Buildings made from bottles

I ran across this collection of photos of homes and other buildings which use bottles as one of the components of the wall. Some are pragmatic constructions, some whimsical works of art. Some years back there were articles in alternative living magazines touting bottles walls as passive solar thermal collectors, but I think these were mostly flights of fancy for the green fringe.

Today as I looked up the subject, I found this in Wiki:

The use of empty vessels in construction dates back at least to ancient Rome, where many structures used empty amphorae embedded in concrete. This was not done for aesthetic reasons, but to lighten the load of upper levels of structures, and also to reduce concrete usage. This technique was used for example in the Circus of Maxentius.

and this:

It is believed that the first bottle house was constructed in 1902 by William F. Peck in Tonopah, NV. The house was built using 10,000 bottles of beer from Jhostetter's Stomach Bitters which were 90% alcohol and 10% opium. The Peck house was demolished in the early 1980s.

The numbers sounded incredible, and when I tried to Google it, the "Jhostetter's" did in fact turn out to be a misprint for "J. Hostetters" and the formulation was apparently 90+ proof, not 90% alcohol. The use of opium and alcohol in patent medicines is a fascinating topic, worth returning to sometime in the future; I'm still catching up on other bookmarks.