If you could live in a replicated famous house (real or fictional) which would it be?

[dada2fish]

I remember a long time ago watching a TV program that showed a tour of Katherine Hepburns house in Manhatten. I fell in love with it. That was my dream home. I wish I could find pictures of it to see if its how I remember it.

[Shagnasty]

I would build an extract replica of Frank Llloyd Wright’s Falling Water house and then surprise everyone on inauguration day by blowing it up in front of thousands of people. Then, I would be build my real house which is Oak Alley on the ruins.

http://www.oakalleyplantation.com/

[Miss_Mapp]

Howard’s End. I had my first serious case of house-lust over the house they used in the movie, and have painted my living room walls in that same green-with-stencil-borders style.

Manderly and Pemberly and Brideshead are tempting, but they’re just too big to keep up without at least 20 servants.

[chela]

I would take Robin Hill from the Forsyte Saga, it’s a bit FLW-ish, down to the handmade furniture. Or the manse in The Secret Garden. Doris Duke’s Shangri-La would be acceptable…

Back down to earth, the Brady Bunch house would do fine, just need to replace that shag carpet and upgrade the kitchen.

[Evil_Captor]

I’d like to live in the Victorian Folly house from Little, Big. It gets bigger, the farther in you go.

[Dangerosa]

@GillianBoardman

I wanna live on Walton’s Mountain. No, really…I love that house. But I’d like to add just one more bath.

In a similar vein, Green Gables is not exactly chock full of large rooms and modern conveniences, but its cozy and surrounded by idyllic beauty.

[PunditLisa]

@chela

Back down to earth, the Brady Bunch house would do fine, just need to replace that shag carpet and upgrade the kitchen.

Too small of a yard and I hate detached garages.

[wonky]

For sheer prettiness, I’d choose Lyndhurst. But I bet I’d hate it. It looks drafty as hell.

[PeskiPiksi]

I want the NYC penthouse that Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow lived in in A Perfect Murder. Sans killer husband, please.

[Shayna]

I want to live in the puzzle house!

. . . What Ms. Sherry didn’t realize until much later was that [the architect,] Mr. Clough had a number of other ideas about her apartment that he didn’t share with her. It began when [her husband,] Mr. Klinsky threw in his two cents, a vague request that a poem he had written for and about his family be lodged in a wall somewhere, Ms. Sherry said, “put in a bottle and hidden away as if it were a time capsule.”

. . .

That got Mr. Clough, who is the sort of person who has a brainstorm on a daily basis, thinking about children and inspiration and how the latter strikes the former. “I’d just read something about Einstein being inspired by a compass he’d been given as a child,” he said. The Einstein story set Mr. Clough off, and he began to ponder ways to spark a child’s mind. “I was thinking that maybe there could be a game or a scavenger hunt embedded in the apartment — that was the beginning,” he said.

Before long, his firm, 212box, was knee-deep in code and cipher books, furnituremakers were devising secret compartments, and Mr. Clough’s former colleague, Heather Bensko, an architectural and graphic designer who had been his best friend at the Yale School of Architecture, found herself researching the lives of 40 historical figures, starting with Francis I of France and ending with Mrs. Post.

. . .

All of that was tied into gizmos Mr. Clough, Ms. Bensko and others in their office hid in the apartment — without telling the clients — in a way that is almost too complicated to explain.

. . .

The apartment is quite attractive and perfectly functional in all the typical ways, and its added features remained largely unnoticed by its inhabitants for quite some time after they moved in, in May of 2006. Then one night four months later, Cavan Klinsky, who is now 11, had a friend over. The boy was lying on the floor in Cavan’s bedroom, staring at dozens of letters that had been cut into the radiator grille. They seemed random — FDYDQ, for example. But all of a sudden the friend leapt up with a shriek, Ms. Sherry said, having realized that they were actually a cipher (a Caesar Shift cipher, to be precise), and that Cavan’s name was the first word.

. . .

Read the rest of the article for more on the hidden secrets in the house. Click on the slide show to see pictures of this amazing place.

How cool would it be to live in a puzzle house?

[missred]

@PunditLisa

Johnny Cash’s house overlooking Henderson Lake. A few scenes from the movie “I Walk the Line” were filmed in the house. It has a great history, isn’t pretentious at all, has a huge screened in porch, lots of light, a great treed lot, and a great lake view. Perfect.

Nitpick: It was on Old Hickory Lake in Hendersonville, TN and as mentioned upthread, it has burned. Too bad, it was a nice house.

My personal choice would be the house from the TV show The Waltons. I kind of like both old farmhouses and the mountains. The kitchen and bath would have to be updated, though.

[Dewey_Finn]

I like Arts and Crafts architecture, so my dream house would be the Gamble House in Pasadena. (It was Doctor Emmett Brown’s house in Back to the Future and I think was the house in the kids’ movie Zathura.)

[Paul_in_Qatar]

Doctor Fraiser Crane’s condo in Seattle.

[UncleMoose]

@Czarcasm

Collinwood, from Dark Shadows.

Guess what? You could (sort of) live there. The building itself is an “academic facility and student residence” for Salve Regina College in Newport, RI. So if you enroll, then get lucky in the housing lottery…

http://www.salve.edu/virtualtour/buildings/cecilia_hall.html

Note that this is (I think) within about a half-mile or so of Belcourt Castle, and the rest of the mansions on Bellvue Avenue.

[zamboniracer]

I guess I don’t have enough ambition. I always liked Jim Rockford’s trailer in Malibu.

[Quercus]

@Sampiro

It has to be a house or dwelling that can actually exist with modern technology: i.e. you can use Monica’s apartment on FRIENDS or Ponderosa Ranch but not George Jetson’s sky condo or the Enterprise.

Hmm, so does Gormenghast count?

It can be real or fictional, but nothing too outlandish- no Renaissance palaces, Versailles, Biltmore, or the Forbidden City or even the White House, but something more family scaled (though it can be a rich family).

Oh, I guess not.

Anyway

@3acresandatruck

If I could have a version of Bag End done by Gaudi, that would be even better.

I think I have to agree with this.

[Bridget_Burke]

@Hedda_Rosa

I love great big older houses, that seem crammed full of family and memories.

The house from The Family Stone.

The house Not the apartment) in Stepmom

That type of place…

How about the house from Practical Magic? This link shows the wonderful kitchen; click around to see the rest. The movie wasn’t much, but I loved the house.

However, I’d pick something more modern–the de Menil house in Houston. John & Dominique de Menil did wonderful things for our city as patrons of the arts & social change. In 1951, they had almost unknown Philip Johnson design them a house in the River Oaks area. River Oaks is full of huge mansions on huge lots. The lot is large–behind a chain link fence, now almost covered by a stand of bamboo. But the house (in which the de Menils raised their 5 children) is quite compact–smaller than many of today’s McMansions.

Mrs de Menil outraged Johnson by asking him to add windows to the front of the house; she wanted light for the kitchen. Then she hired Charles James to decorate the place; he painted some walls in bright colors & designed furniture with curves! (Johnson was miffed but got over it.) Over the years, the de Menils filled the house with the art collection now (mostly) in its own magical museum.

After Mrs de Menil’s death, the house needed serious restoration. Flat roofs in rainy Houston? It’s not open to the public but, as a museum member, I was able to take a tour. The place is charming & quirky, with a wall full of books in several languages–many of them paperbacks. Plus a tiny closet used as a bar–crammed with a stunning collection of miniature art. And a “secret” door (through a closet) from John’s office to Dominique’s dressing room.

Of course, they might not let me stock my replica with a rotating selection from the museum’s collection. I could settle for The Clark Gable House. I’ve never been inside, but many have coveted this gem on a quiet street in the Montrose for many years.

[Hanna]

Iris’s (Kate Winslet) cottage from The Holiday.

[Sampiro]

Adjusted to include all modern conveniences of course, I’d love to have Atia’s house from ROME with its columns, peristyle, statuary, etc…

[blackhobyah]

William Morris’ Red House, but on a bit more acreage.

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-redhouse/

There is something very human and engaging about the Art and Crafts movement.