More than two stories underneath Las Vegas, a businessman built a nearly 15,000-square-foot house intended as a refuge from the threat of apocalypse on the surface and to show that one could retreat from the world and still live in style.
Jerry Henderson’s Underground House hasn’t been anyone’s primary residence since he passed away a few years after completing the nearly 15,000-square-foot space in 1978. Now for sale with an asking price of $8.5 million — together with an aboveground house his wife, Mary, built after his death — the property has the potential to be a home for another visionary or to be Las Vegas’ next great tourist attraction. Holly Erker of IS Luxury is the listing agent.
Taking an elevator or stairs 26 feet down from the ordinary-looking house at 3970 Spencer St., the visitor emerges into another world. The main subterranean house and adjacent underground guest cottage are surrounded by murals depicting places Henderson lived in or visited around the world. There's also a pool made to look like it's outside. A set of light switches controls whether it appears to be day or night, with a faux sky on the ceiling.
The design of the main house is a throwback to the 1970s, with a bright pink kitchen containing actual appliances, including a toaster from that era still in working order.
“You could go from one room to another room and feel like you're just walking in a normal house, so you didn't feel any different underground than you would in any other house,” recalled Gregory Henderson, 72, great-nephew of the house’s builder, who has stayed there on two occasions.
But how do you price such an unusual property? Erker told Homes.com that the current owners hope to get $8.5 million, but that isn’t based on an actual appraisal.
Annual property taxes are $10,521.
Get 'sunshine' when you want it
The 1-acre property is close to The Strip and the city’s heart, hardly where you’d expect to find a bunker for someone trying to escape humanity’s crises. Henderson, an heir to the founder of the Avon Cosmetics empire and a wildly successful businessman in his own right, built the house across the street from his office after relocating his business from New York. He and his wife had first lived in an underground house in Colorado in the mid-1960s.
After making a fortune from his seat on the Avon Cosmetics board, Henderson made a life of starting new businesses, from providing cable TV service to residents of Carmel, California, to founding a seafood company in South Carolina.
One enterprise he started was Underground World Home Corp., a collaboration with Texas architect Jay Swayze to build houses like this one. The two men went so far as to organize an exhibition at the 1964 New York World’s Fair to promote their concept, but only a handful of these homes were ever built.
A brochure Henderson and Swayze distributed at the World’s Fair explained that their houses were “protected from the ravages of nature, the physical and psychological assaults caused by our industrialized society and the population explosion.”
The brochure also painted the concept in a brighter light, asking, “How would you like sunshine every day … when you want it?” But Gregory Henderson recalled his great-uncle was as concerned as anyone in that era about the potential end of the world.
“He really thought that we could have a Cold War situation, and he would survive it by having this bunker underground. And of course, the government at that time was promoting underground homes,” Gregory said.
It’s hard to imagine the dread so many Americans felt during the Cold War, said Bradley Garrett, who has visited hundreds of below-ground places to shelter or live in this country and abroad as he wrote his book "Bunker," published in 2020.
“You could order a bunker from the Sears catalog, and they would install it in your backyard," he said. "There was an incredible amount of anxiety.”
Whether Henderson’s underground lair would have actually protected him from the immediate impact of a nuclear attack or the associated radiation is debatable, Garrett said.
Home has putting green, grill, dance floor
The colorful murals that surround the Underground House are what keep Frankie Lewis working there eight years after she first started a business booking tours and events at the property. Henderson flew an artist to each of the locations depicted in the murals, then she lived on-site at the house for two years in the late 1970s to complete her work. She used fluorescent paints so the murals would glow at night.
“I’ve always wanted to save the legacy of Jerry and Mary, because it’s very special,” Lewis, whose company is Las Vegas Underground Mansion, told Homes.com.
There are five bedrooms and six bathrooms between the underground house, guest house and the aboveground residence.
Some other features of the underground space include a disco ball over a dance floor, a putting green, a grill hidden inside a fake rock and a sauna.
“Aesthetically, Henderson’s bunker is so unique,” Garrett said. “I don’t know another one that goes to such an extent to blur the lines between being underground and being outside.”
Back when Gregory Henderson first stayed at the house, visitors entered through a door attached to a fake boulder positioned among some actual rocks. There were few other clues that the underground house was there, other than an air circulation vent poking up onto the surface.
Officials in Clark County, where the house is located, are interested in designating the Underground House as historical, as they did in the past for the nearby Paradise Palms neighborhood, which has a wealth of midcentury modern-style architecture. This type of historical label can protect houses from being demolished, but it usually applies only to the exterior.
Although the county doesn’t want to designate the property for commercial use, it has issued special permits for the types of tours, events and parties Lewis organizes, Erker said. For instance, Las Vegas-based rock band Imagine Dragons shot a video in the underground house for its 2021 song "Monday." Other events at the house have included film production and photo shoots, corporate events and fashion shows, according to Lewis' company website. Dancer and choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall, known for her work on the HBO series "Girls," made a short film in 2017, "The [End] of History Illusion," inviting the public to live in the underground house and inventing a scenario in which residents would have access to in-house caretakers and other amenities.
At the same time, people could live in the house long-term as Henderson and his wife did.
“I feel whoever has the house moving forward will probably [not live in it] but continue to use the benefits of those permits,” Erker said.