742 Evergreen Terrace
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742 Evergreen Terrace is the street address of fictional Simpson family in the animated television series, The Simpsons. The street of Evergreen Terrace is in the city of Springfield.
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[edit] Design
The house is shown as a pink-orange two-story detached house with an attached garage, basement, and loft. On the ground floor, the front door leads straight into the hallway, with one arch in the wall to the left, leading to the living room, one to the right which leads into the dining room, a small cupboard and the stairs to the first floor. The sitting room and the dining room have bay windows. At the back of the house is the family room and the kitchen, with stairs that lead to the basement. Although rarely seen, there is also a hallway leading to a "Rumpus" room from the kitchen.
The second story of the house has Marge and Homer's bedroom (with an ensuite bathroom), Bart's bedroom, Lisa's bedroom, Maggie's bedroom, a bathroom and some 'empty' rooms, often shown in inconsistent places in different episodes. On the landing, there is a hatch which leads to the attic.
The kitchen features a side corridor leading to the back of the garage and a rarely seen second living room, sometimes referred to as the "rumpus room." Homer was seen relaxing in it during the episode "Three Men and a Comic Book", where he could see the boys fighting in the treehouse.
The back garden of the house is surrounded by a wooden picket fence and a low box hedge, and features a patio and the treehouse from which the Simpsons' annual Halloween specials take their name.
An episode set in the future shows a wooden add-on to the second floor, built (rather poorly) by Homer. It functions as a guest bedroom, but Homer warns Lisa and her fiancée that "if the building inspector asks, it's not a room. It's a window box".
[edit] Features and furniture
The basement always includes a washing machine and a clothes dryer and a large Olmec statue of a head, which was a present from Mr. Burns after Bart donated blood to him. However, the appearance of other features such as a furnace, ping-pong table, air hockey set and water softener vary from episode to episode. The basement is often used as a "secret lair", where Homer has brewed alcohol to beat prohibition and hidden his superhero operation as Pieman, and where Marge hid during a spell of agoraphobia.
In the Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror VI" episode, there is a portal behind the bookcase in the sitting room that leads to the Third Dimension. This is a reference to the Twilight Zone episode, "Little Girl Lost". However, Treehouse of Horror episodes are not canonical. In Treehouse of Horror IV, the famous Dogs Playing Poker painting appears above the sofa.
[edit] Current state
The house is now five miles away from where it was first built due to "Plan B", where, to avoid pollution and landfill, the entire city was moved down the road, as seen in "Trash of the Titans". This is believed by some fans to explain some inconsistencies such as the layout of the basement. Also, in a few earlier episodes, in the old location, the address was 724 Evergreen Terrace.
The house itself is often shown as dilapidated; the walls are painted with lead paint, the roof leaks and in one episode, the kitchen was so badly damaged that it needed to be rebuilt. A running gag is that whenever the camera pans between floors or rooms, the interior of the walls are shown to be filled with dangerous and unusual items such as asbestos, toxic waste, hidden treasure and baby dinosaurs. Even the family cat, Snowball II, is seen in between the walls from time to time. However, the lived-in spaces are usually kept neat by homemaker Marge. In one episode, it was described as a palace by Frank Grimes. In another episode, Moe Szyslak observed that it contained no silverfish.
The house frequently suffers major damage due to attacks, accidents and negligence, including:
- Abraham Simpson crashing through the sitting room window in a car
- All furnishings being stolen by an angry mob
- At several times, being set ablaze by Homer including while burning his high school diploma and while skipping church.
- The house's interior trashed by the Hell's Satans motorcycle gang, in the episode "Take My Wife, Sleaze."
- A taxiing airliner crashing down the living room wall.
- Frequently being in a ridiculously untidy and disorganized state (alligator stuck in the toilet, footprints on the ceiling, etc...).
- Serious foundation failure due to leaking plumbing turns the house into a “Slanty Shanty”.
The phone number, according to "A Tale of Two Springfields", is 555-0113, with the new area code of 939, as opposed to the old one of 636 (636 555-0113 seemingly contacts Mr. Burns). In "Mr. Plow" the number for Homer's plow business, which contacts the house, is KL5-3226. 636 is a St. Louis MO area code and 939 is a Puerto Rico area code.
[edit] Trivia
- "742 Evergreen Terrace" is used as the example address for the reverse address lookup feature on WhitePages.com
- The house's address was inconsistent in earlier seasons, being 94 Evergreen Terrace, 1094 Evergreen Terrace, 723 Evergreen Terrace, and 430 Spalding Way. In "Homer's Triple Bypass", 742 Evergreen Terrace is a completely different house where Snake hides from the police and Rev. Lovejoy lives next door.
- The Simpson House is a real life, exact replica of the 742 Evergreen Terrace home of the title family in the animated television program The Simpsons. In 1997, FOX and Pepsi joined Kaufman and Broad Home Corporation to build the house, which was to be given away in a contest to a person holding a winning ticket. The house was painted and furnished with items to match the television show, although the scale of the house was notably smaller than the house on the series. Barbara Howard, a retired factory worker from Richmond, Kentucky was the winner. The house was built in Las Vegas, Nevada on 712 Red Bark Lane but has since been repainted and no longer offers tours.[1]
