About Mother Goose House
North Main Street in Hazard has a building that appears to be incubating the world’s largest goose. A long white neck rises from a domed roof, a huge head faces the road, oval windows dot the stone walls below, and automobile headlights serve as the bird’s eyes. It is not a sculpture sitting on a building. The bird is the building.
Railroad worker George Stacy began the project in 1935 and completed it around 1940. To get the proportions right, he used the skeleton of an actual goose as a model. Curved roof members mimic the rib structure of the bird, while stone gathered from the region and from other parts of North America forms the rounded base. Eight egg-shaped windows carry the joke into the structure itself.
The Mother Goose House has lived several lives. It began as a home and later served commercial uses including a market and an inn. Its oversized head has required real structural maintenance too. After severe weather knocked the head from the building in 2021, it was rebuilt with stronger internal support and returned to the roof.
The property has been privately occupied at various times, so this is primarily an exterior roadside oddity rather than a place to wander through uninvited. Admire it from legal public viewpoints, respect the residents and property, and do not assume interior access is available. The goose is weird enough from the road.