Photography by Steve Stephens
Bunker Down
March 1, 2002
; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc(); "Kemnal Manor, a top-secret bunker built in 1951")
Who has been calling? “I heard from a worried New York mother, who said she needed to talk her husband into it and would get back to me, and a couple of document storage firms who thought it would be a good idea after seeing the confetti of documents at Ground Zero,” he says. “It’s becoming a rich man’s project now because it’s a hard asset. Some owners have pulled theirs off the market and others are asking more for their properties.” (Click image to enlarge)
Peden is not the Dr. Evil clone you might expect to find leading lookie-loos on house tours of nuclear missile sites. He looks more Lennon than Lenin, like the self-described New Age peacenik that he is. He got into this in 1984 when he and his wife Dianna, both teachers in the Topeka school system, bought the site for $40,000 as a home for themselves and their two daughters. “I was a big fan of earth-over structures in the ’70s,” he explains, “but this was beyond any I could have imagined!” And at 18,000 square feet, there was room indoors for the kids’ trampoline.
Admittedly, there are decorating challenges inherent in Bunker Chic, one of which is that Home Depot doesn’t carry escape hatches. Peden initially had to paddle a canoe through his prospective home and then pump out the eight feet of water that had collected. (An entrepreneur in Shep, Texas, finessed his site by leaving a silo tube “as is” and opening a scuba school.) The Pedens, however, can do a very impressive garage sale: They just crank open their 47-ton, 20-foot-wide, 18-foot-high steel garage door, et voilà!
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