This is a catch-up (catsup, ketchup?) post. We went to the Winchester Mystery House exactly one month ago – January 6th – but I haven’t gotten around to blogging about it until now, partly because the few pictures that we took (interior photos are not permitted) didn’t come off the camera until this morning.
Winchester Mystery House
The Winchester Mystery House is a curiosity. It is big, as a mansion should be – over 100 rooms – but it is not beautiful like the Newport mansions. It is just plain weird. It was the home of the eccentric widow of a guy who made a fortune selling Winchester rifles to the army. She believed that bad things would happen if construction on the house ended, so she just kept building for over 30 years. I think that is what attracted us to the place: it reminded us of our time in Somerville. Non-stop construction as a way of life.
It is also a bit of a time capsule of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The earthquake damaged parts of the house (and in fact trapped Mrs Winchester in one of the front rooms for several hours), but rather than repair the damage like any normal homeowner would, she just closed off the damaged rooms and continued building on other wings.
She was tiny – under 5 feet tall – and not well, so the staircases have very low risers – about 4 inches for each step. This makes some of the staircase *very* long. That doesn’t include the staircase that goes nowhere – it just rises to the ceiling and stops. You are left to wonder “what was she thinking?”
Start of the tour
There is very little in the house that is beautiful. One of the exceptions is the stained glass. There isn’t much stained glass on display in the lived-in rooms, but she left an entire storage room filled with Tiffany stained glass that is worth over half a million dollars today.
We visited on a very cold, dank day. It somehow didn’t occur to us that for $30 each we would be getting a tour of an unheated house. By the time it was over we were both thoroughly chilled. If you go, pick a warm day.
Courtyard
We only toured the house. We arrived too late for the basement tour and it was too cold to tour the gardens. I imagine that there is some good stuff that we didn’t see. They also offer a night tour which would be… spooky.
Gift shop
The place is too weird to recommend highly. But if you ever find yourself in San Jose with nothing to do… there it is.