Winchester Mystery House

~Last week in San Jose, I managed to find time for a tour of the famous Winchester Mystery House:

^ The story of this California Registered Historic Landmark is fascinating.  The house was built at the direction of Sarah Winchester, who married firearms industrialist William Winchester.  Mr. Winchester's family business, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, made the guns that "won the west" and also made a quite literal killing in the American Civil War.

Sarah Winchester (1839-1922)

Despite the immense wealth that her marriage bought her, Mrs. Winchester's life was doomed to tragedy: within a short span of time, her infant child, husband, and in-laws all suddenly died.  Overwhelmed, she sought guidance from a psychic as to why she was so afflicted. The psychic told her that the deaths were caused by the angry spirits of the many, many people who were killed by Winchester guns, and that only two things would appease them: Sarah Winchester had to move away from her home in Connecticut and out to the West Coast, and she was to buy an existing house and continue to build it forever.

Sarah Winchester dutifully moved out to California, purchased a small farmhouse, and hired laborers for construction, which continued 24 hours a day, unceasingly, from 1884 until her death in 1922.  However, she did not hire an architect and had no architectural training, instead relying on seances to decide what to build next.  The result was what came to be known as the Winchester Mystery House:

^ Map of the Winchester Mystery House. The ludicrous sprawl makes it look a bit like a miniature Los Angeles...

^ The famous second-story "Door To Nowhere".

The Winchester Mystery House is filled with bizarre and mostly useless architectural features like the pointlessly dangerous doorway you see above.  There are doors that open onto walls, windows in floors, staircases that go into ceilings, windows that open to other windows, beautiful and expensive stained glass facing away from the path of the sun, and fireplaces not connected to chimneys.  There are roughly 160 rooms; the structure originally included a seven-story tower, but after earthquake damage the upper levels were removed, and most of the house today is four stories.  Four very weird stories.

Many of the rooms and features of the house also reflect Sarah Winchester's fascination with the number 13 and with spiderweb designs.  For example, many of the stained-glass windows have 13 circles in them, the hand-painted sinks have 13 drainage holes, staircases have 13 steps, etc. My favorite example is a beautiful German-made chandelier in the main ballroom which was made to hold 12 candles, to which a 13th candle-holder has been crudely attached.

 To commemorate this obsession with all things thirteen, the staff of the Winchester Mystery House holds special flashlight-only tours every Friday the 13th.  I imagine Halloween is a big draw as well.  I wonder if they give out king-size candy bars?

^ View of the House from the gardens.

Sarah Winchester could afford to build all of this because she was extremely rich -- she inherited over $20 million when her husband died, and also a 50% stake in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.  That level of ownership provided her with an income of what today would be over $30,000 per day.  Construction of the house was estimated to have cost around $5.5 million (or over $75 million today).

So despite the strange design (or lack thereof) of the House, the huge amount of money used to build it means that it is built of the highest-quality materials.  Many of the rooms are intricately decorated with handmade carvings, expensive wallpaper, stained-glass, and so forth.  The original furnishings (many, many truckloads of them) were sold off after Sarah Winchester's death, so the period furnishings there at present are donations.

Photography of the inside is unfortunately prohibited, but there are also garden areas and outbuildings surrounding the house.  The mansion was once the center of a large farming estate but now is surrounded by downtown San Jose, with a movie theater and mall as its neighbors.

There are several unusual fountains and statues in the front gardens:

^ The Winchester Mystery House is quite a place and is an interesting attraction, well worth touring if you happen to be in San Jose.  There's also a museum of Winchester firearms and, this being America, an extensive gift shop.  Have fun, and don't get lost in the House.