#treehouses

I love Topanga, CA treehouses so much. Look at the entrance to this place high in the trees. The 1943 Butterfly House consists of 3 cottages with a total of 3bds, 3ba, 1,500sqft. $1.295m (Zillow's est.: $1,260,600). The "bridge" above leads to Angel's Nest which is a studio, and a winding path leads to the Teahouse, a quiet refuge or guest space. It's an unusual, magical, property.

It starts with Dick and Bruce building a treehouse together in the yard. Dick calls it his “nest” (after all, his name is Robin, and he does love to commit to the bit).

Then Jason becomes Robin and he and Dick’s favorite brotherly bonding activity is working on the treehouse. Eventually they just make another one in the nearest tree, connecting the two with a rope bridge, and they work on that one together too.

It becomes a trend with each new sibling, to add a new house to the system. Every house has a ladder directly to the ground in addition to bridges to each other. After a while, a platform (gazebo in a tree) between all the houses is built as a sort of connection point. It’s big enough that the whole family can hang out and lounge.

Jason’s house stays untouched after his death, and only Dick’s house has a bridge to it. He and Bruce maintain it and keep it in good shape, but they don’t change or upgrade anything. When Dick is missing his brother, he usually hides himself in Jason’s house rather than Jason’s room. Years later when Jason is alive, he’ll occasionally visit his siblings and join them in the gazebo, but he never touches his house again (except that one time he had a panic attack while on the property and needed a place to hide and it was the first place he thought of, and Dick found him and helped him through it, but no one mentions it afterward).

One of the unspoken but very obvious rites of passage in the Batfam is building a house with Bruce, and getting Dick to help with upgrades.

Bruce doesn’t have a house (it’s really for the kids) but he spends time in the “Village” (as the kids have started calling it) to spend time with them. Game nights usually happen in the gazebo.