This insane 'Flintstones House' is on sale for $4.2 million in California

One of the most famous homes in San Francisco is on the market for $4.2 million — and the house looks like something out of the Prehistoric cartoon town of Bedrock.

The three-bedroom home — nicknamed "The Flintstone House"— is rumored to be represented by Alain Pinel Realtors, according to San Francisco Curbed, and we were alerted to the home’s sale after real estate agent Rachel Ni posted pictures of the landmark property to her Facebook.

It’s a unique house with a long history in the Bay Area. Residents of Hillsborough, California, or anyone driving north to San Francisco are already familiar with the home, which has been alternatively dubbed The Flintstone House, The Dome House, and The Marshmallow House since it was first built in 1976, according to Atlas Obscura. Back then, the home was an all white globular structure off of Highway 280, just east of the Eugene A. Doran Memorial Bridge and close to the reservoir.

And it’s not just the exterior that looks like something from the popular “Flintstones” TV show — the interior pictures of the home show rounded rooms that echo the existing structure.

Despite the house's resemblance to Fred and Wilma's domicile, there's no definitive proof that its architects were influenced by "The Flintstones." Instead, its curved architecture was inspired by the “monolithic dome construction” technique invented in 1975 by the South Brothers in Shelley, Idaho. Architect William Nicholson decided to experiment on the Hillsborough house with balloons and new and innovative building materials like sprayable concrete.

The bizarre method involved Nicholson and his team spraying the concrete or “gunite” with a nozzle on top of inflated aeronautical balloons to hold the shape, though it took some time to get the system to work perfectly.

“We got a heavy rain, and the whole thing just collapsed,” Wayne Da San Martino, the San Francisco builder who managed the project, explained to The Wave Mag in an article archived by Monolithic.org. “So we latched a frame of more sturdy half-inch rebar, put a coat of cement on that, and then shot the gunite all over. On the underside, we applied a plaster putty coat.”

They then decorated the home with round windows and slabs of nearby rock. The tallest dome in the home was outfitted with a spiral staircase and the entire house was painted a bright white.

But after its construction, the home fell into disrepair by the 1980s. Water runoff from the hillside caused it to sink into the ground until B.H. Daniller, an Australian architect, repaired the home — but not without the neighbors’ disapproval.

“Many of the neighbors thought it was an eyesore,” Daniller told The Wave Mag. “I think they were disappointed when I repaired it and it got sold again.” 

The Flintstone property is quite different than its neighboring homes in the quiet neighborhood of Hillsborough. Surrounded by conservative, traditional houses, the Flintstone House already stuck out like a sore thumb when it was painted white, but by 2000, the new owners who bought the property in 1996 for $800,000 had painted it a garish rust orange.

The new color may have been the result of eccentric San Francisco architect Eugene Tsui’s involvement, who in addition to an “Edises Kitchen” project remodel (above) wanted to create a complementary second residence on the property. Though numerous mock ups still exist on his website, the project never came to fruition.

According to Atlas Obscura, many celebrities have been tied to the home. George Lucas, O.J. Simpson, and even a few unnamed Sillicon Valley investors have all been rumored to have either bought, lived in, or made a bid on the house.

And now, it's back on the market. The current anonymous owners are shopping around the three-bedroom, two-bath, and two-car garage home for $4.2 million that — given its 2,700 square feet of space and remarkable history in the area — it could actually fetch.

Then again, perhaps a nearby Hillsborgouh resident will buy it to simply knock down the “eyesore.”

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