When Sarah pressed a button, a card would drop on the board announcing her location. Installed throughout the rooms of Llanada Villa, the annunciator had a master board located in the staff quarters. But we put that in case you glanced down to cheat. Your voice is loud.Ĭ) Invent a contraption called an annunciator How do you find a servant to help?Ī) Get off your duff and wander from room to room to find the person needed.ī) Start yelling out names. How else to do the upkeep? It would take a year just to run a feather duster through all the rooms! One Monday at 6:15 in the morning, you need help lifting a box. Obviously, you have a staff, about 18 people. Here’s a multiple choice situation: Let’s say you live in a mansion with 100-plus rooms. If not for them, someone would have had to lug water in buckets to the upper stories. They watered the plants in her conservatories. Plus, she had garden hoses-a brand-new invention-attached to those newfangled indoor faucets. Her home had indoor plumbing, faucets, and showers. In the span of your grandmother or great-grandmother’s lifetime indoor plumbing has become a non-negotiable item! homes had electricity and indoor plumbing. In 1920, two years before Sarah’s death, only 1% of U.S. Over a third of houses didn’t have a flush toilet. Less than 80 years ago, nearly half of houses in the United States lacked hot piped water, or a bathtub or shower. Housing technology has advanced so lightning fast that you may find the next three sentences hard to swallow. Peelor of San Jose electric light tower, aka Owens Electric Tower. To light up a room by pressing a button was wizardry. While that may sound slightly old-school, many other houses of the time were illuminated by candles or paraffin oil. It supplied the carbide gas lights in the house, which ignited with a button! Upon settling into her farmhouse Llanada Villa, Sarah ordered her own gas generator built. In 1881, San Jose was the first municipality in California to power up electricity from the downtown Owen’s Tower. She was wealthy, possibly eccentric, and flush with new ideas that played out within the rooms of Winchester Mystery House, an architectural incubator.įive years before Sarah settled into Llanada Villa, the city itself was lit up. Pardee Winchester, a widow from Connecticut who arrived in San Jose in 1886, would definitely be considered a unicorn by today’s standards. But the house had features that in the 19th century were considered pretty cutting-edge. The 160-room clapboard mansion with turrets and towers may be a relic in Silicon Valley. Winchester Mystery House is like an amusement ride into the past.
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