Surviving Las Vegas' nuclear winter... in a 1970s Doomsday bunker
Ever since I watched Ashes To Ashes I've fantasised about getting shot in the face and waking up in 1981. A far more realistic situation is me scraping together $18 million (£14.7m), emigrating to the States, setting up home in Vegas and waking up in the 1970s every day.
Today Top Ten Real Estate Deals shared details of this exquisite 'DOOMSDAY BUNKER' that was built in 1978 by Avon-cosmetics-executive Girard (Jerry) Henderson.
When he came up with this subterranean super-secure hideaway, the threat of a nuclear winter was very real, and he clearly thought the best defence against a Cold War was some nice warm lighting, a pink kitchen, plastic trees and a swimming pool.
Spot on!
The Underground House, 3970 Spencer St., is quite literally a time capsule, a fragment of the 1970s buried deep underground waiting for future generations to discover and experience.
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The exterior looks like a plain white house, but in if you go down 26 feet to the 15,000 sq ft steel reinforced basement, you discover yourself in a fully functioning, 5,000 sq ft five-bedroom house, complete with gardens turfed with fake grass, and a staff cottage for the lackeys every rich prepper needs to keep their Martinis topped up, and the grim retro canapés coming.
There is a 6-ft deep pool, a BBQ area, carpeted six-hole putting green, and the windows look out on to carefully painted realistic murals. A nod to the wealth of Girard and his wife Mary, each vista is that of their other swanky homes in upstate New York, Colorado, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.
As well as founding Avon, Review Journal claims that Jerry Henderson had a company called Underground World Homes, and they were an exhibitor at the New York World’s Fair in 1964 and 1965 showcasing how to live happily underground in the years following the Cuban missile crisis.
They add that Henderson also had an underground home in Colorado that measured about 45,000 square feet.
It being 2020, the Doomsday Bunker house is now being touted as the ultimate place to style out coronavirus - but it might also be a shameless attempt at cashing in this architectural anomaly.
It was last on the market in March 2014 when it was bought by its current owners for $1.15 million (£940k! Less than a flat in east London FFS). The current owner is the Society for the Preservation of Near Extinct Species, who apparently spent $1m doing it up with 1970s furniture.
They are a "secretive" group, but local press revealed that they are a branch of Transtime, a cryogenics agency based in California... which explains the big silver cryogenics unit spotted in the 'garden' of the bunker.
But what is less clear is who put that stripper pole and disco ball in there?
