Bottle

Village

Tressa

Prisbrey

Introduction

Tressa (Grandma) Prisbree (1896 – 1988) was a senior citizen who created a

valuable architectural site at age of 60. The site is located at 4595 Cochran Street in

Simi Valley, California and is called the Bottle Village.

Grandma Prisbrey started constructing the structure in 1956 and made it from glass

bottles, cements mortar, and numerous found objects. Over the next eighteen years

she built the numbers of small buildings, mosaic walkways, 22 sculptures,

fountains and wishing wells which totally covered the entire 1/3 acre site. Grandma

began constructing the Village after a visit to Tom Kelly’s Bottle House in 1950s.

She got inspired by the idea and decided to make some changes to her and her

husband‘s residence.

She started with building a 30 foot bottle wall and then created her first pencil

house using thousands of pencils, in order to exhibit her large collection of pencils.

The Doll House, the Cabana, the Bottle House, the Second Pencil House, the

Rumpus Room, the Round House and many more are the structures that Grandma

created over 18 years.

Mosaic walkway with imbedded ceramic & plastic objects

Mosaic walkway with imbedded ceramic objects

Wishing well constructed of blue Milk of Magnesia bottles

Mosaic walkway built by Tressa Prisbrey on right, addition built by volunteers early 1980’s on left.

The Cabana load bearing bottle masonry ruin.

Material:

Tressa Prisbrey broadly used bottles, pencils, carpets, woods, signs, dolls, ceramics,

picture frames, and many other objects as the main medium of her construction.

She also used cement mortar as the bonding agent. All materials are artist’s hand

pick and in fact she collected them during her daily trip to the local dump.

Bulding material consist of :

Floor material : linoleum, cement, bricollage

Wall material : horizontally laid bottles, mortar

Roof material : wood frame, corrugated metal, aluminum

Bottel glass & cement wood & corrugated metal ceramic & plastic, metal

Construction:

The Bottle Village construction technique is based on wood framing, joints and

connections, and load bearing masonry walls.

1- Wood framing: The traditional wood framed timber platform construction is simple

in concept, but requires adequate details. All wood components used in Bottle Village

are 2” x 2” members which made it easy to cut and handling.

Wood framing detail Wood framing detail

2-Joints and connections: Wire nails using face, end or toe nailing are the main medium

of connection. Face nailing is the strongest among others and there is no continues

connection in Bottle Village.

Face, face, end and toe nail connections exhibited on the platform frame construction structures at Bottle Village.

Face Nail End Nail Toe Nail

3-Load bearing masonry walls: Based on the American Concrete Institute and the

American Society of Civil Engineers there are three types of load bearing walls,

reinforced or unreinforced masonry, single or composite masonry, and solid or cavity

masonry construction.

In the Bottle Village, Grandma Prisbey used two types of unreinforced load bearing

and framed structures. In load bearing masonry top floor and walls are supported by

wall, therefore the wall must get thicker top to bottom. However the unreinforced and

framed masonry of Bottle Village with no foundation was unsuitable method for

seismic area of Simi Valley. Therefore the large area of Village damaged due to the

1994 Northridge earthquake.

Bottle Village of Grandma Prisbey is a good example of using low-cost material. In

fact she created an artistic village with no experience in construction. She applied the

sense of creativity, to the material which we easily throw them out daily. The recycled

or low-cost materials can be very useful if applied in a right and functional plan.

Original bottle masonry wall along east edge of property, ca. 1955

Pencil House (b. 1955-56) on left Bottle House (b. 1955-56) on right

Bottle House (b. 1955-56) on right. Bottle House (b. 1955-56) on right.