Sarah Winchester, widow of the rifle magnate William Wirt Winchester, oversaw construction herself. She hired at least two architects but dismissed them and planned the house with her own carpenters. The infobox gives 1884 to 1906. Popular accounts claim 38 years of building, which the article disputes, saying work largely stopped after 1910. The style is Victorian with Gothic and Romanesque elements.
A two-story, eight-room farmhouse grew to up to five levels. At her death in 1922 it had 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 47 stairways and 47 fireplaces, and one stairway rises ten feet in 44 steps. The 1906 earthquake collapsed the seven-story tower, leaving doors and stairs that lead nowhere.
It is a privately owned tourist attraction with guided tours. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
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