building his dream, the Wonder House continues to evolve. The columns still collect rainwater, mosaic floors still shimmer and in every corner, there’s evidence of one woman’s devotion to preserving a piece of Florida’s imagination.
“I don’t think of myself as the owner,” Krislin says. “I think of myself as the keeper. My job is to make sure it keeps being a place of wonder.”
She pauses, then smiles the way someone does when they know they’re exactly where they’re meant to be.
“I’m not just keeping the lights on,” she says. “I’m keeping the wonder alive.”
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