Novelty Stone Mother Goose House in Hazard Built by George Stacy 1935-1940

Owner Alice McIntosh says Hazard would not be the same without the Mother Goose House, the round, stone novelty building that perches on the north side of town. Built by George D. Stacy over a five-year span that began in 1935 and completed in 1940, the structure has served as a family home, a market with gas pumps and ice cream, a filling station, and later as a bed and breakfast with an art and gift shop on the lower floor.

The goose form is unmistakable: a circular main body topped by an upper half shaped into a goose, oval "egg" windows, and an arched entry door with a keystone bearing the house's completion date. The eyes were fashioned from old-style automobile headlights that light up at night, and the original neck relied on wooden planks. Sources diverge on the stone’s provenance - Gardenstogables records native sandstone hauled from nearby creeks while other accounts describe rocks brought from many U.S. states and Canada - but photographs and on-site descriptions consistently note a stone-and-wood composition.

The house’s origin has a local family lore angle. Ollie Stacy, George’s wife, is quoted describing the motif in a literal way: "We cooked a goose, picked the meat off, left the bones together, and scaled the building that way." The Stacys lived in a small house on the property while George built the goose, treating the structure as both a residence and an attention-getting advertisement for Stacy’s market.

Maintenance of the wooden head and neck has been an ongoing issue since the late 1980s because of water intrusion. That vulnerability culminated in the head falling off on March 24, 2021 after wood became damp from heavy rain and snow and from longtime leaks exacerbated by an ice storm. The neck was loaded on a flatbed truck and taken to a local shop in Vicco for reconstruction, and McIntosh organized repairs that aimed to preserve original materials where possible. "Today we had the head getting on the truck today so we can move it, and I think that’s a start," McIntosh said as repairs began. She added that contractors would "reconstruct it, and use some of the materials in that to historically preserve it the way it was" and that they planned to set the head back in place with a crane.

Community donations helped fund the repair work. McIntosh thanked residents for their contributions and said, "It wouldn’t be Hazard without the Goose, that’s what they say to me so yeah they’re asking they’re curious." During the 2021 remodeling the neck planks were replaced, the beak was swapped for a stronger plastic material, and the eyes were replaced; the head was set back into place on August 27, 2021.

The Mother Goose House remains a visible local landmark with limited public hours and overnight stays historically offered at the B&B. The City of Hazard called the structure "beloved" and declared "She will be back" during the repair period. For residents and visitors, the goose is both a piece of Perry County architectural oddity and a community symbol that drew hands-on local fundraising and restoration efforts after the 2021 collapse.