Speaking of wealthy eccentrics, the Messy Ness Chic blog has a story about the former home of the late Girard B. Henderson, a longtime Avon bigwig who in 1978 built a 16,000-square-foot abode 25 feet below ground in Las Vegas. Like a lot of folks in the Cold War days, Henderson feared his family would disappear into a mushroom cloud–but no mere fallout shelter would do for them. He created a bunkered McMansion, replete with soundstage scenery, a swimming pool and putting green. (It’s currently on the market.)

Henderson had experience in subterranean endeavors having sponsored in 1964 the Underground Living exhibit at New York World’s Fair. He also in 1950 founded one of America’s first cable TV companies (which brought the service, of course, underground). Unsurprisingly, he kept details about his private life buried. The opening of a paywalled 1966 Time article about him and a video about the house follow.

Girard Brown Henderson, a director of Avon Products, Inc., owes his wealth to the cosmetics firm’s cheery, door-to-door sales technique, but he is not the kind of fellow that a stranger comes calling on. A 5-ft. 6-in., onetime barnstorming pilot, Henderson at 61 is one of the richest men in the U.S., and one of the most secretive. Though he has interests in half a dozen businesses ranging from investment companies to a community antenna television outfit in California and is a member of the New York Stock Exchange, he is rarely seen at his Wall Street office.•

_____________________________

“All these trees are faux trees obviously”: