Colleen Moore's dollhouse palace and its tour during the Great Depression

The most expensive dolls' house in history is held to be a 2.5-metre fairy-tale palace commissioned by the silent film star Colleen Moore from leading Hollywood designers and architects. The palace is adorned with semi-precious and precious stones, even diamonds, with gold, and with fantastical frescoes, some of which were painted by Walt Disney himself. The design, furnishing and decoration of this little house took 7 years and half a million dollars, but the highest-paid actress of her day could well afford it. There are frescoes, tapestries, costly chandeliers, furniture and tableware, and a miniature library of 65 antique volumes was even made for the house. It must be said that Moore did not merely invest in a dream: in the years of the Great Depression she sent her castle on tour across the United States and donated the 650 thousand it earned to children's charity. The house itself she gave to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, I believe. To my mind, a fine example of a responsible approach to one's resources and of accountability to society.