Moxie Bottle House
A 33 foot tall promotional replica of a Moxie bottle that was converted to a house and lived in for 80 years
Moxie
Love it or hate it, Moxie soda is quite unique. Decades past its prime, it is still found on shelves across Maine. There is an annual Moxie Festival in Lisbon Falls and there is a huge exhibit of memorabilia in Union at the Matthews Museum. Clearly, there are some passionate Moxie fans and collectors out there. But I’m not trying to convince you of the merits of Moxie – just to describe a very interesting item that the Moxie promotional department put together long ago.
Bottle House?
The Moxie Bottle House is pure Americana. It started as a giant PR piece for the 1907 New England Food Fair in Boston. Then it moved around a bit and was purchased and converted into a summer “home” in New Hampshire. A family attached it to a summer cottage and used it for 80 years until it fell into neglect. In 2009, it was disassembled, moved to Union, Maine, and restored by some Moxie faithful. It is now the centerpiece of the Moxie exhibit at the Union Fairgrounds in the Matthews Museum of Maine Heritage.
The Matthews Museum
The Matthews Museum of Maine Heritage began in 1964 and contains over 10,000 items celebrating the history of rural Maine. Besides the glorious Moxie section, there are “wings” for sleds, carriages, cobblers, ice harvesting, farming, blacksmith, beauty parlor, laundry, pantry, kitchen, bedroom, carpentry, weaving, cooper, sewing, post office, and military. It is chock-full of stuff and well-worth the visit.
The folks that volunteer there are wonderful. I stopped by in July, 2026, and was escorted around by various docents, each giving me loads of history.
The Museum has limited hours. It is only open during the Union Fair in August, and also in the months of July and August, it is open 12-4pm Wednesday through Saturday. Admission is $5 for adults. They have all sorts of Moxie swag you can purchase including shirts, hats, earrings, pins, bandanas, patches, and of course, cold Moxie. They even had the hard-to-find original Moxie with cane sugar in bottles. Quite a treat.
Why Union?
The reaason the bottle house, and the whole Moxie wing at the museum is in Union, is because the creator of Moxie hailed from Union. Dr. Augustin Thompson created “Moxie Nerve Food” in 1896 and sold it as a cure-all back when you could make any claims you wanted about what a potion could do (he claimed Moxie was especially effective against “paralysis, softening of the brain, nervousness, and insomnia”).
A few years later, he decided to distribute it in the form of a carbonated beverage. From a small plant in Lowell Mass., he grew Moxie into a nationwide soda with a very distinctive taste (many say it tastes like medicine). In its day, it had quite a following. President Coolidge and Sox great Ted Williams were fans.
1907 New England Food Fair
In the Fall of 1907, the New England Food Fair was held at Mechanics Hall in Boston, Mass. Companies set up trade booths to push their products and some went big. Moxie decided to build a giant replica of their very distinctive bottle. They constructed this monolith out of oak, spruce, and pine, with a label, and bottle cap on top. When finished it was 33 feet high and 10 feet in diameter. It had a door and windows and Fair attendees could step inside, sample some delicious Moxie, then climb up an interior ladder, peer out of a window in its neck, and slide down the outside. Fun for all ages.
a “monument to nerve building – a striking feature of the big Food Fair” – The Boston Traveler
The bottle was built to be disassembled, having a number of pins that held the side sections together as well as the rounded top and cap.
A Bottle on the Move
The bottle was built to be moved so it could be exhibited. After its run in Boston, it moved to Luna Park on Coney Island. Luna Park was a giant amusement park that was in operation from 1903-1944 when Coney Island was the center of amusement parks in the country. It was very popular, once hosting 143,000 visitors on a single day. I couldn’t find any photos of the bottle at Luna Park.
In 1910, it moved to the Pine Island Amusement Park in Manchester, NH which was much smaller than Luna Park.
Pine Island was yet another example of a trolley destination. In this case, the Manchester Traction, Light, and Power Company built the park on a pond and leased cottages to summer residents. You can read about the various trolley parks over here.
For 9 years, the bottle stood proudly in the park serving cold Moxie for 5 cents to folks. They would stop by on their way to the Park’s roller skating rink or perhaps the pond. Just like at the Food Fair, people would go inside, climb up the ladder, look out the upper window and admire a view of Mount Uncanoonuc. Then they’d slide down the outside ladder and enjoy the rest of their day.
Pine Island opened in 1902 and closed in 1963. In addition to the Moxie stand, it had a ferris wheel, roller coaster, skating rinks, a pond, a carousel, and regular fireworks displays.
From Exhibit to Lodging
By 1919, Pine Island was no longer using the bottle exhibit at the amusement park. It was purchased by Louis Messier, disassembled and moved across a frozen pond to one of the cottage lots. During the spring and summer of 1920, Messier reassembled the bottle on the lot, built and attached a small two-room cottage to it, added indoor plumbing, wiring, a hammock, and an upright piano. Louis and his family moved in and lived in the cottage and bottle for a few years. It gained quite a bit of attention locally and became known as the Moxie Bottle House.
“Manchester Couple’s Strange Abode Outdoes Diogenes’ Tub and the Old Lady’s Shoe—Are Happily Bottled Up and Dare Winter to Do It’s Worst”
“You think you’re going to be crowded when you are outside, but when you come in you feel like the last pickle in the bottom of the jar.” – Mrs. Messier
Sold
In 1922, Louis sold the house and bottle to Jim Todd, a newspaper executive from Larchmont, NY. For the next 70 years, the Todd family spent summers in New Hampshire, hosting many a party. They added 3 floors of bedrooms, a bathroom, and cut additional windows for ventilation. They had to shingle the entire bottle to protect it against the harsh New Hampshire winters.
To Maine
By the 1980s, the Todd home was hardly being used, and was falling into disrepair. When Mrs. Todd died in 1990, it was sold and was in danger of being destroyed.
New England Moxie Congress members Dave Lowell and Paul Hemen heard about the plight of the bottle and decided to save it. The Moxie Congress had a small museum in Lisbon Falls (which closed in 2016). So in 1999, they bought the bottle, separated it from the cottage, loaded it into a U-Haul, and moved the bottle to a storage facility in Maine. They didn’t really have a plan beyond saving the bottle.
They contacted the Matthews Museum in Union and funds were raised to purchase and ultimately restore and display the bottle. With advice from the Maine State Museum, volunteers painstakingly restored it to as close to the original as they could. They removed all of the asphalt shingles and began cleaning each portion, scrubbing years of dirt, paint, and asphalt residue from the wood. The shellacked the wood, reconstructed the bottle, and placed it as the centerpiece of the Moxie wing at the museum.
