Qualla: The Cathedral of Junk https://qualla.com/cathedral-of-junk-austin en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: The Cathedral of Junk https://qualla.com/cathedral-of-junk-austin The Cathedral of Junk: Introduction https://qualla.com/cathedral-of-junk-austin/ Turn off South Congress, wind through a quiet residential grid of mid-century ranch houses in the Westgate neighborhood, find the address on Lareina Drive, ring the bell, and a soft-spoken man in his sixties will open his side gate and let you into one of the strangest spaces in Texas. Vince Hannemann has been building the Cathedral of Junk in his own backyard since 1989 - towers of welded bicycle frames, arches of bottle caps and lawnmower parts, a sixteen-foot pulpit roofed in hubcaps, walkways braided through tunnels of telephones and toasters and tricycles. Roughly fifty tons of other people's trash, give or take, depending on who is doing the weighing. He still gives the tour himself, by appointment, for whatever you feel like leaving in the donation box.

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]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/v/6/7/cathedral-of-junk-austin-wk/9v67-the-cathedral-of-junk-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full The Cathedral of Junk: How a Backyard Becomes a Cathedral https://qualla.com/cathedral-of-junk-austin/ Hannemann had moved to Austin from Santa Fe and was looking for something to do with the weekends and the yard. He started with a small structure of welded scrap - a kid's clubhouse, more or less - and then it grew. By 1994 the local press had already noticed: towers, connecting ...

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]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/v/6/7/cathedral-of-junk-austin-wk/9v67-the-cathedral-of-junk-how-a-backyard-becomes-a-cathedral.mp3 0:06 2 full The Cathedral of Junk: The Aesthetic of Accumulation https://qualla.com/cathedral-of-junk-austin/ There is a logic to it once you spend ten minutes inside. Look up: the ceiling of one chamber is a mosaic of bicycle gears and dinner plates, soldered into a kind of wheel-mandala. Look down: the floor underfoot is brick interlaced with bottle caps pressed into mortar. Color clus...

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]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/v/6/7/cathedral-of-junk-austin-wk/9v67-the-cathedral-of-junk-the-aesthetic-of-accumulation.mp3 0:06 3 full The Cathedral of Junk: Spring 2010 https://qualla.com/cathedral-of-junk-austin/ Then came the complaint. In early 2010, after twenty-one quiet years, a neighbor filed a grievance with the city of Austin, and code enforcement showed up. The Cathedral, the inspectors said, was an unpermitted structure. It needed to be brought up to code or torn down. Hannemann...

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]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/v/6/7/cathedral-of-junk-austin-wk/9v67-the-cathedral-of-junk-spring-2010.mp3 0:06 4 full The Cathedral of Junk: Why People Keep Coming https://qualla.com/cathedral-of-junk-austin/ Austin is famously a city that worries about Austin - whether it is still weird, whether it ever really was, whether the tech money has flattened whatever made it different. The Cathedral is one of the answers people point to when they want to argue that something has survived. I...

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]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/v/6/7/cathedral-of-junk-austin-wk/9v67-the-cathedral-of-junk-why-people-keep-coming.mp3 0:06 5 full The Cathedral of Junk: A Slow Argument With Time https://qualla.com/cathedral-of-junk-austin/ Folk-art environments rarely outlive their makers. Watts Towers survived Simon Rodia, but barely; many similar projects across the country have been bulldozed within a year of the builder's death. Hannemann talks openly about what happens after. There are tentative conversations ...

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]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/v/6/7/cathedral-of-junk-austin-wk/9v67-the-cathedral-of-junk-a-slow-argument-with-time.mp3 0:06 6 full