Houghton To Host Snow House Downtown

If you take a drive through downtown Houghton, you’ll notice large snow sculptures popping up in front yards and all over campus.

Judging of the snow statues begins on Thursday as part of Winter Carnival and the city of Houghton is creating a very unique sculpture of their own.

This year’s Snow House is being built by the City of Houghton’s Department of Public Works.

DPW employee, John Rudak said, “It’s like a giant igloo and now we’re blowing snow on top of it and we’ll remove the form and it will be a free standing snow structure.”

When it’s complete, people will be able to walk inside a full size snow building that stands over 16 feet tall.

Rudak said, “The first year we did it, the Chief of Police had all sorts of vintage art work, photographs and such. They had candles and mood music. We’ll install lighting. It’ll be lit. It’ll be a showpiece for the city for Winter Carnival. That’s our contribution, I guess, to Winter Carnival.”

The city has built a giant Snow House in years past at various locations, including the parking lot of the Pearl Street Mall, but this year’s location will be downtown, masking the charred rubble left of the building that caught fire in the summer of 2016.

Rudak says that the city had intended on building the Snow House last year, but with record snowfall, DPW focused its energy on snow removal and keeping the city streets maintained instead.  “The trusses have been sitting there in the yard for I don’t know how many years. So everything was kind of in place, we knew how to do it. It was just a matter of getting the manpower together and getting the time to do it.”

Crews have been working on the project late at night when traffic is at minimum flow and expect to have it completed and on display by the end of the week.