The year was about 1972, I was about 13 and some of my buddies and I discovered a basement window down in a window well where the plywood had been removed. This house was a wonder to explore. The basement did have a 2 lane bowling alley. There was also a movie projector that hung from the ceiling. We communicated to the various floors through a laundry chute that we would yell through. The kitchen was huge with 2 walk in refridgerators. The dining room had beautiful paneling. There was a wing of the house on the ground floor that was a library/parlor. Stained glass windows throughout the house. The second floor had several bedrooms and bathrooms. I recall 1 of the bathrooms had a built in sauna, kind of like a metal box you would climb into and close the doors with only your head exposed. There was also a scale built into the floor with the dial built into the wall. The third floor appeared to be servant quarters as it was accessed by a smaller stairway and also a spiral staircase that if I recall correctly ran from about the kitchen area to the 2nd and third floors. It was dirty and a lot of books were scattered about, but was not yet stripped of fixtures and plumbing. We used to bring other kids there and tell them it was haunted. We would bring them in the bathroom and somebody would be hiding in the sauna and pop their head out, the frightened kid would then jump back, land on the scale and the dial would start moving. By this time they would be so freaked out we would say "follow me" run down the hall into one of the bedrooms, ducking to the left while the room seemed to make a natural progression to the right. Problem was if you went to the right, it was actually a wall of mirrors. It was hysterical to watch kids crash into the wall. While we had fun in there, even at this young age, I realized this house was very special and always hoped that somebody would restore it. There was also a very large garage on the property. I recall it had an office or something of the sorts (chauffer's quarters?) built in. Also it had motorized garage door openers, very old, probably one of the first such motorized openers. I recall a building in the back, built into the hillside, just a door and what looked like bunk beds with sand in them. Somebody used to say they were slave quarters. Thinking back on it, I'm sure it was a root cellar. I had visited the mansion about 5 or 6 times that summer and then never again, but it made a huge impression on me both because of the fun we had there and the architecture and oppulance it once had.
