in San Jose, California lies Sarah Winchester house, nestled in the trees, tucked away from the road, attempting to be discreet as a ghost. But where is the Winchester House?Īt 525 South Winchester Blvd. We’ve heard the stories of the mystery house with a life of its own, a house with the paranormal ability to seemingly build upon itself, twisting and turning in every direction to confuse and consume its lost inhabitants. Photo: LiPo Ching / Bay Area News Group Winchester Mansion aka Winchester Mystery House
Winchester mystery house photos inside full#
I love a good ghost story, and the story surrounding the Winchester Mystery House is one full of love, tragedy, and horror. When new owners acquired the property in 1923, they counted, but couldn’t get an accurate number of rooms in the house, as they kept getting a different number every time. Katie Dowd is an SFGATE Senior Digital Manager.Seven stories tall, with stained-glass windows, a garden, a greenhouse, and shrouded in trees, the Winchester House is as beautiful as it is mysterious. I do hope to get that into the tour very soon.” “I still hear tour guides today saying it’s a Tiffany window,” Boehm said. Plus, there's a change that needs to be made. But now, they're looking forward to sharing the news and perhaps setting up an exhibit for the public. The envelope - and the mystery it helped solve - has been the secret of the staff and a few historians for the last five months. It says “Warren $18.” No one’s sure what it refers to yet, perhaps a bill owed to one of the many local laborers she employed. On the back is scribbled a little note, almost certainly in Sarah Winchester’s hand. The envelope is noteworthy for another reason.
Usually when we do restoration projects we don’t normally dismantle things. “I don’t think we’ve ever found anything hidden like this before that was Sarah’s,” Boehm said. And, after all, strange coincidences seem to cluster around the house. The timing felt too good to be true, but Boehm knew no one could come or go from the blocked-off renovation space without the staff’s approval.
Winchester mystery house photos inside windows#
Stamped across the front was the elaborate seal of the Pacific American Decorative Company, complete with the memorial church windows they created for the Stanfords after the death of their son, Leland Jr.īoehm immediately got on the phone with Wolf. It was an envelope, beautifully preserved, untouched since the day over 100 years ago it likely slipped through the floorboards above. As workers carefully removed part of the wall, they saw something tucked inside. The next morning, restoration work started up in one of the dining rooms. “I’ve never seen any other windows like them,” Boehme said. His Pacific glass company made windows for the Mark Hopkins mansion on Nob Hill, the Carson Mansion in Eureka and Villa Montezuma in San Diego.Īnd, Wolf argues, the stained glass in both Craigdarroch Castle and the Winchester Mystery House.Īrmed with evidence, Wolf came to San Jose in April to present his findings to the house historians. Mallon became the go-to craftsman for wealthy Californians.
“Too embarrassed to return, and too proud to admit his foolishness, Mallon decided to remain in the city to find work in the glass trade,” Wolf wrote in an article for “The Magazine of the Victorian Society in America.” Unfortunately for Mallon, the rush had already gone bust by the time he arrived in San Francisco. Mallon, who learned his craft in New York, went west in 1858 chasing after a gold rush in British Columbia. Mallon was no ordinary craftsman although largely forgotten today, he was considered one of America’s greatest glass artists of the late 1800s.
So Wolf began searching for prominent glass artists in San Francisco. Alexander also built the white-columned home today known as the Dunsmuir Hellman Historic Estate in Oakland. Dunsmuir’s son Alexander had moved to San Francisco to run a branch of the family business in 1878. He had a hunch they came from California. Recently, Craigdarroch asked architectural historian Jim Wolf to do some research on the windows. Whoever discovered their windows’ provenance would almost certainly have done the work for both. Craigdarroch Castle also boasts beautiful stained glass windows, and caretakers long ago realized they bore a striking resemblance to the ones at the Winchester home. One of the gems of British Columbia is Craigdarroch Castle, the opulent home of 19th-century coal baron Robert Dunsmuir (if his name sounds familiar, there’s more on that in a moment). The enigma began unraveling 900 miles north.
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