Winchester Mystery House reveals plans for 100th anniversary
The festivities starting in late June include a new tour exhibit, a brunch and the burying of a time capsule.
It sounds like it’s going to be the Summer of Sarah — Winchester, that is — as her storied mansion in San Jose celebrates its 100th anniversary as a tourist attraction starting in June.
A famously private person, Winchester — who died in 1922 after moving to San Jose in the 1880s — probably would have been annoyed by all the brouhaha about her sprawling, 161-room house, which she called Llanada Villa. Not to mention the millions of people who’ve stalked through the house in a century, chuckling at the “easy riser” stairs installed because of her diminutive stature, marveling at the “modern” technology touches like an elevator and admiring the gorgeous Victorian architecture and interior design. And if you got a chill visiting the seance room or were puzzled by the door opening out to a long drop? That’s just part of the experience.
If you want to get an early jump on the celebration, the Winchester Mystery House’s historian, will feature Janan Boehme, the Winchester Mystery House historian, looking back at the house’s last century for the sixth edition of the Centennial Speaker Series on June 24. Tickets for the 2 p.m. talk in the Carriage House are available for $5.
The official centennial festivities, however, kick off Friday, June 30, with city officials and other dignitaries gathering for a proclamation of Winchester Mystery House Day in San Jose. A time capsule filled with current souvenirs and memorabilia will be, ahem, entombed in the house. A string quartet from Symphony San Jose will perform Roaring ’20s tunes in the house’s manicured front garden, and guests will get a look at a new exhibit exploring the house’s effect on pop culture. Magician Aiden Sinclair will return to the mansion with “Aiden Sinclair’s Possessions,” an interactive event focused on what haunts us, with two shows a night on June 30 and July 1.
The final event of the weekend will be a Centennial Brunch on July 2 at the greenhouse and greenhouse patio. Tickets to all the events go on sale June 2 at www.winchestermysteryhouse.com.
CURTAIN CALL: Emily Ray will take her final bows as music director and principal conductor of the Mission Chamber Orchestra at its June 4 free concert, “Music of Portugal,” at Five Wounds Church in San Jose. Ray founded the orchestra in 1996 and was instrumental in bringing the annual celebration of Portuguese music to the community for more than 15 years.
Of course, even if it weren’t Ray’s last time leading the orchestra, there’d still be good reasons to go. The 3 p.m. concert, a nice lead up to the Dia de Portugal events at History Park June 10, features two soloists from Portugal. Soprano Sandra Medeiros will perform arias by composers ranging from Mozart and Puccini to Gershwin and Portugal’s Francisco de Lacerda. Pianist Diana Botelho Vieira, who like Medeiros was born in the Azores, will perform Piano Concerto No. 5 by Sérgio Azevedo, a Portuguese composer she’s very familiar with — they happen to be married.
SCOUTING AROUND: Los Altos resident Steven Wu was honored this month with the Distinguished Citizen Award from the Pacific Skyline Council of the Boy Scouts of America, which is responsible for scouting activities from Mountain View north to Daly City. Wu is an attorney who specializes in the legal issues around artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies — so he’ll be staying busy for some time — but is no stranger to scouting. An Eagle Scout himself, he and his wife, Amy, founded the council’s first Scouts BSA girls troop, and their daughter, Elizabeth, was part of the inaugural class of female Eagle Scouts.