How bizarre? There is a stairway that dead-ends at the ceiling of one room. There are cabinets that open to the backside of a wall, a window in a floor, mixed elevations, stairs with two and a half inch risers, ... . There are windows between rooms that let Sarah Winchester spy on her servants. How did this come about? you ask.
Sarah Winchester was the wife of the son of the Winchester who invented the Winchester repeating rifle. They had a daughter who died soon after she was born. This depressed Sarah greatly. Then, fifteen years later, 1881, her husband died of TB. She was devastated by grief. The story told is that a spiritualist medium told her she was being punished for all the deaths wrought by Winchester rifles. The way to mollify the angry spirits was to move west (the Winchesters lived in New Haven, CT), and build a house, without ceasing. A large house would provide a home for the spirits and would protect her from them. She couldn't stop building because people were still being killed by Winchesters.
This story may be largely folklore (you can Google it for more discussion). Sarah didn't leave a written account and didn't associate with any people who might have recorded her story, so we don't have first-hand info. Our guide said another reason she did it was that she was RICH (and maybe crazy, I'd add). She was also short, 4' 11", so you can add that to the pop psychology mix.
Sarah Winchester was severely arthritic and had difficulty walking and that's the reason for the low-riser stairways. In one case there are 44 steps, switchbacking up a stairwell ending up at the next floor, nine ft. higher.
At any rate, armed with good advice, she came to the Bay area and in 1884 bought an unfinished 8-room farmhouse and started adding on to it. For 38 years until her death, carpenters, gardeners, and craftsmen labored continuously, building whatever whim she came up with.
Susie said, what a shame that she would spend so much money on such a self-centered project. The guide said she paid her employees well, so that seems the most positive benefit of her obsession. She died in 1922 at 82 years of age. You wonder if she felt that she successfully bought that time from the angry spirits.
At one time the house had a seven-story tower. This sketch shows a turret on top that is no longer there.
The tower collapsed in the SF earthquake of 1906 and damaged several rooms in the front of the house, so she quit using that part of the house -- not that she would miss a dozen rooms or so. There are quite a few uncompleted rooms where work was suspended on her death.
No pictures of the interior are allowed and a guide takes you through, so you can't explore. People wondered why no pictures, but I think that's wise because if 20 people are all trying to snap pictures of each room, the tour would really bog down. You can see some interior pictures at this website.
Here are some exterior shots I took. The architecture is fascinating.
Here's a gingerbread Winchester house.
Anyhow, this was an interesting place to learn about and we're glad we had the chance to visit. So, whenever you find your way to San Jose, .... .
By way of contrast the book my book club is reading this month, "Three Cups of Tea," is about Greg Mortenson, a near-penniless nurse and mountain climber who is taken by the impoverished conditions in the mountains of north Pakistan (the region that includes K2) and dedicates his life to raising money and building schools and clinics and better lives for the people there.
Friend Joseph also recommended the Sonoma Chicken Coop as a place to eat. We found one of their locations to be just down the street from us in historic downtown Campbell, so stopped there for a tasty lunch, sidewalk dining, across the street from an Italian ice cream shop. We spent the afternoon and evening mostly watching basketball games on TV. Disappointments: NM State came so close to beating Michigan State. Oklahoma State couldn't quite get it done against Georgia Tech.
The Lobos play Washington tomorrow. Go Lobos!
Cheers,
Susie and Rob
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