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The Simpsons House

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No. 9786065, phone your home! Round a corner in the new Springfield subdivision of this booming town and you’re awestruck by the wacky house and its 27 gaudy colors. Mixed with the more mundane tan and stucco homes is an eye-popping power orange and solar yellow house that replicates the terrible tastes and absurd lifestyle of The Simpsons.

On 1997, Kaufman and Broad Home Corp. is teamed with the Fox network and Pepsi-Cola to give away the four-bedroom, 2,200-square-foot home as part of a national promotion coinciding with The Simpsons season premiere. A drawing will determine the winner of the $150,000 home. In a new subdivision in Henderson, Nevada, about 10 minutes from downtown Las Vegas, Fox TV has built a life-sized replica of the Simpsons’ home.

A home builder has captured every detail of the TV cartoon family’s life, from Marge’s corn-print kitchen curtains to Homer’s driveway grease spot from his car. The bizarre house captures the best (or worst) of television’s longest-running animated prime-time series.

Framed by a shiny orange picket fence, the yellow house features the purple family car parked outside. An antenna is perched on the roof, though unlike Home’s house, this one is cable-ready. Inside, it’s easy to feel trapped in a cartoon with all the Playdoh-colored paint and appliances. Behind a hall tree where Homer’s hard hat hangs is the “mystery door.” No one goes in and no one comes out, just like on the show. Logs in the fireplace are painted bright green, as are the leaves and branches of the fig trees in the living room. Above the blue piano is the sheet music Lisa uses to play her saxophone. Instead of carpet, the architects opted to paint the floors to get the full cartoon effect.

Next to the couch in the TV room is an empty can of Homer’s Duff beer. In the kitchen, food is set out for the family dog, Santa’s Little Helper, and dirty dishes are in the sink. Out back is a swing set, Homer’s orange barbecue grill and Bart’s treehouse, with the legend, “Come in. NOT.” In every closet hangs three sets of the same outfit worn by each character. They never change clothes on the show.

To build the replica of the cartooned house, Kaufman and Broad architects spent hours watching episodes of “The Simpsons,” figuring out how the characters moved from room to room and even noting where mouseholes were. (There are three.) “I ended up watching close to 100 episodes myself,” said architect Manny Gonzalez of Los Angeles. “My kids were kind of wondering why dad was watching ‘The Simpsons’ so much.” Gonzalez said he and his colleagues looked through 7,400 different colors before deciding on the 27 used throughout the house. The cartoon showed arched doorways, so the architects joked they built them to accommodate Homer’s girth and Marge’s hair.

The thing is just sitting there at 712 Red Bark Lane, a 2,200-square-foot, 27-color orphan.

A Tale of Two Houses

After waiting almost two months for the winner of the Kaufman & Broad and Pepsi give-away to turn in his or her lucky game piece, the October 31st deadline to claim the Simpsons House in Henderson, Nevada came and went. Winning number 978065 (announced during the Simpsons season premiere on September 21, 1997 at 8 PM on Fox) was no longer good.

Who in their right mind wouldn’t claim such a fabulous prize? It’s not everyone who gets chance to win a home painted in twenty-seven colors – great cartoony colors like Safety Orange, Generator Green and Pink Flamingo – but someone was about to get a second chance.

Another drawing for the extraordinary four-bedroom, life-sized replica of the cartoon home was finally held in November. The mail-in forms, intended to pawn off promotional items such as skateboards, were now just the ticket Barbara Howard of Richmond, Kentucky needed to win. Howard’s winning entry was selected from 15 million nationwide. She had sent in an entry form retrieved from a Brisk Ice Tea box — a beverage she said she frequently drinks. But the lucky grandmother of 13 and retired factory worker won’t be leaving her 260-acre farm (where her husband, J.B., raises cows, ostriches and tobacco) any time soon. After flying out to inspect the house just before Christmas, Howard said “Honey, I’d give my eye teeth to pick up and move there, but my family being in the shape it’s in, I can’t”. Unfortunately, her brother is stricken with cancer.

It sounds like she’ll miss being able to look at her very own tree house outside the corn cob drapes in the kitchen at 714 Red Bark Lane. The conditions of the contest were to take the house of $75,000, so Barbara Howard will be taking the money and staying in her 60-year-old, gray, vinyl-sided farmhouse with two Porches. Soon the infamous Simpsons house (which will be re-painted the same subdued sand color as its neighbors) will be almost indiscernible from the rest on the block–save from Matt Groening’s drawing of Bart in the cement out front. So much for those of you who thought you’d finally be able to pinpoint the location of Springfied!

Panoramas

• Top of stairs
• Parents bathroom
• Maggie’s room
• Front of the house

photos

• Outside view before painting
• Backyard
• Matt’s El Barto Graffiti
• Simpsons piano
• The couch
• A shot of kitchens microwave
• Second dining room
• Backyard with a grill
• Whole backyard with treehouse on tree
• Another backyard with treehouse on it
• Maggies room
• Homer and Marge bedroom
• Groening reaching his shoes
• Maggies’ highchair
• Another shot of the kitchen
• Maggie’s room
• Groening tags the’ house
• Groening stands 1
• Groening stands 2
• Groening stands 3
• Groening go into the house
• Groening in Lisa’s bedroom
• Bart’s bedroom
• Lisa’s bedroom
• Another shot of Lisa’s room
• Homer and Marge’s bedroom
• The stairs
• Outside of the house
• A nice view of the Kitchen
• Inside of Bart’s room
• The couch with the sailboat
• The dining room area
• The fireplace
• Groening inside
• Groening and wet cement
• Marge and Bart cutout
• Bart does a little jig
• Homer and Marge inside
• Marge tries to fit
• Family stand outside
• Blueprints for the second
• Ground floor blueprints
• Directions to the house
• House in Feb. 1998
• Glossy version
• Photo of Barbara, winner
• House fully painted
• Another fully painted house
• Winner parties
• “Simpson” House builder
• Bathroom
• Homer’s clothes in closet
• Family with key 2
• Family with key 1
• Groening making graffiti

What happened to the house?

It has been converted back to a standard residence.

This:

The house now has lovely ghetto touches like oil stains in
the driveway and front from leaky cars, torn blinds, missing screens, and so
on. The whole neighborhood seemed marginal; I wouldn’t want to be there after dark.

I found a picture of one of the Simpsons creators marking
a picture in the sidewalk in front of the house, but I totally forgot to see if
that piece of sidewalk is still there. However, further analysis of a photo
shows that one square of the sidewalk is colored differently than the rest.

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