Sunday, January 17, 2016

California Here We Come - Winchester House

Time to get back to sharing the pictures from our trip down the West Coast with our family in November.  What fun it is to travel with grown children.  Our oldest son had planned the itinerary which took us to some places we had not seen before.  You may recall that before the holidays I left you in San Francisco after a visit to Alcatraz and a walk along The Embarcadero followed by lunch on the San Francisco Wharf.  The Inspector and I would have said that was plenty for one day, but this day was not over yet.  We piled into our cars after lunch and headed for San Jose just outside of Frisco for a tour of the Winchester House.

Built from a 6 room farm house into a  160 room rambling Victorian mansion, 7 stories high, the Winchester House is on the California list of historic homes.   The mansion is an architectural maze of winding staircases that go up to the ceiling with no way out, secret passage ways, doors that open to nowhere, cupboard doors and closets that opened to nothing and rooms that were built but never used.   You can read a brief history of Sarah Winchester and the mansion she built here and also here.

A very short version of the story is that Sarah Winchester was the wife of the inventor of the famous Winchester Repeating Rifle.  When both her daughter and husband died prematurely, she went off the deep end and began to consult a spiritualist who told her she was being punished by the spirits of those who had been killed by the Winchester rifles and that she must build a house for herself and for the spirits.  As long as she continued to build, the spirits would be appeased but that if she ever stopped she would die.  So she spent the next 36 years building the house until her death at the age 83.

The inside of the house is copyrighted, so though you will find photos of the inside on line here, I opted to just take pictures of the grounds on the outside.


 
L-R: daughter in law, younger son, older son, the Inspector

The grounds were filled with different plants and shrubs we don't see in our neck of the woods.

This was called a potato tree.  You can see that the leaves and flowers do look similar to a potato plant.



 




 This is an umbrella plant.  I remember having umbrella plants in our yard when I was growing up in Southern California.  



There was also a profusion of orange trees all around the grounds.



and numerous fountains.



Of Course there was the house itself.


This is the famous "door to nowhere".  From the inside it looks like an ordinary door going into another room but if you were to open it, as you can see, there is nothing on the other side.
 

This is the front entry to the house.  
Do you see those beautiful front doors?  Our tour guide told us only three people every passed through them, Sarah Winchester and the two workmen who hung them.  Once the doors were set in place they were never opened again for as long as she lived.  We saw the beautiful parlor on the inside next to the entry way. It had lovely wooden paneling and floors and was beautifully furnished.  There was a table all set for tea.  But no one ever came to call.  It was just Sarah and the servants.  




So as we toured the house and the grounds, we saw beautiful architecture and interiors.  There were many modern conveniences of the day built inside to make things easier for the servants.   There was even a beautiful ballroom but no one ever danced on the floor.  I was struck with the terrible tragedy of this poor woman.  She had no faith in God and she ended up living a life of loneliness and fear, haunted by the ghosts in her own mind.   In the end, all her building could not save her.  Sad.

Now I don't want to leave this on a down note because we actually had a lot of fun touring the house and the grounds.  I wouldn't mind taking another tour some day.  But it is definitely a cautionary tale of the importance of keeping our eyes on the things above.

When next we meet, we will head down the central coast and I will have another more personal cautionary tale to share.  Until then, I bid you adieu.
 

2 comments:

  1. What a sad story of this troubled lady. The gardens look well kept with some lovely plants, but I wouldn't be drawn to touring that strange house. I look forward to your next post which sounds intriguing.

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  2. One of our sons has been in San Fran the last few days, and saw the sign about this place as they were driving into the city. He wasn't able to tour it, but saw Alcatraz and some of the wonderful churches and houses as a 'drive by'! He was there for a food exhibition for the Christian retreat where he works up in Northern Calif.

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