The big silver flying saucer on the roof of the Odyssey strip club in Tampa FL is a familiar landmark to passers-by. Most people think the UFO is just a marketing gimmick, but in reality it is a relic from a futuristic housing design from the 1960s.
For those who don't know, I live in a converted campervan and travel around the country, posting photo diaries of places that I visit. I am currently in Florida for the winter.
Tampa Bay is noted worldwide for its sunny weather, warm-water beaches, and exotic tropical landscapes. But there is another attraction here that draws many tourists but is less talked-about in public—Tampa Bay is one of the strip-club capitols of the US. We rival Las Vegas in the number of strip clubs and “adult entertainment” establishments.
One of these is the 2001 Odyssey. Located on Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa, it has the usual confection of strippers, lap dances and soda (but no alcohol—it’s illegal to serve booze in a full-nude club). People who drive by on Dale Mabry, moreover, can instantly recognize the big silver flying saucer on Odyssey’s roof, which is a well-known local landmark. Most people think it is just a marketing gimmick (its interior serves as the “VIP Lounge” for well-off customers). In reality, the Odyssey’s UFO is a remnant of an idealistic effort in the 1960s at designing a futuristic house.
The 1960s were a period of optimism in a world which had only recently emerged from the carnage of the Second World War. The global economy was booming, there was a stream of technological wonders such as computers, touch-tone telephones, and space travel, and the future looked like a never-ending wave of optimism.
In Finland, the hardships and horrors of war had faded, and the country was prosperous and confident. With a disposable income that was steadily rising, Finns began looking for ways to fill their leisure time, and one of these was skiing.
And that gave Matti Suuronen an idea. Suuronen had once been a member of the Finn national volleyball team, but was now an architect. In the early 1960s his company was commissioned to produce a design for a ski lodge that was inexpensive, quick to build, and could be readily located even on remote mountainsides. Suuronen also wanted his design to reflect the times, with cutting-edge technology and a “space” theme.
So he decided on a circular dome shape that he had used before for a grain silo. The materials he would use were emblematic of the 1960s: plastic polyester sheets reinforced with fiberglass. This would be molded into 16 pie-shaped slices that were transported to the site and bolted together, giving a floor area of a bit over 500 square feet with movable internal walls. The entire structure, shaped like a flying saucer (and featuring the iconic row of round windows), sat atop four pre-installed concrete support pillars. It was 26 feet across and 16 feet high, featuring an entranceway designed like an airplane hatch with a built-in staircase that folded down for entry and exit.
The integrated layer of polyurethane foam insulation and the electric heating system meant that the whole interior could be kept warm even in Finland’s bone-chilling winters. If necessary, the parts (or indeed the entire finished structure) were light enough to be transported over rough terrain by helicopter, and dropped wherever the best skiing spots were located.
Then Suuronen went further. Reasoning that his design was inexpensive, easy to build, and suited for a wide variety of climate and terrain from tropical seashore to mountains, he began to sell the idea as a “house of the future”, branded, fittingly enough, as the “Futuro House”. It retailed for about $14,000 (roughly $125,000 in today’s dollars) fully installed and assembled. At first it was marketed to the avant-garde and chic as an ultra-modern vacation home, but then became touted as an answer to the housing crisis being faced by the poor and undeveloped. One ad declared it, “Ideal for Beach, Skiing, Mountain Areas and Commercial Uses.”
But, alas, the Futuro House never took off. When the first one was sold, near Lake Puulavesi in Finland, the neighbors made complaints to the local government, declaring that it was ugly and ruined the naturalistic setting of the lake. Banks, unsure of the concept and especially of the durability (or lack of it) of the lightweight plastic materials, were wary of granting mortgage loans for it. Many building codes were specifically re-written to ban it. And by the mid-1970s rising oil prices led to increases in the cost of producing plastic, which forced Futuro to raise its prices as well. Already, the burgeoning environmentalist movement was leading people to view “plastic” not as the wonder super-material of the future, but as a contaminant and an ecological disaster.
In the end, fewer than 100 Futuro homes were ever sold, worldwide. Most of them were used for commercial purposes, including a few bank branches. Some ended up in shopping center parking lots as curiosities. Today, about 60 of the structures remain in various states of repair, in places ranging from Russia and Japan to South Africa and (mostly) the US. And one of these is on the roof of the Odyssey strip club.
In the United States, the production and sale of Suuronen’s design was licensed by the Futuro Company in Philadelphia, founded in 1969. They in turn marketed the finished homes through a number of dealerships and showrooms scattered around the country, and one of these was in Clearwater FL, just north of Tampa.
In 1971, the manager of this Futuro dealership, Jerry DeLong, was one of the partners who opened the 2001 Odyssey strip club in Tampa, in a building that had formerly been a bar. And as part of their “space” theme, DeLong moved one of the display models from his Futuro dealership, placing it atop the club’s roof. It became the club’s VIP Lounge where, for the price of $200 for 15 minutes, guests can receive “private dances”.
After a few years, the Miami mob muscled in on the club, though, and DeLong sold his interest and left. But his UFO House remains there.
Only one other Futuro House still exists in Florida, atop a nondescript little home in Pensacola.
NOTE: As some of you already know, all of my diaries here are draft chapters for a number of books I am working on. So I welcome any corrections you may have, whether it's typos or places that are unclear or factual errors. I think of y'all as my pre-publication editors and proofreaders. ;)