' I don't know what I would do with the caves, but very cool to have.

Nice house and the caves could be a teenage dream!

I shared it with a bud who's a nut for caves.

Does that lamp convey?

I have such a fear of caves there is no way. I tried to read Thor Heyerdal's book about the caves on Easter Island and it freaked me out so much, i would occasionally fling the book across the room.

Twice, I've paid to go on cave or cave-like excursions with my family and been left by entrance unable to go in while they all had an exciting adventure. I am not proud of myself. I quite like the rest of the house :-)

That’s cool. It seems like those caves would make a great wine cellar.

Whoa - that is very cool. Think how much fun that would be for kids.

The outside is beautiful.

More background on the cave house from local newspaper

Some houses have special features that select buyers prize — think mudrooms, sunrooms and wine cellars. But an English-style cottage in southwest Rochester has gone viral for an unusual reason — it comes with caves.

"We were surprised by all the interest," said owner Dr. Peter Dyck, a neurologist who directs the Peripheral Nerve Research Laboratory at Mayo Clinic. "We didn't think that that was something that would attract people."

Peter and his wife, Isabelle Dyck, bought the property 34 years ago for what they describe as a song — $90,000. Built in 1926 and tucked into a hillside, the cottage served as the pump house for the up-the-hill estate of Dr. Henry Plummer, the fourth doctor hired as a partner by the clinic.

Plummer was known as "the diversified genius" of Mayo because of his many inventions, including the medical records system that he and his assistant, Mabel Root, designed and that still is in use at the world-renowned institution. He also designed his five-story, 20,000-square-foot Tudor house, which includes 10 bathrooms, nine bedrooms and a ballroom and sits on 65 acres with its own water tower.

"The original building [that is now the Dycks' home] was essentially a carriage house and a pump house to push water from a well that was 80 feet deep, which at that time was quite deep," Peter said. "Then they pumped that water up to the water tower, which sits right behind our property. Our cave connects the pipes to that water tower."

Some of the limestone from the caves was used as building material for both the water tower and the carriage house. The English-style cottage was built in 1926 and served as the pump house for the estate of Dr. Henry Plummer. When the Dycks took title to the property, it needed a lot of work. They hired the late architect Gordon Gjelten, father of National Public Radio correspondent Tom Gjelten, to guide the upgrades.

Together, they expanded the footprint of the house and included a curved, floating staircase. Gjelten loved woodwork and he used it in floors and walls to add warmth to the structure.

The four-bedroom, three-bathroom house now boasts 3,000 square feet of refined finished space where the Dycks have hosted many special occasions over the years, including wedding celebrations for two of their four children. Lovers of art and music, the Dycks have had baroque music ensembles perform at their home.

But the 3,600 square feet of caves are all most people want to talk about. They're man-made and hollowed out of the karst limestone, Isabelle said. "Actually, one of the other reasons for the cave was open-pit beer-making," Peter said. "There was a roadhouse just 75 to 100 feet to the east of us on the old Dubuque Trail. We think the first cave was made simply to store open-pit beer."

The Dycks haven't used their caves much. The below-ground chambers have good acoustics, which would have made them an interesting venue for small concerts, especially with baroque music. "But they're too damp," Isabelle said. The couple has stored occasional wine bottles in the caves. And they have fretted about losing pets in them (although that never happened).

I love caves and tunnels.

The layout of the house seemed odd, which probably makes sense since it wasn't originally designed as living space. I think it would have benefitted more than most homes from staging, as I was having trouble figuring out what rooms were what (or how best to use them).I found some of the updates, like the floating staircase, attractive but incongruous with the rest of the design.