The construction project continued until Winchester’s death in 1922, producing an enormous, labyrinthine mansion filled with logic-defying features: staircases that end at the ceiling, indoor balconies, skylights built into floors, doors that open onto walls. In San Jose, she purchased an eight-room farmhouse that she began to renovate in 1886. Winchester decided to leave her home in New Haven, Connecticut, and head to California, where two of her sisters lived. This staircase in the Winchester Mystery House leads to the ceiling. Her husband, William Wirt Winchester, died in 1881, leaving his widow with a vast fortune: 50 percent ownership in the Repeating Arms Company and a $20 million inheritance. Four years later, she gave birth to a daughter, Annie, who died about a month later. Sarah Lockwood Pardee married into the Winchester family in 1862. The narrated video tour spans more than 40 minutes, providing insight into the property and the mysterious woman who built it: Sarah Winchester, wealthy and reclusive heiress to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, which manufactured an innovative rifle that became a fixture of Westward expansion. But as Michele Debczak reports for Mental Floss, you can now explore the Winchester House from afar via a detailed video tour posted on the mansion’s website. Built by a millionaire widow over the course of 36 years, the sprawling mansion features more than 200 rooms, 10,000 windows, trap doors, spy holes and a host of other architectural oddities.Ī popular tourist attraction, the house, along with many other cultural institutions in the United States, has closed to help curb the spread of coronavirus. Louis (1904) may have fueled her imagination.The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, is one of the nation’s most curious landmarks. Also, the earlier stateside international expositions in Philadelphia (1876), Chicago (1893), and St. If the New York Times Best Seller list existed then, that British architect’s treatise would have been on it. Most likely, she would have consulted the numerous blueprint books of the time and “Hints on Household Taste” by Charles Locke Eastlake. Sarah was the mastermind she alone was responsible for the renovations and addition of 160 rooms over 38 years. When touring, we recommend noting the smaller items. The doorknob in TK certainly puts a regular old handle to shame. One Aesthetic disciple, British designer William Morris is famous for his textile and floor- and wall-covering designs. That Aesthetic movement gave birth to the decorative arts, which held that everyday objects should be beautiful: surface coverings, yes, but also the small pieces like hinges, doorknobs, and locksets. She wrote about them, as well as the Lincrusta wall covering and stained glass for “Collections” journal. “The house is a treasure trove of Aesthetic design elements,” says Winchester historian Janan Boehme. While a tour guide will point out highlights, such as the stained glass and the Lincrusta embossed wallpaper, those smitten with Victorian homes may want to note the smaller pieces, like the fancy brass hardware and the wood embellishments. The interior is not as, how-shall-we-say-it, wedding-cake-y as the exterior. Other Queen Anne signs include an exterior of different surface textures such as scallops and boards round or octagonal turrets and irregular floor plans and roofing. Hmmm, that rings a Winchester bell.Ĭentral Courtyard of the Winchester Mystery House Owner Sarah Pardee Winchester would have been familiar with the long-lean rowhouses of San Francisco, an Italianate signature, which can also be marked by “the rambling, asymmetrical character of Italian farmhouses,” writes Architectural Styles. The Winchester Mystery House identifies most with Queen Anne. Early on, all the rage was Gothic Revival, then there was Italianate, Second Empire, Queen Anne, Eastlake, and Romanesque Revival. In its six decades, it cycled through several styles. Homes built during the Victorian era-all 64 years of it-are Victorians. The train was to Victorian-era America what the Internet was to Americans 100 years later. Factories expedited craftsmanship such as the carving of wood into ornamental pieces and railroads delivered these pieces to cities across the nation. When Queen Victoria’s ascended to the British throne in 1837, the factory system was just emerging, and railroads were making inroads. In an era known mostly for its restraint-synonyms for Victorian are “prudish” “straitlaced” “puritanical”-the exteriors of the houses seemed particularly risqué, if we may hijack that term to describe architecture that flaunted it. Tiers of belvederes, turrets, and balconies exude an eccentricity and lightheartedness. The scalloped shingles favor fancy frosting. Spindlework and stickwork-horizontal and diagonal wood-decorate like pretty piping. Finials top the Winchester cake like slender birthday candles.
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