While the roller coaster envisioned by the couple who first opened Winchester Park was never built, the house and grounds once owned by Sarah Winchester has managed to draw visitors for the last 100 years.
The Winchester Mystery House celebrated its centennial as a tourist attraction June 30 with a gathering that included dozens of current and past staff members.
Walter Magnuson, executive director of the Winchester Mystery House, said about 10,000 people attended the opening of Winchester Park on June 30, 1923. John and Mayme Brown, who leased the land after Winchester died in 1922, intended to create an amusement park complete with a wooden roller coaster designed by John Brown.
“The old Winchester place was sort of a supporting act,” Magnuson said.
That changed quickly as public interest in the house that Winchester built grew. “By late 1924, it was the headliner.”
The Winchester Mystery House has maintained its headliner status over the years due in no small part to the mythology that built up around it. While visitors were drawn in by stories of Winchester’s obsessive need to keep adding rooms to the house to appease the spirits of those killed by the Winchester rifle, it’s no secret that some of the house’s architectural oddities are the result of damage from the 1906 earthquake.
While the Winchester Mystery House doesn’t share attendance figures, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan told the crowd assembled in the front garden for last Friday’s event that there have been 13 million visitors in the last century.
Mahan, along with San Jose Vice Mayor Rosemary Kamei and Councilmember David Cohen, presented Magnuson with a proclamation declaring June 30, 2023, as “Winchester Mystery House Day.” Santa Clara County Supervisor Susan Ellenberg also presented a proclamation, saying, “There’s not much I like more than celebrating housing in my district.”
Guests were invited to tour recently refurbished rooms in the house to get a sense of what it was like as a home as opposed to a tourist attraction. The Twin Dining Rooms—so called because they were once both decorated with the same wallpapers and paints—still sport Lincrusta wall covering purchased by Winchester in the 1890s after their renovation.
The house has been high maintenance since it was built, and Mahan acknowledged Winchester’s management skills when it came to encouraging her staff to keep things running, This treatment of employees has carried forward, he added, and has been a factor in keeping the doors open more than 100 years after her death.
“She had incredible generosity and care for the folks who maintained the house,” Mahan said. “We have that legacy here.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com