A Hyattsville art house is regularly cited as one of the state’s top roadside attractions, fittingly for a site located just outside the Gateway Arts District and Route 1.

Located at 3810 Nicholson St., the Vanadu Art House is a steampunk paradise, encrusted from top to bottom with sculptures made of recycled metal, objets d’art and mosaics that owner Clarke Bedford has added over the years.

It’s been featured by the Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, Reader’s Digest, Baltimore magazine, Roadside America, the Maryland Office of Tourism, and a number of other online travel sites.

Work on the house began in the early 2000s, when Bedford shifted from photography to building art cars, including the eponymous Vanadu, a 1988 Ford Econoline van tricked out to look like something Jules Verne would take to Burning Man.

To make his pieces, Bedford bolts various bits of found metal together, then paints them in layers to create a uniform look, and artificially ages it with carburetor cleaner to give it a vintage look.

He picked up the skills while working as a conservator for decades at the Hirshhorn Museum in D.C., where he helped preserve Modernist sculptures and paintings by the likes of Mondrian and de Kooning.

In an interview with an art magazine, Bedford said that work inspired his approach on the cars and the house.

“There’s a lot of fakery in conservation — and with these cars and the house, it’s all about fakery — it’s trying to make the thing look like it’s been there for a long, long time even though your mind says it couldn’t have been,” he said.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Bedford started decorating vintage jackets with dozens of patches, embroidery floss, beads, buttons and Crackerjack prizes, which can be seen on his Instagram page, which also features close-ups of Vanadu.

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