Inside a real-life $2 8 million 'Flintstones' home in California

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• You are unable to access sanfran.com
• Inside a real-life $2.8 million 'Flintstones' home in California
• Inside the famed Flintstone House: Owner shows off latest additions to controversial Hillsborough property
• How to Grow a Dye Garden With Aaron Sanders Head
• Take a tour of the ‘Flintstones’ house in Hillsborough, California

Fang won’t discuss details of the settlement this spring, but is now free to celebrate the quirkiest piece of real estate in the Bay Area in peace. She’s recently added a hulking Bigfoot statue to the patio and a Gold Rush-themed room, which Fang showed off to the Bay Area News Group this week in a rare tour of the orange, red and purple-domed home on Berryessa Way. Now, she’s planning a giant beanstalk and a phoenix rising from the ashes.

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Trouble is brewing at the “Flintstone House,” but this time Fred, Wilma, Pebbles and Dino have nothing to do with it. For a while people called it the “Barbapapa House,” after the blob-like character from a series of French children’s novels. He was kind of like Gumby—and now and then 45 Berryessa was also called the Gumby House.

Inside a real-life $2.8 million 'Flintstones' home in California

While The Flintstone House is marveled at by many passersby, it’s also loathed by many Hillsborough residents. In the mid-1980s, the home began to show serious wear as water runoff on the steep hillside caused it to sink and the walls began to develop deep cracks. Word spread of such problems and several neighbors pushed to have the home removed.

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Inside the famed Flintstone House: Owner shows off latest additions to controversial Hillsborough property

It’s been over a year since the so-called Flintstone House at 45 Berryessa Way in Hillsborough went on the market for $4.2 million, and it’s still without a buyer. “The parties have reached an amicable resolution of the case to the satisfaction of all the parties, such that the improvements made to the Flintstone House will be permitted to remain,” the settlement states, according to the Palo Alto Daily Post. Florence Fang, former publisher of the San Francisco Examiner and chairwoman for the Independent Newspaper Group, bought the house for $2.8 million in 2017. Our psychological, our cellular makeup, is that we're a little more comfortable in soft structures than we are in a box.

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Round built-in shelves line the walls of the kitchen along with fun details like these swirling designs in the ceiling. Inside the tallest orange dome is a sitting area called the conversation pit. An orange upholstered couch curves around the front of the fireplace, and a big window looks out onto a succulent garden and patio. Today, The Flintstone House is as well known for its architecture as it is for its sporadic tenants, which has led to several urban legends surrounding the home’s ownership. It’s also said that several famous Silicon Valley investors have lived there as well.

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Following a lengthy court battle, the Northern California owner of the “Flintstone House” has quietly settled her lawsuit against the town of Hillsborough. But Iglesias says it's unusual for a homeowner to ignore three work-stop orders issued by the city, as the March 13 complaint states Fang did. She also ignored an administrative order to remove the installations by Dec. 5, 2018, although she paid a $200 fine. "Whether she is building a project with amusing cartoon characters or Rodin statues or anything else, she still has to go through the process like everyone else," he said. No one lives directly across from or behind the Flintstone House and residents in the comparatively vanilla homes on either side, she said, have not complained about their unusual neighbor. Its shape appealed to her, Fang said, since “round represents inclusive” — a not uncommon style in ancient times but a far cry from the sharp, square boxes typical of most suburbs today.

However, to their dismay, a severe renovation and change in ownership brought the home back to life in 1987. It took on its characteristic “Flintstone” look when it was painted completely orange in 2000. The home, which is also referred to as the Dome House, Gumby House, Worm Casting House and, Bubble House, is a three-bedroom, two-bath house with a two-car garage and about 2,700 square feet of living space. The upstairs bedroom, located in the tallest dome, has a spiral staircase inspired by a sugar cone with a diameter that increases to equal that of the floor above. The master bathroom is also unique, with its scattering of large rocks in place of floor tiles.

The whimsical front yard has statues of Barney and Betty Rubble, along with Fred and Wilma. A steep staircase, deemed unsafe by town officials, leads to a garden of giant metal prehistoric animals. Hillsborough issued a building permit in November 2017 that allowed Fang to build a 2-foot-high retaining wall on the property. However, when officials visited the house for an inspection, they found extensive landscaping in the backyard, a new deck and a retaining wall on the side of the property that had been constructed to delineate an area for parking. Those changes fell outside the scope of the permit that had been issued by the town, according to the civil complaint filed in court.

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But at least in its current form, officials and some residents do not to want the home, which evokes the 1960s cartoon, in their backyard. A panel of code enforcement officials last fall declared many recent renovations to the home to be a public nuisance, according to a town order, and have asked a judge to do the same. The suit alleges that the homeowner did not secure the proper permits and approvals for the changes. Legendary TV host Dick Clark and his wife are selling their home in Malibu for $3.5 million. Normally, a celebrity selling a piece of real estate in California is nothing to write about, but, in this case, it's nearly impossible not to share images of the media tycoon's Flintstones-inspired house. Based on the classic 60's cartoon, the specially-designed residence features a cave-like atmosphere with high ceilings.

But her grandson, a recent college graduate, has spent the pandemic hunkered down at his grandmother’s place amid the stuffed tigers, watermelon-shaped pillows and, naturally, Flintstone figurines dotting the home. There was hardly anybody in there at the time, so I laid down on the floor, and I looked up at the (domed) ceiling. Town officials in Hillsborough filed a lawsuit against Fang, calling the house an eyesore that doesn't comply with the community standards. She says her house represents the idea of the American dream with all different kinds of creatures living together in harmony.

The town sent three notices from December 2017 through August ordering that Fang stop altering the property, but officials said those requests were ignored. After a hearing over the issue in October, the town’s administrative panel decided that some of the prehistoric metal animals qualified as “unenclosed structures” and required a building permit and other approvals. “The stone family cannot always stay in the stone age,” Fang said, her explanation for the property’s constant evolution. Several years ago, Fang was just searching for a nice, quiet place to retire — someplace where she could downsize a bit from her longtime Hillsborough home. Then she toured the domed abode, designed in the 1970s by William Nicholson, and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to purchase the property she’d grown accustomed to seeing from the car on drives.

For now, Fang still resides not far away in her longtime Hillsborough home, with traditional Chinese decor, Fang said — lots of gold tones and jade, not a Flintstones character in sight. She hosts family and friends at the Flintstone House, including Nicholson, the architect, several times. Once a cello player serenaded guests from the rooftop, accessible from the second story.

Overlooking the freeway and reservoir, it continues to serve as an unofficial California landmark and a lighthearted reminder of the Bay Area’s forward, yet sometimes quirky, thinking. This building technique, known as “monolithic dome construction,” was invented by the South brothers in Shelly, Idaho, in 1975. One year later, Bay Area architect William Nicholson built a series of domes using this method, including The Flintstone House in Hillsborough, California. The controversy has sparked international media coverage and an online petition signed by thousands to preserve the attention-grabbing property, visible from a nearby highway.

When Hillsborough objected to some of her outdoor decorating choices, it issued stop work orders and ultimately filed the suit. She responded in part by alleging racial discrimination by city employees. As part of the recent settlement, the town agreed to cover Fang’s $125,000 in legal fees and said the dinosaurs, mushrooms and other yard decor could stay. It was designed in 1976 by William Nicholson and most recently purchased by Florence Fang in 2017 for $2.8 million. Large dinosaur statues and other Flintstone-themed artwork cover the front and back yards.

Fang’s lawsuit began in March 2019, after the town of Hillsborough deemed the home’s lawn decorations as a “highly visible eyesore” following complaints from neighbors and residents. Town officials alleged that the caveman-themed menagerie of 15-foot dinosaur statues and cartoon sculptures violated building codes and were built without proper permits. Now, issues with the property’s decorative style have landed the house and its owner in court. The property was purchased in 2017 by octogenarian Florence Fang, who made several whimsical additions to the home, including anodized steel dinosaurs and “Flintstones” characters in the yard which are visible to passing motorists on Interstate 280. In 2019, the wealthy, snobbish residents of the town of Hillsborough attempted legal action to have the statues removed. In June 2021, the matter was settled in favor of Ms. Fang; the sculptures were allowed to stay.