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Mary Nohl's Eccentric, Eclectic House to be Relocated to Sheboygan

ribarnica, flickr

Tourists will soon have to travel to Sheboygan to take in the Mary Nohl's art, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.For years, Mary Nohl's home was known to many Milwaukeeans as the "witch's house."

The front yard of her lakefront home in Fox Point was elaborately, and mysteriously, decorated with large stone heads, figures made of driftwood, and small recreations of ancient ruins, all of which may have contributed to her unfortunate nickname. Nohl has also come to be appreciated as an outsider artist who dedicated her life to creating an ever-changing artistic environment at her beloved home. 

She passed away in 2001 but her house remains a tourist destination and a national landmark.

Today it wasannounced that the house will be dismantled and relocated from its Fox Point location to an undetermined site in Sheboygan.

Many artists and Nohl enthusiasts would like to house to stay put, but Fox Point residents do not support the zoning changes required to keep the house at its current location, according to the Journal Sentinel.

Fellow artist Barbara Manger befriended Nohl late in her life. Manger's book, Mary Nohl: Inside and Outside, explores Nohl's unusual art and complex personality by recounting Nohl's early life, her formal art training and her artistic process.

Listen to a Lake Effect interview with Barbara Manger from 2009: