Writer Ruth Comfort Mitchell Young and her husband, Sanborn Young, later a state senator, built it on land from her parents. Her successful play The Sweetmeat Game, with a Chinese setting, inspired the design, which she called a “bungahigh.” A winding drive was meant to keep the devil from finding the house.
The household raised nearly all its own food, and visitors included Herbert Hoover and the actresses Joan and Constance Bennett.