62. Kukla and Ollie’s House

Location: 557 Spear Street, Saugatuck

Kukla and Ollie were the two best-known television puppets in the 1940s-1960s. They spent their summers here with their creator Burr Tillstrom, the puppeteer on the popular “Kukla, Fran and Ollie” show. The show originated in Chicago, airing on a closed-circuit TV system at the Marshall Field Department Store, and was later broadcast nationwide on NBC. Tillstrom’s barn on upper Spear Street, formerly a net shed, was his get away from celebrity. Tillstrom was active in Saugatuck community life as well as at the Saugatuck Ox-Bow Summer School of Painting. A memorial to Tillstrom stands in the Saugatuck Village Square.