Microsoft mansion: Who will get the keys to the gates of Xanadu?

After Bill and Melinda Gates announced their divorce after 27 years of marriage earlier in May, many are wondering who will get their lakefront estate in the Seattle suburbs, which is valued at upward of $131 million (R1 866 553 500)?

Image: Archute

About Xanadu 2.0, the Gates’ family mansion

According to the New York Times, the couple’s 66,000-square-foot home on the shore of Lake Washington is one of the big matters of their divorce. It was designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and Cutler-Anderson Architects, who also designed a house for Steve Jobs, according to Archute.

The house initially cost the businessman over $63 million (R896 729 400) to complete. Its construction took seven years before completion in 1995.

The sprawling complex – which, at the time of a 1995 New York Times story, included a spa, a 60-foot pool, a gym panelled with stone from a mountain peak in the Pacific Northwest, a trampoline room, and a stream for salmon, trout and other fish – got the nickname Xanadu 2.0 from Gates’s biographers.

Xanadu is said to be a reference to the large, lavish property that belongs to the tycoon at the heart of the film Citizen Kane.

A family secret

The details of the waterfront compound have been kept incredibly private by the Gates family – so much so that a tour of the property was auctioned in 2009, according to TechCrunch.

According to Edition, the house has just seven bedrooms but 24 bathrooms.

What’s more, the sand at the beach by the lake was reportedly brought in from Hawaii, according to an intern who viewed the home in 2007. Microsoft published the intern’s report about visiting the estate for a barbecue. “The whole house is built out of this beautiful orangey wood,” they wrote. “The landscaping is just insane.”

Advanced technological aspects

Another aspect of Bill’s vision was to turn the walls into video screens where he would be able to display digitized works of art. As the house was being built, Bill began to purchase the electronic rights to world-famous pieces from museums like the National Gallery in London through a company called Interactive Home Systems.

Image: Archute

Hopes for a smaller house

Back in 2019, Melinda said that she would rather live in a smaller house. “We won’t have that house forever,” Melinda told the Times in 2019.

“I’m actually really looking forward to the day that Bill and I live in a 1 500-square foot house … Just to be clear, the house was being built before I came on the scene. But I take responsibility for it.”

Watch: Inside Xanadu 2.0