This Paper House   

Elis F. Stenman read three newspapers a day, but nobody in his family used even one of them to line a birdcage. "They never had a bird," says Edna Beaudoin, his great niece. "They had cats."

What Stenman did with his old newspapers in the early 1920s still stands as a tourist attraction in Rockport, Massachusetts, about 40 miles northeast of Boston. A preeminent recycler, the Swedish immigrant collected 100,000 papers and built his summer home with them. When the Paper House was completed in 1923, he started filling it up with unique newspaper furniture.

Stenman was a mechanical engineer by trade, a designer of machinery that made snaps and paperclips. He also built the wire roller that allowed him to wind newspapers into the tight, sturdy logs he used for his benches, table, cot and rocker.

He built a bookcase using only foreign press. He made a desk from accounts of Charles Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic flight. A grandfather clock features papers from the Arizona Republic to the Salt Lake Tribune--mastheads from the capitals of the country's then 48 states. Stenman's wife, Esther, added her own touch, folding newspaper magazines into origami stars, which she wove together to make curtains.

The couple lived in the cottage for six seasons with Beaudoin's mother, Vivian, and their cats. The inside had running water; there was an outhouse out back. But, there were so many curious visitors that the Stenmans had to build a conventional house next door.

Today, Beaudoin opens the Paper House to the public each April to October. A few tourists are disappointed to learn it isn't newspaper through and through: The house has a wooden floor and frame, and a shingled roof. But the walls are made of 215 layers of paper--pasted, folded, stacked and coated with marine varnish. The fireplace is brick but adorned with a mantle of newspaper magazines.

Visitors write guest-book comments like "Environmentally correct!" "Newsworthy!" "A Great Read" and--Beaudoin's perennial favorite--"No Smoking."