Salisbury House is the strangest building in Des Moines and one of the most rewarding. Built between 1923 and 1928 by Carl and Edith Weeks of Armand Cosmetics, it is a deliberate stone-by-stone homage to the medieval King's House in Salisbury, England, with imported English oak beams, sixteenth-century stained glass, and original Tudor stonework. The Weekses filled it with a serious collection: paintings by Lawrence, Reynolds, and Van Dyck; tapestries; and a 3,000-volume library that included a Shakespeare First Folio (now on long-term loan).
The house operates as a museum with guided tours running on the hour. The gardens are walkable on their own and free; the house tour itself takes about ninety minutes and is by far the best look at how an early-twentieth-century American industrialist tried to import European old money to the prairie.