the heinlein house

[memelaina]

We found out about ten days ago that the house that Heinlein built here in Colorado Springs at 1776 Mesa was for sale. Yesterday we went to see it. We went with moderate hope (living in the Heinlein House would have enormous cachet) but not much faith that it would really fit our needs. After some discussion we decided that we were correct, it really was not a good fit for us, but it was a very interesting experience.

The house was originally one floor, on a large wooded lot (read big mucking CANYON in the back yard). The house was tripled in size by subsequent owners who finished the double garage and put a second story over the whole resulting house. We had hoped that the bomb shelter (famous from Farnham's Freehold) might be made into a usable room - but it was clear it could not. Kent went down the rickety wooden steps while the agent plugged in the power line that gave light to a tiny room carved out of the middle of a 15' x 20' concrete block. Take three feet of concrete off each side and that leaves you a room about 9' by 14' with a low ceiling and a hatchway door. Nice root cellar, nice wine cellar, nice bomb shelter - not good for anything else.

There was loads of living and entertaining space (big sunny music room, living/dining great room, den, study, upstairs living room, separate breakfast room), but very little bedroom space. The original house apparently had only one bedroom (on the main floor) and it could be called spacious only in comparison to accomodation aboard a battleship. If you put a double bed in the room you would have just about exactly a foot and a half on all sides between bed and wall. A master bedroom and two other bedrooms upstairs - but the combination of having to do so many stairs along with the outside maintenance (a lovely system of three conjoined ponds, but is some disrepair - as was most of the outside property) let us shake our heads and say, no. Nice but no thanks.

Still, if there's anyone out there looking to retire to the best climate in the world and live in a house with a great literary history, let us know and we'll introduce you to the real estate agaent.

Comments

[threeringedmoon.livejournal.com]

I'm with you: if I move to another house, it will be one-level. As it is these days, there are some weeks when I don't get downstairs even once.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing your impressions. (I looked up your LJ after reading papersky's poem and discovered this posting.)

I seem to have accidentally collected a lot of information about this house.

Have you seen the 1952 Popular Mechanics article about it (http://books.google.com/books?id=XNwDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA65#PPA65,M1)? The original floor plan is shown.

Or a tour by mystery writer Robert Crais (http://web.archive.org/web/20051224024837/http://www.robertcrais.com/worldheinlein.htm)?

Or the sleepover visit of two Los Angeles science fiction fans (http://jophan.org/mimosa/m27/pelz.htm) in the 1960s?

Are there still folding cots and oxygen tanks in the shelter? Looks like, as of 2003, owners had not bothered to remove them.

[gilraen2.livejournal.com]

These are fascinating links, thanks! I'll have to ask my husband if there are still cots and tanks in the bomb shelter - he went down and looked in, and I did not. Mostly he just mentioned walls of shelving as if it had been used for storage.

From looking at the original plans, I can see that what the realtor said was the "master bedroom" is actually the study. What was the master bedroom and nursery are now a large pleasant breakfast room with stairs going up to the upstairs living room. The only built-ins left that I could see were an end table in the living/dining room, some bookshelves, and the pocket doors and closets. The indoor garden is still there and filled with potted plants. The double garage has been turned into a large study. The size of the living/dining room almost doubled with an addition onto the front. The swinging panel between kitchen and dining room for the table is no longer in evidence. And there's an entire 'nother floor with three bedrooms, two baths, living room, and music room build above the whole ground floor layout.

However, the original house is clearly there, not destroyed as Crais conjectures - just extended and built onto. And the bomb shelter is there as well, although the stairs are now quite rickety and power is provided by an extention cord up to the back porch.

Thanks for sharing the articles.

[gilraen2.livejournal.com]

Having now figured out who beamjockey really is, I'm awed that you took time to read and comment on my journal. We met by email last year when I was organizing the program for Denvention3. And, of course, we both list jonsinger as friends .

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I called my blog "Eponymously Yours, W. Skeffington Higgins" as a kind of subtle clue.

Your identity is better-protected, but looking through my Denvention correspondence I think I know your name. Denvention was a truly grand time, and I thank you for your efforts.

Anyway, I have been doing Heinlein research for a few years now, and I am pleased to have an eyewitness report on the appearance of the celebrated house today.

The Heinlein house

[(Anonymous)]

Hi,
I live in the Springs and have desired to see the property but had no interest in buying. I wonder if the realtor might have had floor plans available? Maybe its not too late to inquire?

I'd like to compare to the original plans as shown in the old 1950's Popular Mechanics article. Sounds like more of the original architecture exists than some had believed and this agrees with what I'd guessed after noodling about with the old versus new dimensions (obtained from public construction records).

--Wayne

Re: The Heinlein house

[gilraen2.livejournal.com]

The ground floor is largely as Heinlein built it, with the following changes:
- the master bedroom/nursery is now a large pleasant breakfast room off the kitchen that also connects to the front hall. the main stairs to the upper level come off of this room. there are glass doors out to the concrete back porch from whence the bomb shelter descends.
- the kitchen has been modernized, but still has the same original footprint
- a large piece of additional living room space has been added to the front of the living room/dining room - nearly doubling the original space.
- the garage/workroom area has been converted to a study/den with lots of built in cabinets that may be original to the garage.
- a second story has been added over ALL of the original and extended first story.

I felt that it would be inappropriate to just go look at the house without at least some interest in purchasing it. Since we are in a position to make that purchase and move there if we chose to do so, I felt okay about asking the realtor to show it to us. The cachet of living in the Heinlein house (in such a great location) would have been high - but although it was workable for us, it just wasn't quite as comfortably laid out as our current home. If it had been on the market when we moved to the Springs in the 90s we would have snapped it up.

Re: The Heinlein house

[(Anonymous)]

>it would be inappropriate to just go look at the house without at least some interest in purchasing <

That is my feeling as well, so I've been reluctant to make inquiries with the realtors. I had hinted to my wife that a tour of the property would be a fine birthday present but they didn't take up the hint.

In the NitroForum I noticed someone remark on the similarity of a realtor's picture of the back of the home with a 1950's image in Grumble From The Grave. And that makes sense if a lot of the original survives as the first floor.

Do you recall if the glass brick window was still part of the entryway?

--Wayne

[jeff-duntemann.livejournal.com]

I live in the Springs, over on the slopes of Cheyenne Mountain, and a friend and I once went past the Heinleins' address. Lots of bushes, bad view. It's interesting, because I almost went up to look at Heinlein's California house, in Bonnie Doon, back in 1988. Virginia Heinlein was selling the place, and (weirdly) Carol's boss's wife was the listing agent. It was too expensive for us, so we decided not to even go up there and look! (BIG mistake...)