It’s a Virtual Winchester House, She Told Me

I asked an website usability testing guru to give me her thoughts on GoNOMAD’s design. She called one section ‘A Winchester House,’ which of course led me to look up just what she meant.

And it made perfect sense.  In 1830 Leonard and Sarah Pardee of New Haven had a baby girl. She grew up to be only about four feet tall, yet was çonsidered the Belle of the City among socialites. In 1857  William Wirt Winchester too over manufacturing of the Volcanic Repeater, a rifle that used a lever to load bullets.
He amassed a breathtaking fortune by selling these guns to the Union army just as the civil war began. Sarah and rich William got married.

But then an infant death and her husband’s death three decades later left her crushed, yet the inheritor of $20 million, and an income of $1000 a day, this when there was no tax on income!  But she needed more, and had a vision, and was told, “look west, start a new life.”  So she sold it all and moved to Santa Clara in 1884.

She bought a small house and then spent the next 32 years building, rebuilding, adding and building, renovating and keeping 22 carpenters at work 24 hours a day. It grew to a massive 26 rooms, three elevators, 47 fireplaces, plus 13 cupolas, windows with 13 panes, and staircases with 13 stairs.   The house grew to seven stories tall.  It ended up having 148 rooms when Sarah finally died at the age of 83.

So what does it mean to have such a thing as a Winchester House?  It means she wants it to be simpler. Cleaner, less choice, more nesting buttons and navigation that is easier to, well, navigate.