Many have tried to get inside Darth Vader’s head, including, most notably, his creator, George Lucas, who made three prequel movies showing the once-imposing Star Wars villain as a pod-racing, baby-murdering, sand-hating youth. Now, enterprising fans with a desire to more literally live within the dark lord’s noggin and who have a spare $4.3 million kicking around can buy a house designed to kind of look like his creepy space helmet.
“The Darth Vader House,” according to its listing on Sotheby’s real estate website and a post on Boing Boing, was built in 1992 by Dr. Jean Cukier, a presumably wealthy man whose riches allowed him to build a home modeled after one of pop culture’s most recognizable symbols of cartoonish evil.
Located in Houston, Texas, Dr. Cukier’s mad experiment resulted in a 7,040-square foot house that’s meant to resemble Darth Vader’s helmet and basically just looks like a weird postwar museum building that got dropped in a suburb. It comes with four bedrooms, five bathrooms, central air, and a four-car garage. It’s also located in the Houston Independent school district, in case that’s of concern to any evil Sith buyers who want to ensure that their nefarious younglings are well-educated.
The listing leans into its reputation, stating that the home is “known to many as ‘The Darth Vader House’” and calling it a “contemporary masterpiece [that] is one not to miss.” It pretty needlessly adds that there’s “nothing else like it in the area.” As for the price: $4.3 million may be a lot of money, but it’s a drop in the bucket for the incredible sums that wealth-hoarding Star Wars fans will have to spend if they’d like to go the entire way and really, fully embody their evil hero.
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81 Comments
Obi-wan never told you what happened to your condo.
He told me enough!!! He told me you sublet it!!!
No. I am your landlord.
Horrible interior, looks like an office building.
Exterior too, at least from the side with all the windows.
That central space, I guess it’s supposed to be a living room or den or something, with the staircases, is unbelievably hideous. It looks (keeping with the office theme) like there should be a directory board behind a security guard counter somewhere.
i was thinking, it looked like a bonus level from some alt-Earth Doom reboot.
That bizarre giant head sculpture does look like good spot for cover to fire at demons from behind, yeah.
oof, the inside. What’s with the strips of neon lights framing the white concrete non-pools?
Yea it’s like a mall or doctors office or something, very of the era I guess.
Or a crappy hotel that thinks it’s a nice hotel.
The Empire’s greatest weapon wasn’t the Death Star, it was administrative bureaucracy.
You can tell its a Texan home because there are as many garages as there are bedrooms.
This is very inside the Loop, where two-car garages or carports are standard. Maybe you’d get three with newer construction on a large lot. Four is luxurious.
People outside of Houston have no idea about the car culture down there. I live in Knoxville now but King of the Hill still gets me a little bit wistful for some WHATABURGER.
One major problem with this house: it’s in Houston. I guess that’s better than Tattooine, though. Maybe?
Definitely better than Hoth, for the most part, usually.
as a Hoth native, i feel i must mention our summer festival season,
July 12-24
Oh yeah. Far and away the best nude beaches, too. Do they still run that same TV spot where they dub “Then I’ll see you [at Hoth Summer Fest]!” over Han Solo’s line from Empire Strikes Back? It was cheesy a long time ago, but I feel like it would just be retro now.
As a winter vacation home it can’t be beat.
Hey give Houston a chance. It’s a highly underrated city.
I’d say no, that part of Texas is humid, at least Tattooine has a dry heat
I prefer the humid heat over the dry heat, but ymmv.
Cockaroachs as big as Chewbacca there, so, no. Plus, it’s in Texas.
Houston. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
How’s the sand situation in Houston?
It’s more garage than home now, twisted and evil.
Excellent
There is still retail value in it, I can feel it.
Then there is that old guy going up to all the interested buyers at the open house This is not the home you are looking for….
I’ve taken shits that look more like Darth Vader’s head than this place
Are you pooping through a fun factory?Do the dolphin next.
It looks more like the Legion of Doom headquarters.
and that would actually be useful in Houston.I do not see anything about the exterior that would remind me of Vader.
Are you sure this isn’t in Florida?Honestly, it’s not that bad ie it could’ve been so much worse.
This house is in a neighborhood near where I grew up, and me and my friends were excitedly circulating this listing yesterday. This house is … unique. Architecturally it was completely out of character for the area when it was built in the early ’90s, and it’s on a large corner lot at the intersection of two main roads that run through the residential area up toward Greenway and across toward Rice Village. For years, the owner tried to grow grass up the lower part of the walls, finally giving up and putting in the slate that’s there now. The story we all heard originally about the exterior design is that it was meant to look like a fighter jet, but it was so foreboding and weird that it got the Star Wars/Darth Vader nickname instead.We’re most excited to see interior photos! Always wondered what it looked like inside…
I grew up in West U, where the house is located, which is an independent city inside Houston for the truly pedantic. The reason for the grass walls was because with the grass, he had a walk-out basement, so a 2-story house, which was fine, without them, it was 3-story which wasn’t. At least so went the suburban myth. It’s a shame about how ugly the house was because that section of town is beautiful.
Interesting about the height regs — I lived in Braeswood Place (technically Ayrshire, which I joked was the “armpit” of West U) and when the original one-story homes there started to be replaced with new construction, there was much finessing of the definition of a half-story and BTW it isn’t really a third story, we promise. Of course, now the houses are getting built up eight feet at the foundation to meet flood code, so they tower over absolutely everything.
I grew up in a tiny house on the corner of Byron and Wesleyan, but in high school moved onto N Braeswood, next to Edloe (sp?), so not that far. I last went back a few years ago for a buddy’s wedding and all the houses around both of these were McMansions. That awful flood about twenty years ago was maybe a year after we moved out of the Braeswood house and apparently flooded it enough to require all new carpeting, even though we were raised up, way off the road, and significantly higher than the street. But you could see the bayou from the front windows and it wasn’t infrequent to see the bayou full up to the street. Some things i miss, lots of things i don’t.
I lived a few blocks from Pershing (in three different houses, over the years), so far enough north away from the bayou that we didn’t flood in Allison in 2001 or in any of the three recent floods. But the high-water lines kept getting closer and closer to the front door, and after Harvey my parents threw in the towel and moved to Spring Branch.Me, I couldn’t afford the area anymore even if I wanted to live there. My parents paid $25K in the mid ’70s for a home built 20 years prior. Works out to $143K in today’s money. That same house today, now 66 years old, is on the tax rolls at $611K.
My best friend growing up lived across the street from home plate of the Southside baseball field. His grandfather bought the house for a handful of thousands way back in the day and they put it on the market around 2003 for $675K and sold it 3 days later for $750K.
It couldn’t break Houston zoning laws.Houston doesn’t have zoning laws.
This isn’t technically in Houston, and West U does have zoning ordinances. But mostly around here this sort of thing gets dictated by the deed restrictions. No rollercoasters to be found in my neighborhood! 🙁
…yet.
There is an element of the Wild West and Manifest Destiny to Houston. But the house isn’t in Houston. “Houston” is a weird, state-sized collection of sprawl and vast sections of swamp and marsh, but also a collection of small city-states that have independence. West University (west of Rice University) is one such, and even inside West U there’s a place called Southside which is 2 blocks wide and about 15 blocks deep that has its own police and fire departments. Super-high property values and very competitive in just how much you can bend the building regs, but was THE best place for trick or treating.
FULL-SIZE CANDY BARS!
Not so much that, but since it was a straight grid with no interrupting businesses or empty lots, you could just walk up and down the blocks and hit house after house, and just work the neighborhood in a couple hours and come away with a huge haul and go do other stuff.
West U is it’s own incorporated city. They even have their own mayor.
I grew up in WU too! I remember the beautiful old house that was there before that monstrosity was built. Anywho, 50 Cent had moved to Htown & is supposedly looking at buying the Darth Vader house. I really, really want 50 to live in WU.
Houston ISD sucks ass.I remember hearing about kids getting stabbed on campus back in the late 90s.
Needs more lava.
Lame. The conversation pit isn’t even shaped like Texas. What the hell kind of person made this, anyway?
Someone who forgot to build their home on higher ground.
I’m glad you used the version of unmasked Vader that’s in the Real Version of Return of the Jedi, not the fake eybrowless one. That had to have been a conscious effort, bravo
Running neon floor lights inside and out and half the photos in the listing are just different angles of the swank living room.I’m guessing owned by either drug dealers or runs a popular porn website.
The floor design is atrocious. The granite counter tops are ugly. If you buy the place you’ll have to spend lots of bucks tearing all that out.I happen to like the LED-surrounded sitting area with the seats facing away from each other. It’s an anti-social conversation pit. I can dig it.
The “You will trip here, and often” pit
I’ve always thought he looks like Humpty Dumpty playing Bob Dylan’s harmonica.
I’m a Realtor with the same brokerage (but in NY state). It kind of annoys me how incomplete and repetitive those pictures are. Does the place only have 2 rooms? It’s a $4,000,000 listing guys, show a little effort!
four bedrooms, five bathrooms…What?Maybe I just missed some great shift in home construction, but aren’t there usually at least as many bedrooms as bathrooms?
Maybe each bedroom has a connected bathroom and the extra one is for guests?
Each bedroom has a bathroom, and then there’s one bathroom for everyone else.
It’s not like the place is built in the middle of nowhere. It’s in a very desirable part of Houston—inside the loop and just up the street from Rice University, the Texas Medical Center, and the Houston Museum District. It makes total sense that a a plastic surgeon (https://www.cukiermd.com/home/) had it built.A lot of the very well-off people who want to live there and have the means probably find it desirable, not just for the location but also for the architecture. This is the kind of house that ends up in Byron Allen’s Open House real estate shows and in magazines.I’m betting it doesn’t stay on the market all that long.
It looks nothing like Darth Vader!Melbourne’s ‘Pamela Anderson’ house however is a legit representation of its subject
You’re welcome:
one of the problems with Lucas getting into Anakin’s head was that Anakin’s childhood was without real substance, it was all pre-Disney trauma. Now, imagine that instead of “no father” you had some abusive bastard who beat him and mom, and Qi-jon rescued him from that? Maybe lopping off a hand or two, but leaving Shmee with him, and taking the boy. Then you get some simmering rage.
I’m getting more of a Bond villain than Darth Vader vibe from the pictures.
This just in: the house has been purchased by a buyer known only as “K. Ren.”
The realtor is Wade Knight, who I have to assume has nicknamed himself “Jedi.”
The weirdest thing I’ve seen inspired by Darth Vader (so far)? Iraqi troops. In 1995, Uday Hussein founded the Saddam’ Fedayeen, an irregular paramilitary group armed with light weapons. The most notable part of their uniform; a black fiberglass helmet, almost identical to Vader’s (minus the mask).
Wow. That’s nuts. I’m disappointed that you didn’t include pictures though!
You see Vader, I see classic Cylon, myself.
Just curious as to the editorial decision to not include a single photo of said house?
Ugly as fuck.It looks like an office building.
As someone who is a massive Star Wars fan, and enjoys architecture a bit, had you shown me that house without mentioning Darth Vader, I never would have thought the house was inspired by him.
Furthermore, though I absolutely love the house, it’s an AWFUL house to put where it is. All these massive windows, with direct line of sight to their neighbors houses, 25ft away. Why? What architect in their right mind puts wall sized windows in the master bedroom, with a direct line into the neighbors house? Windows like that are meant to look out onto a spectacular view, not your neighbors patio.
Getting more of a Cylon vibe from that exterior.
For once, it’s not tacky as hell for a stupid mansion, but dear lord, Rich people and the realtors taking care of selling rich people’s places, you HAVE to give us some plans.
There is 22 pics of the place and I still don’t understand the shape of it and how it works.
And judging from the pics, this looks a lot more like an office than a home.
Which is probably not gonna help sell a 4.3M$ home.
“it’s not tacky as hell”If you say so!I agree with you on the poor job photographing the place. Too many pictures of that pit. The pictures of the rest of the open area are scattered randomly, making it difficult to tell where it’s located. Same goes for the other rooms. There’s a second floor, but as far as I can tell the only photos that show what it looks like were taken outside and 100 feet away. Are there rooms up there? Impossible to say!
I didn’t say it was beautiful ^^
But at least it’s not half covered in gold leaves and uglyass paintings and fake old stuff like those bigass places usually are. It’s ugly, but somewhat more “sober” and modern than other mansiony type houses.
Trump is a good exemple of what I’m referring to:
Ah, I see. Yeah, it definitely doesn’t fit the stereotypical ugly mansion.
The real story here is that Boing Boing still exists.