Why the Winchester Mystery House?

What am I thinking???

In 2018 I visited the Good Sam Miniature Show in San Jose, CA. Since we were in the area, my friends and I scheduled a tour of the famed Winchester Mystery Mansion. I instantly fell in love with it! The décor, the details, the maze of passages to everywhere and nowhere. The Victorian era seems to be my niche of interest. From steampunk to gothic mansions, if it has a Victorian element or flair to it, I'm instantly hooked.

“Sarah Winchester ... spent 32 years building this mansion.”

retrieved from: www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/sarahs-story

Sarah Winchester started with an 8 room farmhouse (as seen here) and spent 32 years adding to it and making architectural changes. Sarah was very reclusive, and therefore rarely invited anyone to her home. Upon her death, and because of the mystery surrounding her life, the people who purchased the home claim it was continuously built upon to appease the spirits of those who perished by Winchester guns.

A Vast Undertaking

As can be seen in the postcard picture at the top, the mansion is extremely large. According to the Winchester Mystery House website, here are the facts about the house:

• 24,000 square feet

• 10,000 windows

• 2,000 doors

• 160 rooms

• 52 skylights

• 47 stairways and fireplaces

• 17 chimneys

• 13 bathrooms

• 6 kitchens

• cost to build - roughly $5 million dollars in 1923 (this is the equivalent of $71 million today)

I'm anticipating it will take a decade to completely recreate it. I will be creating many items, rooms, etc. from scratch to complete this build, and it is my plan to share this journey with you through this blog, the project page on this website, and through my Instagram and YouTube channel.

In anticipation of the vast amounts of work for this project, I made a second visit to the mansion in November, 2020 (in between stay at home orders) to get pictures of areas that are not normally seen in the photos found on the internet. I'm hoping to schedule a complete tour of the mansion sometime in the future to see areas that are not usually shown on the tours.

After hours of research, planning, and reading, I have decided I will make the home partly as it stands today, and partly as if Sarah were still living in it. Because all of Sarah's furniture was sold off by her heir and niece immediately after her death, recreation of her living spaces will use some creative license based upon furniture that is now in the mansion, the interior styles of the era, and pictures from the book, Captive of the Labyrinth by Mary Jo Ignoffo. The book captures a more realistic image of Sarah, and shows pictures from another home Sarah owned and lived in at the time, which provides a sense of her design aesthetic. Another book, Sarah Winchester, My Neighbor by Edith Daley is a book reprinting articles written by Edith Daley in 1922, shortly after the death of Sarah Winchester. It gives some enlightening accounts of the interior design as told by some of the people who lived and worked on the estate. I'm currently reading Sarah Winchester: Beyond the Mystery by Bennett Jacobstein to glean more information about Sarah.

I believe some of the mysterious occurrences of the mansion can be explained by the 1906 earthquake and Sarah's constant design and re-design of the home. However, I leave it up to you to make up your own mind. No effort will be made, on my part, to persuade you one way or the other.