The Flintstone House is a free-form, single-family residence in

Hillsborough, California Hillsborough is an incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is located south of San Francisco on the San Francisco Peninsula, bordered by Burlingame to the north, San Mateo to the east, Highlands-B ...

overlooking and easily seen from the

Doran Memorial Bridge The Doran Memorial Bridge is the twin pair of steel girder bridges that carry eight lanes of road traffic on Interstate 280 over San Mateo Creek near Hillsborough, California in San Mateo County. History The Doran Memorial Bridge was origina ...

carrying Interstate 280 over San Mateo Creek.

History

Design

The house was designed by architect William Nicholson and built in 1976 as one of several experimental domed buildings using new materials. It was constructed by spraying

shotcrete Shotcrete, gunite (), or sprayed concrete is concrete or mortar conveyed through a hose and pneumatically projected at high velocity onto a surface, as a construction technique, first used in 1907 invented by Carl Akeley. It is typically r ...

onto steel

rebar Rebar (short for reinforcing bar), known when massed as reinforcing steel or reinforcement steel, is a steel bar used as a Tension (physics), tension device in reinforced concrete and reinforced masonry structures to strengthen and aid the concr ...

and wire mesh frames over inflated aeronautical balloons. It has approximately of living space including three bedrooms, one accessed via a spiral staircase inspired by an ice cream cone that at the top is the same diameter as the room, and two bathrooms, and has a two-car garage. All the interior surfaces are rounded, and the master bathroom has a floor of rocks instead of tiles. Originally off-white in color, the house was repainted deep orange in 2000, and one of the domes was later painted purple.

Nicknames

The house is known popularly as the "Flintstone House", from ''

The Flintstones ''The Flintstones'' is an American animated sitcom produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions. The series takes place in a romanticized Stone Age setting and follows the activities of the titular family, the Flintstones, and their next-door neighb ...

'', a

Hanna-Barbera Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc. ( ) was an American animation studio and production company which was active from 1957 to 2001. It was founded on July 7, 1957, by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera following the decision of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to c ...

Productions animated cartoon series of the early 1960s about a

Stone Age The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years, and ended between 4,000 BC and 2,000 BC, with t ...

family. It is also known as the Dome House, the Gumby House, the Worm Casting House, the Bubble House, and "The Barbapapa House", from

Barbapapa ''Barbapapa'' is a 1970 children's picture book by the French-American couple Annette Tison and Talus Taylor, who lived in Paris, France. Barbapapa is both the title character and the name of his "species". The book was the first of a series of ...

, a character and series of books created by

Annette Tison Annette Tison, (born in 1942 in Hossegor, France) is a French architect and writer, mainly known for being co-creator of the ''Barbapapa'' series with her American husband, Talus Taylor. Tison graduated from the École Spéciale d'Architecture ...

and

Talus Taylor Talus Taylor (1933 – 19 February 2015) was a writer of children's literature, best known for being the co-creator with his wife Annette Tison of the ''Barbapapa ''Barbapapa'' is a 1970 children's picture book by the French-American couple A ...

in the 1970s.

Disrepair, restoration and remodeling

By the mid-1980s the house had fallen into disrepair, as water runoff from higher on the mountainside damaged the foundation, causing the walls to crack. After failed attempts at sealing the cracks, it was extensively restored in 1987. San Francisco Bay Area architect

Eugene Tsui Eugene Tssui ( born Eugene Tsui, September 14, 1954) Eugene Tsui, ''Evolutionary Architecture: Nature as a Basis for Design'' (John Wiley & Sons, 1999), . is an American architect noted for his use of ecological principles and "biologic" desig ...

undertook to remodel the house during the first decade of the 2000s. The results of Tsui's remodel appear as the "Edises Kitchen" project, pictured on Tsui's website. Tsui's original concept for the remodel, including a proposed complementary second residence on the property, is detailed in depth on his earlier site. In late 2017, new owners installed large oxidized steel sculptures of

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

s, a

woolly mammoth The woolly mammoth (''Mammuthus primigenius'') is an extinct species of mammoth that lived during the Pleistocene until its extinction in the Holocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with '' Mammuthus subp ...

, a giraffe, and

Fred Flintstone Fred Flintstone is the main character of the animated sitcom '' The Flintstones'', which aired during prime-time on ABC during the original series' run from 1960 to 1966. Fred is the husband of Wilma Flintstone and father of Pebbles Flintsto ...

in the yard.

Complaint

The house was unpopular with some neighbors, and inspired the formation of a local architectural review board. In March 2019, the town of Hillsborough filed a complaint against the current owner of the house,

Florence Fang Florence Fang (; born 1933/1934) is a Chinese-American businesswoman, publisher, and philanthropist active in the San Francisco area. She is the former owner of the '' San Francisco Examiner'' and other media titles and has been a fund-raiser for t ...

. The complaint alleged that the current owner's modifications are a "public nuisance" and that she did not receive the proper permits for her modifications. In March 2019, Fang retained the law offices of former San Francisco Mayor

Joseph L. Alioto Joseph Lawrence Alioto (February 12, 1916 – January 29, 1998) was an American politician who served as the 36th mayor of San Francisco, California, from 1968 to 1976. Biography Alioto was born in San Francisco in 1916. His father, Giuseppe ...

and

Angela Alioto Angela Mia Alioto Veronese (born October 20, 1949) is an American attorney, politician, member of the Secular Franciscan Order, and founder of the Knights of Saint Francis at the Porziuncola Nuova. A member of the Democratic Party, she is the d ...

to respond to the Hillsborough complaint. The lawsuit was settled in June 2021 allowing the modifications to stay, with Ms. Fang receiving $125,000 from the city.Flintstone House lawsuit settled — the dinosaurs can stay
/ref> File:FlintstoneHouse.jpg, alt= View of the Flintstone House from Doran Memorial Bridge on Interstate 280 (July 2007)., View of the Flintstone House from Doran Memorial Bridge on Interstate 280 (July 2007). File:Flintstone House 2019.jpg, alt=View of the Flintstone House with dinosaur sculptures installed in the backyard (2019), View of the Flintstone House with dinosaur sculptures installed in the backyard (2019)

Notes

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Flintstone House Houses in San Mateo County, California Houses completed in 1976