On one hand the City of San Francisco has declared this building to be an official landmark, which is pretty darn cool. And it’s huge and — if we consider this is in San Francisco, where $750,000 gets you this — it’s cheap and the Rolling Stones went to parties there back when they were interesting . But… well, poking around the Interweb reveals at least three porn movies were filmed in this house. I was all set to show you some screenshots proving this, but tell me: do you want to spend the afternoon researching 1970s porn?
You do?
Great! Okay! “User submitted,” that’s our slogan! So, lock your office door, put your phone on mute, and see if you can find John Holmes’ The Swizzle Stick. Also Tea Time (tea time?!?), and The Vixen. Have fun!
Found By: Teri
Loveliest comment, by Vivian: See, my head went to a completely different place on the movie thing. I’m picturing Gene Wilder walking down that hallway bent over double at the tiny, tiny door, and playing on a piano keyboard to open it.
Tags: antique, creepy, hallway, old house, red room red room, stairs
See, my head went to a completely different place on the movie thing.
I’m picturing Gene Wilder walking down that hallway bent over double at the tiny, tiny door, and playing on a piano keyboard to open it.
Name that movie! Anyone, anyone? Bueller?
What? What were YOU thinking of?
Ahhh! Now I can’t see it any other way.
Glad your mind is so easily re-focused. Mine is still stuck on shaggy 70s body hair and John Holmes’ “O-Face”. Thanks, Lovely Listing!
Ooo oo Willy Wonka!!!
Ding ding ding ding ding! We have a winner!
what?
I thought Pan’s Labyrinth to be honest.
I was thinking of the Rose Red TV movie thing, personally.
And I think my parents saw The Vixen. No, my folks didn’t usually engage in TMI with me. I just asked my mom when I was a teenager why my dad didn’t ever go to our local movie theater, and she told me it was because they’d seen a porno flick there in the 70s. So I asked her which one, and she told me it was The Vixen.
My mom died in 2006, and I’m not about to ask my dad about it. “Hey, Dad. Do these pictures look familiar?”
Yup… Rose Red popped into my head, too!
Strangely, my mind went immediately to the original “A Haunting”. This place seriously looks like that mansion.
WANT!
Me too!
I’ve found my dream home. “WANT”, indeed.
If I bought this place, I’d feel obligated to wear filmy nightgowns with underwire support every night.
It just wouldn’t be fitting otherwise.
All I’m thinking is that I want to Swiffer the CRAP out of that place! Dust mask STAT!! After I buy it because it is ridiculously awesome.
I was thinking we could contact Swiffer and make them pay for part to do an infomercial there!
I’m most definitely sure that this house falls into the category of “Pretty Freakin’ Awesome.” It’s creepy, sure, but only at night when the organ plays by itself. According to this website, http://www.anusha.com/bourne.htm, this is the Bourne Mansion and contrary to popular belief is not a haunted house.
Pretty Freakin’ Awesome… so long as you have a lotta cash on hand to hire a cleaning crew. I suspect there’s been a wee bit of deferred maintenance, as they say.
I love this place. I want to buy it and invite you all to live with me.
This sounds like the start of one of the movies they filmed there.
that has to be the coolest freaking house i have ever seen. DO WANT
OMG, I know where this place is! I’ve taken pictures of it from the outside because it looks like it dropped out of a Dickens story. Last time I saw it I noted that the windows were covered by blankets and you could see that there was a ton of junk stacked up in the rooms, but it’s totally awesome inside!
You really need to go to an open house or con a realtor into getting you in there!
This place is to die for – after a thorough dusting.
I would throw seasonal parties in this place. I mean… seriously! Have you ever seen a house so perfect for Halloween Bashes AND Christmas Extravaganzas!? Oh, and the indoor Easter Egg Hunts would be fabulous!
Does the guest room have a transdimensional wardrobe in it?
I’d turn it into a Horror-movie themed bar/restaurant – clean out all that dust, buy those vintage props and use them to decorate the place. Set up a Munster Koach limosine service out at the front.
That would be freaking awesome. I had a friend who wanted to open a “psychic” B&B — get an old house and then offer tarot card readings and woo woo stuff like that. This place would be perfect for something like that.
Not Tudor, not Georgian, hardly English but deeply wonderful. I sense moths, huge moths, just waiting behind those doors and muttering to themselves.
I wouldn’t pay over $2 mil for a fixer-upper, no matter what kind of history it has.
And interesting as it is, it’s not the kind of history I’d want for a home – no more than getting a former whore house.
It’s too dark and dirty looking for my taste.
Apparently the lady who lived there for a long time had lots of cats. The rumor is it reeeeeeeks of cat pee. You’ll need more than a Swiffer.
http://www.shakerworkswest.com/Bournemansion.htm
Two Swiffers?
A little enzymatic cleaner should get that out!
You all can HAVE the house! The Haunting of Hill House will haunt me forever and that is all I can see in this house! (Shudder)
I need this house or I will die. seriously!
Oh, the parties I could have in it…
A little fluffing and the house will be good to go.
Eeew. You said fluffing…
Only $2.9 million for nearly 10,000 square feet? Full of gothic goodness like stained glass windows? In Pacific Heights??
I would totally buy the crap outta this place. All I need are nine more people who can qualify for a $300K mortgage. Who’s in?
I have a house that I can sell. Unfortunately I only have about $50,000 in equity on it.
And I’m not sure if the judge would let me out of the geographic restriction that I agreed to in the divorce for this.
“But, your honor, wouldn’t this spooky-looking former porn movie set be a splendiferous place to raise a kid?”
REDRUM cuz that is what this house looks like to me, so if you bring your children – please be prepared for the consequences Johnny!
If I lived in San Fran, I would SO be in on that. I’m sure 10 of us could live in this house and never even see each other. Heck, it has 14 bedrooms alone. I call dibs on that study with the chandelier, fireplace, and gorgeous ceiling detail!
I thought it was the hotel from “The Shining.”
Um, ok, this is in Pacific Heights folks. Pacific Heights. The most exclusive neighborhood in San Francisco. Now, I’m not saying that super-rich people make good neighbors, or do a good job running investment banks, they don’t, but… this is a MAGNIFICENT house in one of the best neighborhoods in the dang country… world. Like from a Hollywood movie views of Golden Gate Bridge…. and Marin, and the rest of the City, and over to the Presidio… this is not some weird dump. This is a somewhat neglected gorgeous house, primo delight, who cares what was filmed here when, not only is this a grand mansion, but, at the risk of being trite beyond belief, location, location, location.
I have an urge to buy Murphy’s Oil Soap in a 55-gallon barrel. Am I the only one who feels that need?
Nope, in fact I told my fiancee that it would need a serious cleaning w/ murphy’s
I am like everybody else — WANT!!! I don’t know if I could ever actually spend the night there because I am a big wimp and would be afraid of the house reconfiguring itself a la Rose Red at the very least, but wow.
Given its history, no wonder this dusty house has been free from Pledge — S.C. Johnson is a FAMILY company.
WIN!
Those stained glass windows alone are probably worth 100K each. Amazing. Gorgeous. I want to see HGTV do a special where they restore it or something-a house like that should never sit empty, collecting dust and entropy.
I love this house!! I would so buy it if I had the money!
Dear Santa,
I’ve been awfully good. Or at least I haven’t been anywhere near as bad as I could have been, that has to count for something. Please bring me this house, and a whopping stash of cash to do right by it. You won’t regret it, Santa.
Unless you don’t bring me this house. In which case, I will hunt your red velvet covered hide down and sing a nonstop tuneless version of It’s a Small World, After All. After that I will take to kidnapping reindeer, Santa. I don’t think you understand fully how much I want this house. Don’t make me prove to you the ends to which I will reach to get this house.
Pony up, Santa or I’ll start putting more, and more greenhouse gases into the environment, which will melt your home.
If you know what’s good for you, honor this request.
P.S. Oh come on! So what if they are empty threats!! I make great cookies Santa, just givemethishouse.
I think we just found out who did this http://thereifixedit.com/2009/10/20/thats-not-traumatizing-or-anything/ to Santa’s sleigh!!! You are a horrible horrible person!!
But I could have been worse! Really! Somehow! With more power tools, and a far grislier imagination and possibly severe head trauma to account for…
It wasn’t me! It was my brother!
(and if anyone is wondering, I am kidding, I am kidding. Well, except for the part about my brother, because I’m not sure what he’s been up to lately
)
How can it have 14 bedrooms but only 4.5 bathrooms?!?
This house is more than 100 years old. Having ONE indoor bathroom was the height of sophistication at that time. 4.5 borders on sheer indulgence.
People were much more continent 100 years ago.
Up until the 1900’s, the bathroom would be an outhouse at the back of the house. Then in the 1930’s, the bathrooms would be indoors, but still communal for apartments. One apartment I saw had stained windows (red/yellow/blue borders around each clear window panel) along with communal bathrooms halfway up and down the staircases. Renovated homes would turn one bedroom into a bathroom. I would guess that there is going to be one bathroom for each floor.
e_e I think when ever I ran over my dad’s porn stash by accident Tea Time was on of them…
This makes me think of the movie, “Vertigo”. What a totally cool place!
For those who are interested in the Bourn Mansion and its wacky history, here’s a lengthy, detailed article:
http://www.anusha.com/fortress.htm
Believe me, the pornos filmed there are the LEAST interesting facet of this place’s checkered past.
I followed the link, it’s a good read.
So what happened to Arden? Did the city seize the house? Did she die or get committed? I gotta know!
The house got forclosed on by the bank. It took forever to get all of her junk out. They eventually threw her out too, not sure how they did that. The house is still on the market.
Thanks for posting that, now I deeply desire it slightly less : )
I would love to buy and restore this lovely mansion.Fill it with period furnishings and art..Come on,Lottery..=)
I personally think this would make the perfect boutique hotel? maybe not have red walls but … thoughts running threw head.
If I didn’t live in Australia and was totally broke I would so buy this house, this is my dream house.
Awesome house! Now, if I can just win the lottery. . .
I thought it was going to be the Airplane house. Another great icon of the City. Then I thought “Oh, it’s the house where “Behind the Green Door” was filmed”.
If I had an extra $2.9 mil laying around I would buy this place and we would have amazing chair parties.
amazing location. just the dirt for an empty lot in this neighborhood would be a million. looks like a really good deal to me. Red is not good- but the architectural details-fireplacesetc. – fantastic. and, for those of you with the “ick” response to people having intimate relations in the rooms at some point in the past…have you ever stayed in a hotel?
This is absolutely fabulous. I want to go inside and take a million pictures of it as it is right now, and then buy it and spend the rest of my life lovingly renovating it.
Best. House. Ever.
The hallway reminded me of Stephen King’s tv-movie Rose Red. I’m expecting the house to change each time I look at it.
I agree it is a creepy (but still seductively awesome) house. But I just know as you go running screaming towards the open french doors that they will slam shut right before you get to them.
I am enormously creeped out by this place (Victorians do that to me). But…I still kind of want it.
The story of its owner, Arden Van Upp, is endlessly fascinating–
http://www.sfweekly.com/1998-12-30/news/the-fortress-on-the-hill/
Me, I wouldn’t have a a problem with the house at all. It’s just that you know that every time it rained, Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon would knock on the door and ask to use the phone.
VVlVlad Dracula: What the hell!? Why are there pictures of my summer home on this website!
shit damn keyboard!
this is my freaking dream house…. ::sigh::
I agree about REDRUM. I immediatley pictured the scary little twin girls in front of the elevator in The Shining. Blood red walls, etc.
This SO looks like the house in which the 80s cult TV show “Greatest American Hero” filmed the episode “The Beast in the Black”. That show was largely shot in and around the San Francisco area…would be really curious to have this confirmed or denied as one and the same location.
Anyone able to help?
Thank you for the reference to Rocky Horror! Immediately what I thought of. Actually not so much the rain, but sliding down the banister with a feather duster.
And doing the Time Warp.
Again.
And again.
And again…
The episode of The Greatest American Hero was not shot at the Bourn Mansion. That’s a different house, though it does look like another house in San Francisco.