Wikipedia Wednesday: Winchester Mystery House

Conan O'Brien once said that his favorite character to write for on The Simpsons was Mr. Burns.  His reasoning was that since Mr. Burns had the ultimate trifecta of being rich, old, and evil, he can do almost anything he wants.  Nearly any insane and extravagant bit that Conan could come up with would be within scope.

This is just as true with the fictional C. Montgomery Burns as it is with many of history's old, rich, and evil people.  Sarah Winchester was not, by any reasonable definition, evil, but she was definitely old, rich, and deeply eccentric, and she used her vast wealth to play out her eccentricity to the extreme.  In San Jose, California, you will find the monument to her eccentricity: the Winchester Mystery House.

The Winchester Mystery House is a well-known California mansion that was under construction continuously for 38 years, and is reported to be haunted. It once was the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, but is now a tourist attraction. Under Winchester's day-to-day guidance, its "from-the-ground-up" construction proceeded around-the-clock, without interruption, from 1884 until her death on September 5, 1922, at which time work immediately ceased. The cost for such constant building has been estimated at about US $5.5 million (if paid in 1922, this would be equivalent to almost $70 million in 2008 dollars).

Sarah was deeply troubled by the deaths of her daughter and husband, and sought advice from a medium (psychic).  There are several differing accounts of what this medium told her, but the most commonly held belief is that Sarah was told she was haunted by all the people who had been killed by Winchester firearms, and needed to build a very large and confusing house to keep the spirits at bay.  The idea was that if her home had a bizarre, nonsensical layout, the ghosts would get lost and confused and wouldn't bother her.  Makes perfect sense, right?

Due to her inheritance (over $20 million, plus 50% of Winchester Repeating Arms Co. in dividend-paying shares) Sarah had essentially unlimited funds to finance the construction of the house.  Construction was constant, and design was subject to Sarah's whim.  As a result of the ad hoc nature of the design, and Sarah's vast wealth, the house became enormous and extremely bizarre.

Prior to the 1906 earthquake, the house had been built up to seven stories tall, but today it is only four stories. The house is predominantly made of redwood frame construction, with a floating foundation that is believed to have saved the estate from total collapse in both the 1906 earthquake and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. There are about 160 rooms, including 40 bedrooms and two ballrooms, one completed and one under construction. The house also has 47 fireplaces, 10,000 window panes, 17 chimneys (with evidence of two others), two basements and three elevators. Winchester's property was about 162 acres (650,000 m²) at one time, but now the estate is just 4.5 acres (24,000 m²) — the minimum necessary to contain the house and nearby outbuildings. It has gold and silver chandeliers and hand inlaid parquet floors and trim. There are doors and stairways that lead nowhere and a vast array of colors and materials. Before the availability of elevators, special "easy riser" stairways were installed to allow Winchester access to every part of the mansion, to accommodate her severe arthritis. Roughly 20,500 gallons (76,000 liters) of paint were required to paint the house. Due to the sheer size of the house, by the time every section of the house was painted, the workers had to start repainting again. 

The Sarah Winchester article mentions what to me is the most amusing part of this story: when the 1906 earthquake hit, parts of the house were badly damaged.  Rather than start repairs, Sarah had the damaged sections boarded up and isolated.

Construction on the house continued until Sarah's death in 1922.  Her will did not specifically mention the mansion, in spite of it being her main preoccupation and source of expense for decades of her life.  Appraisers considered the home worthless, in part because of the neglected earthquake damage, and also due to its bizarre, confusing layout.  It is now a museum open to the public.

I think it goes without saying that I would love to visit the Winchester Mystery House someday.  I was in San Jose two summers ago, and had I known about this place I would have certainly visited.  Some of the most amazing things on Earth are the direct result of wealthy, eccentric people spending their money in extravagant, fascinating ways.  That said, I don't think I could even picture Mr. Burns building something this crazy.