flooding the daylong valleys like the Nile . I want it still .
1977
Many Mansions
the new official residence for governors of California, un land scaped, unfurnished, and unoccupied since the day construction stopped in 1975, stands on eleven acres of oaks and olives on a bluff overlooking the American River outside Sacramento . This is the twelve-thousand-square-foot house that Ronald and Nancy Reagan built . This is the sixteen-room house in which Jerry Brown declined to live . This is the vacant house which cost the State of California one-million-four, not including the property, which was purchased in 1969 and donated to the state by such friends of the Reagans as Leonard K . Firestone of Firestone Tire and Rubber and Tart Schreiber of the Music Corporation of America and Holmes Tuttle , the Los Angeles Ford dealer . All day at this empty house three maintenance men try to keep the bulletproof windows clean and the cobwebs swept and the wild grass green and the rat tl esnakes down by the river and away from the thirty-five exterior wood and glass doors . All night at this empty house the lights stay on behind the eight-foot chain-link fence and the guard dogs lie at bay and the telephone, when it rings, startles by the fact that it works . ” Governor’s Residence,” the guards answer, their voices laconic, matter-of-fact, quite as if there were some phantom governor to connect . Wild grass grows where the tennis court was to have been . Wild grass grows where the pool and sauna were to have been . The American is the river in which gold was discovered in 1848, and it once ran fast and full past here, but lately there have been upstream dams and dry years . Much of the bed is exposed . The far bank has been dredged and graded . That the river is running low is of no real account, however, since one of the many peculiarities of the new Governor’s Residence is that it is so situated as to have no clear view of the river .
It is an altogether curious structure, this one-story one-million-four dream house of Ronald and Nancy Reagans . Were the house on the market (which it will probably not be, since, at the time it was costing a million -four, local real estate agents seemed to agree on $300,000 as the top price ever paid for a house in Sacramento County), the words used to describe it would be “open” and “contemporary,” although technically it is neither . “Flow” is a word that crops up quite a bit when one is walking through the place, and so is “resemble . ” The walls “resemble” local adobe, but they are not: they are the same concrete blocks, plastered and painted a rather stale yellowed cream, used in so many supermarkets and housing projects and Coca-Cola bottling plants . The door frames and the exposed beams “resemble” native redwood, but they are not: they are construction-grade lumber of indeterminate quality, stained brown . If anyone ever moves in, the concrete floors will be carpeted, wall to wall . If anyone ever moves in, the thirty-five exterior wood and glass doors, possibly the single distinctive feature in the house, will be, according to plan, “draped . ” The bathrooms are small and standard . The family bedrooms open directly onto the nonexistent swimming pool, with all its potential for noise and distraction . To one side of the fireplace in the formal living room there is what is known in the trade as a “wet bar,” a cabinet for bottles and glasses with a sink and a long vinyl-topped counter . (This vinyl “resembles” slate . ) In the entire house there are only enough bookshelves for a set of the World Book and some Books of the Month, plus maybe three Royal Doulton figurines and a back file of Connoisseur, but there is $90,000 worth of other teak cabinetry, including the “refreshment center” in the “recreation room . ” There is that most ubiquitous of all “luxury features,” a bidet in the master bathroom . There is one
1977
Many Mansions
the new official residence for governors of California, un land scaped, unfurnished, and unoccupied since the day construction stopped in 1975, stands on eleven acres of oaks and olives on a bluff overlooking the American River outside Sacramento . This is the twelve-thousand-square-foot house that Ronald and Nancy Reagan built . This is the sixteen-room house in which Jerry Brown declined to live . This is the vacant house which cost the State of California one-million-four, not including the property, which was purchased in 1969 and donated to the state by such friends of the Reagans as Leonard K . Firestone of Firestone Tire and Rubber and Tart Schreiber of the Music Corporation of America and Holmes Tuttle , the Los Angeles Ford dealer . All day at this empty house three maintenance men try to keep the bulletproof windows clean and the cobwebs swept and the wild grass green and the rat tl esnakes down by the river and away from the thirty-five exterior wood and glass doors . All night at this empty house the lights stay on behind the eight-foot chain-link fence and the guard dogs lie at bay and the telephone, when it rings, startles by the fact that it works . ” Governor’s Residence,” the guards answer, their voices laconic, matter-of-fact, quite as if there were some phantom governor to connect . Wild grass grows where the tennis court was to have been . Wild grass grows where the pool and sauna were to have been . The American is the river in which gold was discovered in 1848, and it once ran fast and full past here, but lately there have been upstream dams and dry years . Much of the bed is exposed . The far bank has been dredged and graded . That the river is running low is of no real account, however, since one of the many peculiarities of the new Governor’s Residence is that it is so situated as to have no clear view of the river .
It is an altogether curious structure, this one-story one-million-four dream house of Ronald and Nancy Reagans . Were the house on the market (which it will probably not be, since, at the time it was costing a million -four, local real estate agents seemed to agree on $300,000 as the top price ever paid for a house in Sacramento County), the words used to describe it would be “open” and “contemporary,” although technically it is neither . “Flow” is a word that crops up quite a bit when one is walking through the place, and so is “resemble . ” The walls “resemble” local adobe, but they are not: they are the same concrete blocks, plastered and painted a rather stale yellowed cream, used in so many supermarkets and housing projects and Coca-Cola bottling plants . The door frames and the exposed beams “resemble” native redwood, but they are not: they are construction-grade lumber of indeterminate quality, stained brown . If anyone ever moves in, the concrete floors will be carpeted, wall to wall . If anyone ever moves in, the thirty-five exterior wood and glass doors, possibly the single distinctive feature in the house, will be, according to plan, “draped . ” The bathrooms are small and standard . The family bedrooms open directly onto the nonexistent swimming pool, with all its potential for noise and distraction . To one side of the fireplace in the formal living room there is what is known in the trade as a “wet bar,” a cabinet for bottles and glasses with a sink and a long vinyl-topped counter . (This vinyl “resembles” slate . ) In the entire house there are only enough bookshelves for a set of the World Book and some Books of the Month, plus maybe three Royal Doulton figurines and a back file of Connoisseur, but there is $90,000 worth of other teak cabinetry, including the “refreshment center” in the “recreation room . ” There is that most ubiquitous of all “luxury features,” a bidet in the master bathroom . There is one
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