Editor’s note: Every weekday in October, former Mystery House blogger Stephen will post an excerpt from his in-progress guide to the Winchester Mystery House. Previous entries can be found here.

Stop 10: The Hall of Fires

According to the tour script, the heat generated by four fireplaces in a relatively small room would have soothed Mrs. Winchester’s painful arthritis. Many of the design decisions in the mansion may have been motivated by the challenges of living with the disease. The Easy Riser stairs, the addition of an electric elevator (and accompanying generator), and the bathroom doors with clear glass windows all have explanations rooted in Mrs. Winchester’s illness.

I mention the bathroom doors because inevitably someone asks about them in the Hall of Fires. The official explanation is that Mrs. Winchester’s nurses needed to check on her, and that having a window offered more privacy than an open door. It’s also true that each of the doors has curtain hardware on the inside, so the windows would not have offered much of a view. Finally, I always like to point out that windows would have offered a convenient light source, since only one of the bathrooms had electricity.