San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1924-03-23
The Real Building
BY KATHLEEN NORRIS

say it could not be duplicated today
for five.
The sunshine pours into glorious
wide empty suites, open fireplaces,
tiled bathrooms, windows commanding
glorious views-untenanted for twenty
years. There are false trapdoors, real
trap doors, windows in floors. windows
in windows, SPLENDID fireplaces in
tiny servants rooms, splendid apart
ments reached only through insight
ficant or secret passages, steps up,
steps down, faucets hidden where
lights appear to be lights hidden in
faucets, trick panelling. There are
heavy prison bars placed eratically,
business-like flights of steps that
lead to nothing, shady deep balloon
les TO which no door nor window
gives access. There are hundreds
and hundreds Of shallow stairways,
with one-inch rises, zigzagging back
and forth like a cattle-run.
Reaching one angle of the roof.
one looks down upon veritable sea of
formers, attics, towers, pinnacles,
dormers, attics, towers, pinnacles,
pavilians. 1t is of course extremely
easy to get lost in the place. And
a series of small arrows has been
painted on the walls to guide any
one who may be too entirely con-
fused.
Poor old lady, with her income Of
a thousand dollars a day! Her last
decade was spent in wheeling herself
suspiciously and anxiously about her
preposteroIs dwelling. She would not
allow her very servants to accompany
her. Nobody-nobody was to see
what was being done. The carpenters
who were working on a certain section
could not approach it through the
house. They must put high ladders
up from the garden, and climb into
the room they were altering Tho. way.
But the place is a museum now. and
all the poor old woman's crazy ideas
are being exploited cheerfully to the
public at firty cents head. Because
she never would let a strange or I'M
friendly eye penetrate into her life.
is all the more reason why scores of
scorpful and contemptuous eyes should
do so today.
Heres the secret door to the room
where she used to commune with her
husbands spirit the guide says scep-
tically. The sight-seers swarm after
him. grinning.
They say that her own maid. eigh-
teen years in her service, came to the
Craziest House in the World, the
other day, and paid her fifty cents
with the rest to have a look nj it.
"She never would let me see but three
or four rooms" explained the old
servant, "and the cook and waitress
never saw even that many"
Oh, poor old Mary Smith, with
your hundred magnificently wooded
acres, and your thousand doi~-s a
day, how might you have built il you
has CHANGED to get that message just
little straighter!
Half a mile from the @Craziest
House in the World" is a big factory
and a long line of crowde>., s.aopy
workingman's houses. The day l was
there it was just the noon hour, and
outside the factory score q, yvunl
girls were settled-settled upon moth
ing more comfortable than a great
heap of pipe to eat their lunches. Il
was a bCOLNuinb lHc VI
the corrugated iron building was no
real shade.
They were young, in their skinny
perspiration-soaked waists and sack
shilded skirts. They were laughing
and murmuring. But one had a tiny
downy-headed baby, having his lunch
con from his mothers flat young
breast before she had hers from ths
red manila-paper box, and they al
looked weary, jaded ever bored. Pres
emily q whistle sounded and they al
got to their feet, and the baby wen
back into a shabby preambulator, il
the shade"
A mile away from the crazies
house in the world is an orphan
asylum, one hundred and twenty deal
little obedient, patient children treated
with machine-like justice, precision
intelligence.
Mary Smith, with your thousant
a day, couldn't you have afforded t,
build a long table, under the tree
a comfort-room, perhaps a libls.-. :
club-room for those factory girls? An!
one Of their lives, at two dollars ,