09-05-2007 | |
Press escape to continue.
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![]() I've only heard about this place but it must be amazing - The Winchester Mystery House. http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/ History Sarah Lockwood Pardee married William Winchester of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1862. Their only child, a six-month-old daughter died in 1866, and William died of tuberculosis a few years later. The distraught woman visited a Boston psychic who told her the deaths were revenge from the ghosts of those killed by Winchester rifles, and that Sarah could escape the spirits' wrath by moving west and building a house that would never be finished. Winchester took her $20 million cash inheritance and $1,000 a day income and moved west to California in 1884. She bought an unfinished eight-room farmhouse near San Jose that is now known as the Winchester Mystery House. She soon started building on the house maniacally, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and she never stopped. For the next 38 years, the house grew like kudzu along a Virginia highway, swallowing up everything around it, including the barn and water tower. Opinions vary about why Sarah kept building the Winchester House. While some say she thought it would prevent her death, others reckon that she was just a crazy rich woman with too much money and a poor sense of building design. Every night, Sarah is rumored to have retreated to her seance room to consult the spirits, who gave her building instructions. Neither Sarah nor her spirits were good architects, and the Winchester House grew without plan or blueprint. By April, 1906, the Winchester House rose seven stories high. A massive earthquake struck, setting off fires that destroyed much of San Francisco. In San Jose, Sarah Winchester was imprisoned in her bedroom. When freed, she announced that the earthquake was a message from the spirits that she was spending too much time in the front rooms. She boarded up 30 of them, blocking access to her new $3,000 front doors, and never used them again. Sarah spent over $5 million building and rebuilding the bizarre Winchester House, but it didn't ensure her immortality. She died in her sleep on September 5, 1922. Construction stopped abruptly. Some say carpenters stopped without hammering in the nail they were working on. By then, Winchester had created a sprawling structure covering 6 acres with 160 rooms, 13 bathrooms, 6 kitchens, 40 staircases, 47 fireplaces, 2,000 doors and 10,000 windows. A small clue to Sarah's thoughts was found in the contents of her safe after she died. Servants opened it, no doubt thinking it might contain items of great value, but all they found were locks of her husband's and infant daughter's hair, along with copies of their obituaries. Even if Sarah really believed that the building would help her live forever, she had a contingency plan: a will written in 13 parts and signed 13 times. She provided for some of her servants, left her furniture to her niece and said nothing about the building she had spent so much of her energy on. The niece sold most of the furniture, which was carried away by the truckload: eight truckloads a day for six and a half weeks. The Winchester House was sold and turned into the tourist attraction it is today. On a saner note, Sarah donated almost $2 million to the Winchester Fund for treatment of tuberculosis at New Haven Hospital, which she founded after her husband's death. Sarah was also sometimes a practical and inventive woman, and there are many unusual innovations in the Winchester House, including a shower specially designed so the diminutive Sarah could wash without getting her hair wet, an elaborate servant call system, a conservatory room designed to save water, and a patented laundry room sink with built-in scrub-board and soap holders. Big image link: http://edp.org/Travel/California/Tou...erExterior.jpg ![]() ![]() A staircase that leads nowhere... ![]() Wall detail ![]() Conservatory ![]() Hallway ![]() Organ ![]() Daguerreotype ![]() Google it further. The images are incredible, straight across the board. ![]() content.answers.com . terragalleria.com . gocalifornia.about.com . math.utoronto.ca . snoobug.com . insolitology.com . members.tripod.com . images.43things.com
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“Above all, remember that the most important thing you can take anywhere is not a Gucci bag or French-cut jeans; it's an open mind” Gail Rubin Bereny |
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11-05-2007 | |
backstage pass
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Windsor Castle have an amayzing work but to heavy for me i like it simple and cousy...and simple and cousy doesn't mean without glamour!!!
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"... bad taste is wanting to be too fashionable" www.pinkyreport.com |
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16-05-2007 | |
backstage pass
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Versailles it's amazing but extrimely heavy... i'll get depress if i must live there, i love the style and special the inspiration, the story it's fantastic and the resolt to, but in sec. XVIII, now it's beutifully heavy, Louis XIV was a excentric king but he really was THE KING!!!
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"... bad taste is wanting to be too fashionable" www.pinkyreport.com |
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18-05-2007 | |
windowshopping
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For the person who likes the White House, you should go to http://www.whitehousemuseum.org/ ... it allows you to look in every room
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