Where It Began

Chris Siriano grew up in the little country town of Riverside Michigan, a small farming community about 2 miles Lake Michigan. His father Tony Siriano had a deep passion for history and loved to share the things he learned about in their deeply rooted Italian family and about world history. It was during these early years that Chris also felt a passion for history and went on to major in history and political science at Western Michigan University. After graduating with a Bachelor Degree he came back to S.W. Michigan and began studying about local history. Nearly everything Siriano uncovered had some toe to the House of David. Either being invented by, built by, owned by, or somehow affected by the House of David…..Siriano made the decision that this famous chapter in local history needed to be saved and shared. It was after several years of intense research and amassing quite a large collection of rare items, Siriano decided it was time to start a museum and thus in the spring of 1997 he founded the House of David Museum and has never looked back! The museum nearly immediately acquired national attention after Siriano held the very first House of David Baseball Team Reunion with 14 of the old original players from their famous whiskered teams! Every media thru the Midwest showed up to film and interview the old players, all of which passed away only a short few years later. The House of David Museum grew and grew in popularity and size, hitting over 100,000 visitors and over 80,000 artifacts several years ago. ESPN rated the House of David Museum the #3 Baseball Museum on the North American Continent back around 2010 and a book was written about that called “The 100 Best Baseball Places to See before Striking Out”.

Siriano’s museum would go on to be written about in nearly every major media across the country, including many tv stations and radio broadcasts. He was interviewed in 2018 by Sports Illustrated for a fascinating Podcast created! Siriano has helped create an animated film about the House of David by a nationally famous cartoon artist, made a documentary film back in 2010 and authored two books about the House of David story.

He spent over 25 years around the House of David colony members learning every tiny aspect of their lives and story, and has documented those years thru thousands of pages of notes, tens of thousands of original photos, filmed interviews, and a mountain of research and travel.

Chris has a daughter Ali Siriano who now has two children of her own.

Making Documentary Films

Music at the House of David

Vaudeville

Back in the “Roaring Twenties” much of America was fascinated with what was called “Vaudeville” shows, which were super talented groups of comedians, singers, dancers, magicians and musical groups that traveled the country in the Vaudeville circuits and entertained the entire country long before televisions and the big screen. The House of David had many of the country’s leading Vaudeville acts and was rated in the 1920’s as the “Top Vaudeville Act” in America by both the NY Times, Los Angeles Times, amongst many other medias around the country!!! Most of this amazing talent came from Australia as the group of 85 had joined back in 1908 with actors, actresses and more!! They went on to teach many of the original House of David members how to perform on stage, and never looked back!! Hundreds of thousands of tourists and locals were entertained like never before when the House of David began Vaudeville Shows right here in Benton Harbor. And soon after the H of D Maestro Chic Bell, who also came from Australia, saw a need for the local youth to be able to get interested in musical careers and show off their own talents here locally, so he created the “Chic Bell Wednesday Night Amateur Show” which was a gigantic success!! Many locals started their own musical careers right there on the House of David Main Stage thru the next 50 years!! Here are some of those rare images that show how much fun they were creating along the roads to Vaudeville!!

The Trains

The Train Yard

It’s now 107 years later and the fascination of those little House of David steam engine trains lives on just as strong as ever!! The fact is that the story of the trains being a part of our lives here in Southwest Michigan was never a planned thing according to history.
It all started in the year of 1904, when Benjamin Purnell and his wife Mary, along with several of the House of David messengers and pillars attended the 1904 St. Louis Worlds Fair, with the intention of not only recruiting members to their newly found faith in Benton Harbor Michigan, but also to introduce to the world their newly invented waffle cone which was a creation that was soon to excite all of America!! The success of both of these objectives was absolutely gigantic, but what they did not know on their way to St. Louis was the fact that the Cagney Brothers steam engine company had contracted with the city of St. Louis to help facilitate bringing in the gigantic crowds from remote areas, and then transporting those tourists throughout the setting of the World’s Fair. Benjamin Purnell was so astonished and impressed by the ease of this new form of transportation, that while they were St. Louis he negotiated the purchase of two of those little steam engine trains (since he was creating his own little Disneyland type park, he knew he could probably use this same mode of moving tourists). After the end of the World’s Fair the House of David sent two of their men back to pick up the trains and bring them here to Benton Harbor. At that time the colony craftsman began to entirely dismantle one of the trains into a gigantic amount of tiny little parts and pieces. After extensively studying all that went into building those trains the colony began perfecting what they discovered and creating their own versions, but history shows that the House if David trains were much better built and more durable than the original Cagneys ever were. So from 1905-1908 the colony constructed 8 little 15″ steam engine trains to be used at their newly built railway. And with the experience of the Baushke brothers, who had been manufacturing carriages for many years, the colony was able to create an amazing quality passenger car for those little trains (if you look closely at photos of the little passenger cars you’ll see that they are nearly identical to a horse carriage!!). In the spring of 1908 the amusement park was opened and the introduction of the worlds largest miniature Railway was to be a media sensation that would never end! According to colony records roughly 500,000 tourists frequented the amusement park for the next 65 years!! The memories that Lloyd Dalager shared with me in regards to his times as the steam locomotive engineer of the little railway were so fascinating, and he recalled many times all eight of the little trains would be running around the mile long track, all at the same time!! He told me that a certain number of pulls on the little steam whistle would signal certain actions that others in the park were supposed to respond to. Since Lloyd arrived at the House of David back in 1918, he did not recall any major problems with the railway, except for one time when one of their favorite wealthy farmers tried to drive his horse and buggy over the tracks near the south depot and Lloyd was driving the train around that last curve as it enters into the depot. Lloyd said he sounded the train whistle over and over again but the farmer must not have hear him because of the music in the park. He said at the very last minute he jumped off of the train just before it hit the very tail end of the carriage. To his delight he looked up and saw that neither the farmer nor any of his passengers were injured in the crash and only the locomotive was slightly damaged!
Here are a small handful of super early images of those famous House of David trains, including the very first train that came out of their little production shop, as well as an image of one of the curves being layed at their railway. One of the proudest days of my life was back in 2003 when I actually was able to locate and purchase the very first built House of David train. Today that very train has been fully restored and is now once again operating at the park!!

Pearlized Statuary

Possibly one of the MOST collectible and sought after items in local history has to do with the famous artwork created by the House of David Arts Department and specifically Italian artist Frank Rosetta. With some of the most unique and often very controversial statues, Rosetta made a name for himself starting back in 1923 as a fun pastime which soon fell into a gigantic new enterprise of the whiskered colony. His artwork became a fast addiction of the hundreds of thousands of visitors to the park each year, and Frank Rosetta eventually created nearly 1,500 different pieces of art in his reign. The statues were finished with ground-up fish scales and called “Pearlized Ivory”. Some consider it the highest quality Art Deco statuary ever made! Starting around 1930 Rosetta began to create magnificent award winning floats in the famous Blossom Parade and won the Grand Prize every year for 36 straight years!! He was featured in National Geographic Magazine back in 1944 and was written about in medias around the world. He was able to acquire permission to set up a building in the 1933-34 Chicago Worlds Fair which set the business on fire for years to come!! I was fortunate enough to acquire Frank Rosetta’s personal sketch pads and have included 2 of his amazing drawings here!! He became a world renowned artist and will never be forgotten by the spectacular works he leaves behind.

Baseball

The Baseball Room

Because of the fact that baseball was America’s absolute most favorite pastime, and because every small town and farm in America wanted to put out a baseball team to represent their hometown boys, the House of David was never at any lack of finding a great game and a great team to play against. They had hundreds and hundreds of requests to play games across America that they could just not fill, simply because it was not possible to play more than two or three games per day. Around 1925 they invented what’s called the “pepper game” of baseball, which went on to be an extremely famous part of the fifth inning stretch, consisting of a comical act between three players throwing the ball quickly between each other, around their back’s, around their necks in between their legs, only to have the baseball disappear. The crowd would go from ecstatic loud cheering to total silence. The House Of David whiskered players would look around and no baseball was found, and all of a sudden one of the guys would pull his beard up in the ball was stuck underneath his chin. The crowd would then roar with laughter, and the game would continue on. It was a great time in baseball history, when comedy was just as much of the game as it was seriousness. Because of the The House of David’s love for the Negro League baseball teams, they began to realize that because they were such a huge draw in baseball that they could demand doubleheaders all over the United States. So they began to schedule doubleheaders in towns that before their arrival had never allowed a Negro team to play on their baseball field. But unbeknownst to the hosting team, the House Of David would show up with two buses, one with their white with your team and one with the Negro League team just sitting outside of town quietly waiting for the go ahead to come into town to play. My old friend Lloyd Dalager, who was the last living member of the baseball team years ago, told me that one of the most tense moments of their careers would be to enter the managers office at these hosting doubleheader games, to announce that prior to the House Of David playing that host team, they would be playing this unknown Negro league team that was sitting in the House Of David bus just outside of town. And old Lloyd Dalager told me that with this announcement, the managers offices in the stadium would instantly erupt with swear words and punching of doors and walls, and tons of tension. But Lloyd says that every single time somehow these host teams would agree to play the House Of David and allow these Negro League teams to play first, and would threaten them that they would both never be allowed back into their stadium after this doubleheader. But ultimately because of the hilarious, fascinating and talented Negro League teams, the stadiums would be filled with pleasure after learning how phenomenal these unknown teams really were. At the end of the day the House Of David team along with these Negro League teams would be invited back year after year to play in towns and stadiums all around America that they were never allowed to even enter prior to our whiskered teams. What a great legacy of baseball history our guys left behind…!!!
Can you also add pics of each of the movie covers thru the years?