Text 47880, 37 rader
Skriven 2007-01-27 06:05:06 av Bob Ackley (1:2905/3)
  Kommentar till text 47838 av Roger Nelson (1:3828/7.0)
Ärende: America
===============
Replying to a message of Roger Nelson to Roy Witt:

 RW>> There is the Winchester name, but I'm not sure where that would 
 RW>> lead to. Could be the rifle manufacturer or the people who built 
 RW>> thier namesake house in San Jose, CA.

The 'Winchester House' was built by Sarah Winchester, *wife* of the fellow
who made the rifles.  The building started out as a 4 room farmhouse.  The
lady kept a crew of carpenters busy for upwards of 40 years adding on to the
house.  When she died in 1922 the house had over 100 rooms and required a
staff of a dozen or more just to maintain it.  Construction stopped at her
death
and a considerable portion of the house was never finished.

The house sat empty and abandoned (and stripped of furniture and fixtures) from
her death until about 1950, when her heirs opened it for tours.  When I first
saw
it, in about 1956, it was about a half mile down a 1.5 lane gravel road from
US101.
In 1975 it was at one corner of a major (2 six lane highways) traffic
intersection,
and was practically 'downtown.'  The state took over the operation in the early
1970s
and it is now a state park.  The state park system has done considerable
maintenance
and renovation (fixed the roof and painted the place for the first time in half
a century)
- and re-furnished some of the rooms.  Among other things the state found on
taking
over the operation were two 1920s vintage cars in the barn (apparently nobody'd
ever
looked in it), and a completely furnished and equipped sewing room that had
been
walled off during construction.

--- FleetStreet 1.19+
 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:2905/3)