In 1965, Hobart Brown, welder, sculptor and founder of the Kinetic Sculpture Race, bought the big brown building on Main and Brown streets in Ferndale. Prior to Brown buying the building, it was an Old West saloon, with a brothel, gambling room and lawyer’s office upstairs.

Brown turned the notorious building into an eccentric art gallery and home.

The downstairs was a giant open room with a bar. Brown built small rooms around the side of the building, 22 total, out of wood found on the beach and recycled.

When the building was a saloon, it was luxurious and plush. Brown changed every piece of decoration and a lot of basic layout things as well. “There are secret passageways all over the building,” said Brown’s apprentice and future building owner Ellin Beltz. Beltz is buying the gallery from Brown’s heirs (Brown died in 2007), but the sale has yet to go through.

Beltz said she hopes to restore the gallery and house and turn them into a living museum, the way Brown had it when he was living, charging a dollar to give tours of the upstairs. “The only way to keep a place like this is to keep it alive,” said Beltz.

When Brown was alive, he rented out rooms to make ends meet, usually to artists. That tradition continues, as there are three artists living in the house now.

Throughout the house there are sculptures and contraptions. “He made things to amuse himself, not because it made sense to anyone else,” said Beltz.

The upstairs features a working kitchen with canisters labeled “Eye of Newt,” “Bat Wings,” “Bees Knees” and “Bat Warts.” They really just contain average kitchen items like coffee and spices.

Beltz met Brown in 2002 at a garage sale. When she expressed an interest in learning how to weld, Brown offered to teach her. Now she visits the house to work on some of the designs she and Brown sketched out before he died.

The workshop is adjacent to the kitchen and covered with bits of metal.

The living room and dining room are separated by the original doors to the building, which hang from the ceiling by giant chains. In the dining room sits the original craps table from the gambling room. It’s turned upside down to accommodate a real table.

The walls are a collage of posters and art. In 1992 the plaster fell off the walls and instead of redoing it, Brown and the residents of the house spray-painted and put up posters.

As Brown’s health failed, the house fell into disrepair. Beltz has been trying to repair things as she can. The roof used to leak, so she put copper tiles in the attic with the extra metal in the welding workshop. When the roof is eventually redone, she’ll get the copper back and use it in a sculpture.

“No metal goes to waste at Hobart’s Gallery,” said Rick Fergison, a longtime friend of Brown’s and a Baron of the Kinetic Sculpture Race.

Fergison is staying in Brown’s bedroom, but often moves around depending on which rooms are open or which beds suit his back.

“It’s a fun place, but I’ve been here for two earthquakes and this place likes to rock ’n’ roll.”

To truly understand the craziness that is Hobart Brown’s house, one has to see it for one’s self. There are hidden passageways behind portraits, a secret loft room, a pulley stair system and art around every corner.