The Orange House

On the I-280 San Jose-San Francisco drive, we pass a strange-looking house every day that we have come to refer to as the “Orange House.”

(Photo by the wife)

Not only is the house painted orange, it seems devoid of corners in a rounded orange-fruit sort of way. From a certain angle, it looks like a fat orange aardvark sticking its snout out from the forest.

You can see it when you’re driving north on I-280 toward San Francisco, just past the Bunker Hill Drive turnoff.

I understand it used to be called the “Igloo House” when it was painted white.

The fact of the matter is, it’s the experimental “infamous Flintstone House” in Hillsborough built in 1976 above the Crystal Springs Reservoir.

The community considered it pretty hideous, and it was the reason why the community formed an architectural review board to keep other such experimental homes out of their area.

The last time it went on the market, it sold for $800,000 in 1996.