Genesee – John Huggins didn’t plan to buy the Sculptured House on Genesee Mountain.
He just wanted to see it.
So why did Huggins pay $1.3 million in 1999 for the house featured in the 1973 Woody Allen movie “Sleeper”?
“‘Cause it’s cool,” said Huggins, Denver’s director of economic development. “It has an aura of inaccessibility and mystery.”
Huggins spent two years – and millions of dollars – restoring the house, and he has been trying to sell it since.
The price has come down from the $10 million Huggins was asking for the house and 15 acres three years ago to $4.86 million for the house – furniture included – and 5 acres. He’s asking $650,000 for each of two adjoining 5-acre lots.
“It was a lot more fun to create it,” said Huggins, who has hosted a number of political fundraisers and benefits for various charities at the house. “Just having it is not that interesting. It’s time to move on to something else.”
Since Huggins dropped the price a month ago, real-estate agent Rollie Jordan of Kentwood Co. has shown the property to three prospective buyers. One of them wants the two lots, and another is interested in the house, Jordan said.
“It’s a trophy home,” she said. “Everybody thinks it’s fabulous. I just haven’t found the right person.”
Over the two years he worked on the house, Huggins devoted more than half his time to the project. He was then a self-employed venture capitalist who had earned a fortune when then-fledgling America Online acquired the small software company in which he was a partner.
Working from architectural plans for an addition and a schematic design by original owner and architect Charles Deaton, Huggins treated the project like a historic rehab. He matched and copied elements to ensure the 5,000-square-foot addition kept the spirit of the original.
He deviated only slightly from the plans, installing a cone-shaped fireplace with a saucer- shaped ventilation system that “floats” above it.
“You can’t have a house in the mountains without a fireplace,” Huggins said. Ditto on the hot tub on the upper deck.
Huggins scoured the Internet and stores nationwide to find iconic ’60s and ’70s furniture for the home. He found late-’60s vintage bright-orange chairs for his entertainment room at a New York store. The chairs stack into a cube to make room for a Murphy bed to drop down.
“It was like an Easter egg hunt,” said Huggins, who worked on the restoration with Deaton’s daughter, Charlee Deaton, an interior designer, and her husband, architect Nick Antonopoulos.
The work paid off, with the house being listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its architectural merit, even though most buildings on the register are more than 50 years old.
The house also has received international attention with inclusion in various magazines, television shows and advertisements. Most recently, the Japanese electronics manufacturer Sharp has asked whether it can include the house as a part of its ongoing “Living is Environment” campaign showcasing notable architectural sites from around the world.
Staff writer Margaret Jackson can be reached at 303-820-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com.
A sleeper’s history
Who built it: The Sculptured House was designed by visionary architect Charles Deaton in 1963. He also designed the elliptical- shaped bank building at Broadway and Hampden Avenue in Englewood and Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City.
Where: The clamshell-shaped, 7,500-square-foot house overlooks Interstate 70 in Genesee.
Claim to fame: It was immortalized in Woody Allen’s 1973 movie “Sleeper.”
Owners: Deaton finished the exterior of the house in 1966. It cost a then-astronomical $100,000. He never completed his plans for the interior of the house.
California investor Larry Polhill bought the property from Deaton in 1991 but never completed a planned addition, and the house deteriorated.
John Huggins bought the house in 1999 for $1.3 million and spent millions more to restore it. It was the first time anyone had lived in the house.
Huggins put it on the market in 2002, and it remains for sale.
