Xanadu 2.0
Bill Gates's stately pleasure dome and futuristic home
William H. Gates III is a symbol--of wealth, technology, shrewd intelligence, and the possibility that a Harvard dropout can triumph. In his new house, on the shore of Lake Washington near Seattle, you can find reflections of all those things.
Gates can afford to build the biggest house on any block, and he certainly has. If the final tally for Gates's house hits $100 million, as some believe it will, don't worry about his financial well-being. That's only a quarter of 1 percent of Gates's fortune.
Money has given Gates the opportunity to make a house few could build. Its construction is not with two-by-fours but with 500-year-old Douglas fir timbers rescued from an ancient lumber mill, painstakingly sanded and refinished to a satin glow. The roof is stainless steel. The house is full of electronics ordinary computer users only dream about. It is his idea of the house of the future.
The technology is at times subtle, but always present. As you move about the house, your choice of art appears on high-definition television monitors. Music, lighting, and climate settings all tag along, too. A small pin you wear lets the system know who and where you are. You can go to a computer terminal to pick out a movie or television program. It will follow you to the nearest screen. Only the phone nearest you will ring, assuming you've told the computer you're taking calls at all.
Gates himself first fueled the fires of curiosity about his house. He wrote a chapter about it in his bestselling book, The Road Ahead. The book came with a CD-ROM featuring a "virtual tour" of the private house. Book and CD-ROM buyers were so interested in the building he bragged about that they want to know even more about it. That's why U.S. News studied house plans and pestered Gates's representatives to find out more than he revealed at the time the book went to press.
The biggest question is: Does the technology work? We don't know. Gates won't discuss it anymore.
Perhaps the most intriguing glimpse of what the house means to Gates is a line from the conclusion of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, which Gates ordered inscribed around the base of the dome in his library. "He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close he could hardly fail to grasp it."
[Diagram is not available.] INSIDE THE GATES MANSION Family wing The Gates family's 11,500-square-foot inner sanctum is surprisingly modes, with four bedrooms and quarters for a nanny. A four-car garage is attached. The lower levels include a techno-playland family room and an exercise facility that is better appointed than many health clubs. 1. Pool building Size: 3,900 sq. ft. The 17-by-60-foot swimming pool has an underwater music system and a floor painted in a fossil motif. Swimmers can dive under a glass wall and emerge outdoors by a terrace. Locker room off the pool has four showers and two baths. 2. Exercise facilities Size: 2,500 sq. ft. Includes sauna, steam room, separate men's and women's lockers, and a trampoline room with a 20-foot ceiling.
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