Inside the Cathedral of Junk

© Janet Jay / RumBum.com

The Cathedral of Junk is what you get when you combine bicycles, street signs in three languages, weathervanes, televisions, carabiners, Christmas lights, shopping carts, minikegs, and 60 tons of everything under the sun. It’s the kind of place that a visitor can get lost in – the Cathedral has three floors and a number of rooms, each of which hosts its own jumble of junk. It is, as one visitor said, “like a junkyard set to music.”

The Cathedral was born in 1988, when South Austin resident Vince Hannemann began tinkering in his backyard. “People started asking what I would call it, and I wasn’t really sure – it was just me playing in the backyard,” he explained. “So I just counted up the yards and this was number 11, so I called it Yard Space 11.” It was Hannemann’s mother who dubbed the budding structure Cathedral of Junk, and the name stuck. The Cathedral has no entrance fee, just a box for contributions, and Hannemann keeps it open most days of the year. The sign at the front says it all:

NO MINORS WITHOUT ADULT

OPEN DAWN TO DUSK 365

LEAVE THINGS AS THEY WERE

“It is like a cathedral in a lot of ways,” said Hannemann. “It’s used for weddings and special events, and it’s a community project, like many cathedrals: all the stuff is donated. People help me out that way. They don’t help build it, but the stuff they bring helps build it.”

The shape of the structure, jutting skyward, does remind one of a spire... and a windmill, and an observation tower, and a lighthouse, and the crow’s nest of a pirate ship. And that’s just it: this is one man’s labor of love, but it’s also a great example of Austin’s gleeful weirdness. Next to an antique Pepsi can sits a silver can of “Pork (with juices)”. Because really, who wants canned pork without juices? A room or two away sits a ceramic pumpkin – the exact same pumpkin that this reporter painted at a ceramics birthday party when she was 10. The Cathedral’s pumpkin is far cooler, however, because it sports a stylish tinfoil monocle.

A recent Saturday was cold but sunny, and the Cathedral was full of visitors. There was a birthday party going on, and little boys were running everywhere with lists for a scavenger hunt. “Can you show me where that one bicycle is if I ask you?” yelled one as he sprinted past. The male half of an adorable 20-something indie couple pointed out some of the structural components that kept this multi-level beast safe and sturdy: throughout the structure, flowerpots are cemented into, onto and through the support beams. When asked what his favorite part of the Cathedral was, one small boy ran out and brought back a small chainsaw.

It’s the small things that make the Cathedral so engrossing. CDs are used as decorations: one room included Frogger; CDs by They Might Be Giants and the Backstreet Boys; and the free AOL CDs that were annoyingly ubiquitous a decade ago. There’s a marionette hanging not far from a giant spoon. A rubber monkey mask sits somewhat disturbingly inside an empty television screen. An original Nintendo controller hangs near a small, orange, rubber fish. There are innumerable bicycle wheels, hubcaps, and steering wheels. There is a cast-iron cupcake pan.

Right now, the Cathedral is going through some growing pains. The neighbors aren’t particularly fond of it, for one thing, though it can’t really be seen from the road. Hannemann has more than enough visitors and has declared that he will no longer grant interviews, on the grounds that they’re repetitive and don’t really do him any good. He knows that as time goes by more and more guests will come traipsing through his backyard, bringing both good and bad. He will probably have to put up cameras, he says, just for peace of mind.

“The whole public aspect of it is a very difficult thing to live with,” he explained, sitting next to a crackling fire. “I have to get used to—I’m kind of a curmudgeon and anti-social, really, which makes it kind of ironic that what I did to get away from the whole world actually ended up attracting the whole world. So what it is about me subconsciously that made me do that? I don’t know, honestly.”

Sometimes, people try to sneak in at night to steal things. Many things in the Cathedral can be picked up and moved, and there are many cool things in the Cathedral to covet. But so far, Hannemann’s honor system is working pretty well.

“People probably leave as much as they take,” said Hannemann. “I would feel more sorry for whoever took something, if they did it on purpose, because that would be kinda pathetic, you know? I might feel sad but then I’d probably have to pray for them, because they’re probably cursed.”

**UPDATE** The City of Austin is trying to tear down the Cathedral of Junk. To help save it, head to the activist site, Save the Cathedral of Junk.

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