|
|
|
|
||||
|
Danny and Plaque California Registered Historical Landmark #868! |
Rifles The "Winchester" bit is because the family owned the Winchester Repeating Rifle Corporation. |
Candy House Tasty! Maybe. |
Winchester Family Tree It's not very big, you might notice. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Little Door Sarah Winchester was a very, very short woman. |
Random Door She also didn't know how to design a house. |
Picture of the Estate When I came in the 80s, it was more off in the distance. Now, it's right smack dab in the middle of San Jose. |
Stairs to Nowhere This was the bit that made me the most interested Stairs |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
$10,000 Storage Room When the place was handed over, the combined value of everything in here was $10,000. |
$10,000 Storage Room, II Nowadays it holds a lot of neat glass things. |
Expensive Wallpaper The wallpaper actually really did feel pretty neat. |
Our Tour Guide I've got on the tour three times now, and she's by far the best tour guide so far. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
More Glass Many of these pieces really were neat. |
Low-Riser Stairs It's a bit of an adventure to get up a single story. |
Storage Loft Formerly a grain storage area in the barn. |
Sewing Room None of this furniture is original. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Bedroom Sign The old stuff was auctioned off after Mrs Winchester's death. |
A Bedroom Maybe I should spend some time talking about why I wanted to go here in the first place. |
Nooks and Crannies Mrs Winchester survived both her husband and her infant. |
Lots of Stairs She was traumatized by this, so she decided to talk to a medium. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Windows to a Hallway The medium told her that she was cursed by the spirits of those that had been killed by her company's rifles. |
Random Doorway The only way to placate the spirits was to start constructing a house and never stop. |
Shower Interlude - this is the only shower in the house, out of 13 bathrooms. |
Bathroom Window Going to her bedroom... okay, we should go back to the story. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
More Windows And so that's what she did - she bought a farmhouse, and she built. |
Study And built. |
Office And built. |
Pretty Ceiling It ended up a 160-room mansion by the time she died. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Wallpaper This stuff lasts forever, and doesn't need cleaning. |
Master Bedroom This was the bed in which she died. |
More Bedroom It was a rather neat bedroom. |
Another Bathroom There were a lot of these things, I don't know if they really had this much plumbing to start with. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Danny and Celeste Hanging out in the seance room. |
Sudden Drop There's a nice drop off the seance room. |
Fire Suppression System Yes, this was added later. |
Solarium It had a pretty neat water preservation system, I must admit. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Solarium, II Water drained onto the sloped floor, which drained into the garden. |
Elevator There were three ancient elevators in the mansion, none of them vaguely safe by modern standards. |
Hall of Fire Lots of fireplaces, many of them really pretty. |
Nifty Sink With 13 water drains. 13 is important. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
More Fireplaces She used them to keep things really warm, to counteract her arthritis. |
More Bedrooms So many of them! And she never really had guests to use them. |
7-11 Stairs For the servants to get from place to place. There's also a nifty story for the tour guides. |
Oriental Bedroom Where her most trusted aide (secretary?) lived. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Floor Window Doesn't everyone have one of these? |
False Woodgrain She had her servants paint an oak grain over redwood, so it'd look better. |
Sewing Machine I would have liked the place more with some original stuff, I must admit. |
Storage Area But what I really find fascinating is the idea that I liked this place when I came as a kid. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
7-11 Stairs, Other Side I mean, it's a neat enough place, but I enjoyed it when I was 7? |
Pretty Ceiling There must have been something more to it. |
Prettiest Window Or at least the most expensive one - $3000 at the time. Too bad it was on an interior wall on the north side of the building. |
Glass Doors I'm not sure what they went to. I kindof want to see the ~50 rooms they don't show off. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Damaged Rooms The house had some damage during the 1908 Earthquake. |
Different House Designs They had to take out three entire floors to make it stable enough to survive. |
Neat Railings Mrs Winchester was trapped in this section of the house... |
More Windows ...and was scared enough that she decided to close the entire area off. The spirits told her to, you see. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Door to Nowhere It's a door that goes straight outside from the 2nd floor. Kindof random. |
Ghostly Door to Nowhere I guess that's just a reflection. |
Missing Fireplace It fell in during the 1908 Earthquake. |
Crowbar Damage The door had to be pried open to rescue Mrs Winchester. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
More Stained Glass It's everywhere. And lots of 'em have 13 on them. |
Half-Finished Wallpaper Less was fixed up in the damaged section of the house. |
Servant's Quarters Their setup really wasn't too bad. |
Alarm Box Basically a whole-house doorbell system to keep track of Mrs Winchester. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
4th Floor Fans were good enough to keep it reasonably cool... |
Interior Balcony This would rock for a paintball game. |
Parabolic Hedge It theoretically points at the location where Mrs Winchester died. |
The Roof I liked the roof. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
The Roof, II There were so many levels to look interesting... |
The Roof, III It's no Altgeld, but it's still pretty cool. |
The Roof, IV Hopefully somebody can take advantage of the shots, too. |
The Roof, V FPS levels, go! |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Kitchen One of, what, five? |
To the Garage There was some random discussion of how big the house was based on this picture, but I didn't really understand it. |
Laundry Room Mmm, laundry! |
Kitchen Sink The water drains into the sink from the counter. This was also a neat water-saving feature. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Wood Stove A reproduction, but pretty cool. |
Expensive Floor This floor took a year's work by a single carpenter. So said the tour guide, it must be true! |
Front Door Rarely used. Very pretty. |
13 Lights The chandelier had an extra candle added for the sake of keeping the numbers up. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Shakespeare Window #1 "These Same Thoughts People This Little World". There were two. They're random. |
An Organ Part of the ballroom. So much random stuff.. |
Fridge Well, close enough. |
Strawberries Mmm, plastic tastiness! |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Smallest Cabinet A half-inch deep. |
Biggest Cabinet The entire back half of the house. A nice contrast. |
Looking Back Up To the seance room! |
Yet More House It just keeps going! |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Interior Sculptures I'm not even sure how they got them in there. |
Venetian Dining Room The last room on the main tour. |
Stables On to the other tour! |
Hay Loft Okay, that doesn't look too exciting. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Behind-The-Scenes Tour Same tour guide, more helmets. |
Helmeted Family The plastic makes them safe! |
Winchester Mystery House Sign I'm not sure where this is visible from. |
Fruit Drying Shed This was apparently a lucrative side-business. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Fruit Drying Machine It was a neat machine, but it would have been neater to see it running. |
Fruit Drying Boxes Probably not the originals. |
Water Tower The whole facility was fairly self-sustaining for the time. |
Toilet Storage What, don't you have a toilet storage room? |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Water Pump It still works. |
Flowers Pretty. |
A Redwood That's a tree, alright. But it's a labelled tree! |
Pet Cemetery I'm not sure why this was there. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Old Photos The house in the olden days. |
Old Photos, II I thought they were cool, anyway. |
A Bench Look, Mom! |
Palm Trees They don't really grow that well around here, but everyone wants them anyway. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Fountain There were a bunch of fountains; this one seemed to involve cherubs. |
Hardhat Tour Group Soon, we'll go underground! |
Stag Sculpture One of many sculptures around there. |
Indian Sculpture Hunting...something. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Dragon Sculpture Is this the same one from before? |
Front of the House Wow, it looks like a house from here! |
More Sculptures And hedges. And prettiness. |
Celeste and House She hid her hat for the duration. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Door to Nowhere, Other Side I want to go in that door. |
Door to Nowhere, In Context I still doubt I could find the place. |
Ticket Booth I'm not sure what this was useful for. |
Old Walls She just kept on building over walls, which makes for interesting layers. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Another Fireplace This is probably the prettiest one in the house, at least that I saw, and it was trapped in back. |
Useless Fountain If only it worked! |
Garden I'm not sure why it was kept from us. |
Central Garden Plan Hey, more context! I would have liked this on the map they handed out. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
More External House Architecture is very hard to label. |
Boiler Engine I think that's what it was, anyway. |
Wood Shed This I appreciate. |
Rock Beats Scissors. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Elevator Fuse Box Those are big fuses. |
Elevator Mechanics For one of those three elevators. |
Blueprints Copies of them, anyway. |
Approved By... ...Nobody! Whee! |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
The Basement It was hard to see what exactly I was taking pictures of. |
Batteries They control the doorbell system. |
Another Elevator The cargo elevator, as I recall, to bring down the coal. |
Basement Crawlspace They all look like this. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Heater Area Lots of blowers and radiators to keep the whole house warm. |
Supports The place is actually pretty earthquake-safe, surprisingly. |
Coal Stove It was a big monster. |
Old Coal Bits The stuff you had to get out of the furnace before anything broke. |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Steam Boiler Operation Manual Only one page? P'shaw! |
A Little More House One last time looking around the outside. |
Unpainted Areas I'm not sure why this part didn't get touched up... |
...but it was the pa..ed on when she died. |
|
|
|
Main Sign In the middle of movie theatres and high-end shopping areas, there's this weird place. I'm impressed. |
![[ ,,^.,^,, ]](/lynxfriend.gif)