Norway Beats a Tax

If you visit the tall round tower found at the south end of the Norway pavilion within Epcot and carefully study the stone facade, you’ll find a bricked up window that does not match the surrounding stone. Surely the Disney Imagineers didn't make a mistake, which they then had to cover up, did they?  No, not at all.  This is actually yet another example of the Imagineers' attention to both detail and history.

Originating out of England's Lights and Windows tax of 1696, residents of Norway were in time assessed a tax based upon the number of windows in their home.  Given glass was expensive, the tax assessors reasoned that the more windows in a residence, the more wealth and income the homeowner must have, so a tax on windows would not only be easy to determine, as one could simply count the windows from outside, but it would also be fair for all.  However, Norwegians cleverly worked to evade this "window tax" by boarding or bricking up the windows they felt they could live without.  In this case, it was a higher window in the tower.