Time for another edition of Famous Homes, Colorado Springs style.
I honestly can’t remember how I found out this famous person used to live in Colorado Springs, but once I did I was a little obsessed with figuring out where on earth this house was. I saw a picture of the house and got some faulty information from Wikipedia about where it was located, then spent a long time going up and down the street this house was supposedly on via Google StreetView, but couldn’t ever place it. Thanks to some super helpful people (that I’ll give credit to later) for giving me a hand.
Anyway, here’s your clues – see if you can guess BEFORE getting to the bottom of the post. 🙂
- This man, an artist, was born November 5th, 1922 and died February 12, 2000 from colon cancer.
- Lived in Colorado Springs from 1951-1952 (this house was new or nearly new at the time of their residency).
- Painted a mural on one of the walls of this home, which was actually removed from the home in 2001 and donated to the museum bearing this artist’s name in California.
- Ice sports played a frequent roll in his art, and this artist was actually inducted in the US Figure Skating Hall of Fame and has a figure skating rink named after him.
- Many of us will probably watch the animated Christmas show from this artist sometime this season.
OK, surely somebody has it figured out by now – the house you see pictured about is none other than the former home of Charles Schulz, creator of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the rest of the Peanuts comic strip!
The most incredible thing about this house is that Schulz actually painted a mural on one of the walls in his daughter Meredith’s room, which was painted and re-painted over the years. Polly and Stanley Travniceck purchased the home in 1979 and neighbors told them that Schulz was rumored to have painted a mural on one of the walls. They “spent two months removing the layers covering the artwork, using a roll of cotton and cans of Red Devil Sanding Liquid.” Their work paid off when they uncovered this:
In 1999, the Travnicecks decided to donate the wall to the Charles M. Schulz Museum in California and in 2001 it was removed from the home and transported to the museum where it currently resides. You can read lots more details from the museum’s page about the wall or download a PDF of the People Magazine article entitled “Peanut Gallery“.
[ The Peanuts’ characters Linus and Lucy Van Pelt were reportedly named after friends the Schulz’s had in the Springs, but I wasn’t able to find out much more information on this. Man, I wanna see where Lucy lived! ]
Huge thanks to the Charles M. Schulz Museum for their help!
