(The Veronica Bradwell House is an important location in The White Elephant of Panschin. Odessa Moon talks about the house’s design and how it takes advantage of Mars’ unique atmosphere.)
The White Elephant is located in Dome Two, formerly the most splendid and wealthy area of Panschin. It is not far from Dome Two’s small business district.
It is a graceful, elegant house whitewashed to a sparkling white. It is two stories high, with a rooftop terrace that extends across the entire roof. The rooftop terrace has a balustrade that is styled to look like a Mansard roof in pink and gray striped tile. This is as useless an ornamental element in Panschin as can be imagined as there is no weather under a dome. The balustrade is topped off with lacy wrought iron, very expensive, but also useful as it keeps people from climbing over the rooftop or falling off the terrace. The house actually has shutters, large gray ones trimmed out in a darker gray with pink edging, another completely useless touch and symbol of conspicuous consumption.
The house has a center with a wing on either side. The main, wide gravel pathway leads to a big set of double doors with sidelights opening into a grand hallway with a sweeping double staircase leading to the upstairs and a continuation of the staircase leading to the below ground levels. This part is slightly less grand but it serves to allow more natural light to flood both lower levels. This atrium is open to the dome far above, since there is no weather inside a dome. The open rooftop allows light to flood down inside the house. In the winter, when the dome gets colder because of the sub-zero temperatures outside, there are large covers that can be installed to close up the open rooftop.
As is common in Dome Two and throughout Panschin, all buildings have extensive sections below grade. The White Elephant, like most of the grand mansions in Dome Two, has two stories above ground (plus the terrace) and two more floors below ground, lit by narrow light shafts with windows into the rooms.
Belowground, the first subbasement is for mechanicals and other services, extra rooms for overflow, storage, etc. The second subbasement is for more storage plus servants’ rooms. The White Elephant doesn’t have staff anymore. You never put servant’s quarters aboveground in Panschin as the higher up you are, the better. The second subbasement contains the storage room that has the trapdoor leading to the tunnels still further below. This ties the White Elephant into a maze of underground tunnels. The trapdoor is always left closed since it’s a safety hazard.
Above ground, there is the central atrium with the grand double staircase sweeping up to the second floor and then up to the rooftop terrace. The rooftop terrace extends across the entire building. There is a large open skylight in the center of the two staircases, allowing daylight to flood the interior hallway and thus much of the two wings, as well as the central hallway below ground. The skylight covers the entire footprint of the entry hall, making this space an atrium.
There is a symmetrical wing on each side of the center unit, two stories high. The first floor contains on one side the grand, formal ballroom, taking up most of the wing. It is lined with big windows on all three sides, with transoms over the doorways leading into this space. This is the space used for parties and gallery showings. This space is decorated mainly with the paintings provided by the PanU Artists’ Collective.
On the other side is the dining room, kitchen, parlor, library, and music room. There is a bathroom tucked in there somewhere on each side. The library doesn’t have many books anymore. Wherever Neza and Veronica could, they removed and sold furnishings.
On the second floor, each wing contains six bedrooms with a bathroom on each side to be shared by the tenants of that side (considered very elegant and luxurious for Panschin when the house was built). On the side over the ballroom (the right side), the six bedrooms are fully furnished with solid, old fashioned, sadly out dated furniture, drapes, etc. A nice, although amateur landscape or other painting is hanging in each room. Shelby painted them while in high school.
The opposite wing also has six bedrooms. Three of them are completely empty, stripped of everything that could be sold. The other three bedrooms are occupied by Aunt Neza, Veronica and Shelby, and Florence and Lulu.
Aunt Neza gets a bedroom of her own because of her age, status as the lease holder, position in the family, and she snores.
Veronica and Shelby share a room, with two narrow beds, old dressers, etc. Florence and Lulu share a room as well, similar in most respects.
When Veronica and Dean were married, they moved into the White Elephant with auntie Neza as it was close and convenient to Panschin University. They shared a room in the other wing, now used for guests, because it gave them more privacy and they didn’t have to share a bathroom with Auntie Neza. Veronica and Dean spent much of their free time exploring Dome Two. After their divorce, Veronica moved to the other wing as it was more practical to use only one bathroom, and less lighting and cleaning was needed. When Shelby moved in, she shared with Veronica.
The rooftop terrace has some furniture but not much. There are a few potted limon trees but not nearly as much terrace gardening as you would expect because Veronica cannot afford to buy the pots or the topsoil.
At one end of the terrace, roped off, is Shelby’s studio. It consists of her easel, an old dresser to hold her supplies, and a chair. She paints here because of the odor of the paint and because the light is the best in the house (and free).
The White Elephant is keep whitewashed to increase the light reflected upon the surrounding area. The ceilings are all white as well, as are all the interior walls. Shelby stenciled decorative borders throughout the bedrooms. Each door has a transom for additional light and ventilation. All the exterior doors have transoms and sidelights.
The skylight in the atrium floods the stairwell all the way down to the second subfloor level with light. In addition, the hallways are lit with deck prisms. These are heavy faceted glass insets, set flush with the terrace roof but with the faceted side protruding from the ceiling in the hallway. This sheds additional light into the hallways, which would otherwise be very dark.
In addition, there are more deck prisms set into the hallway floors to bring some light to the first floor. There are even a few deck prisms set into the first floor’s floors to light the first underground level. There are several light shafts (long, narrow mirrored chases hidden within the walls) that bring light to the interior spaces in the first subfloor. They extend all the way down from the rooftop. Each light shaft is topped with a flush mounted, large deck prism.
The White Elephant is very well lit. Its construction took advantage of all the daylighting techniques so that free sunlight (what comes in through the glassteel dome) is utilized most effectively. It was and is wired for electricity. However, electric lights are expensive so Veronica and Neza tend to use rush lights, candles, and lanterns like much poorer people would.
If they aren’t hosting a function or guests, those expensive lights get turned off. Veronica and Professor Vitebskin routinely argue over the use of electricity for gallery showings. He’s of the opinion that she should provide (and pay for) electricity for the benefit of the art. She’s of the opinion that if he wants expensive electric lights, the PanU Artists’ Collective can well pay for them.
Lulu and Florence moved in because they wanted to live closer to nursing school at PCC. They pay part of their rent, as is standard in much of Panschin, with housekeeping. In every dome other than Dome Six, every single surface has to be regularly swept, mopped, or dusted clean of terraformers. This includes rugs and drapes as well as walls, windows, ceilings, and furniture. Floors stay relatively clean where people walk. Dome Six has electricity coursing through every building, keeping them, although not their furnishings, clean of terraformers.
A mansion like the White Elephant would normally have a staff of servants, including a cook and her minions, a housekeeper overseeing the house as a whole, a number of maids doing the heavy work, along with a man or two to do the outside gardening and upkeep. The entire staff was let go when Simon Bradwell’s embezzlement empire collapsed. Veronica, Shelby, Lulu, and Florence do all the work themselves, another reason to remove and sell furnishings since if they’re not there, they don’t have to be cleaned on a near-daily basis. Empty rooms can be swept down faster. The PanU Artists’ Collective provides free labor on a regular basis, allowing Veronica to keep the outside of the White Elephant clean of terraformers. Without them, she’d have a much harder time maintaining the exterior.
The White Elephant has its own tiny garden area wrapped around the house. The yard is enclosed by a low wall of dry-stacked granite. As with everything else, the granite wall has to be swept regularly. The garden consists of sunken beds, edged in more granite, and filled with real plants or terraformers. The beds are separated by white gravel paths that have to be raked on a regular basis to keep them from getting overgrown with terraformers. Every single bed has to be hand-watered because there is no rain inside a dome. There is some condensation, the amount of which varies with time of day, time of year, and exterior conditions. Condensation will keep terraformers alive, but not real plants.
The White Elephant stands out in the neighborhood because of its immaculate appearance. However, every mansion in Dome Two used to be kept at those high standards and could be reclaimed with plenty of work. Malcolm Cobb is correct: Dome Two is an ideal candidate for gentrification because as Panschin’s population grows, those people have to live somewhere. Panschin won’t be building a new dome (Dome Seven) for decades. In the meantime, Dome Two is underutilized and has plenty of space. If only they could do something to improve the ventilation, Dome Two would once again become the premier place to live in Panschin, just as it was when the dome was constructed.