Jimmy Fallon Inspires Renewed Interest in Interior Slides

Of course, Fallon’s home may be slightly different than ours. From what we have been able to see on The Tonight Show at home, a pared-down version of his weeknight show that has been a family affair, with his kids and wife participating, the home is as interesting as he is. It has a slew of eye-popping features, including a rustic wood staircase, wallpaper that resembles birch bark, paneled walls, and an indoor slide.

Yes, a slide.

It made an appearance during the show after Fallon said goodbye to viewers and made his exit.

“That’s right,” said Yahoo. “It turns out the late-night host has a full-blown, tubular slide inside his home, which he can apparently use to travel between rooms. The reveal took many Twitter users by surprise, mainly because Fallon made absolutely no reference to the feature during his monologue.”

In light of this momentous reveal, we’ve decided to take a look at some other indoor slides around the world. “From taking center stage in swanky Manhattan penthouses to providing the fun secret way to get from the laundry room to the basement in Minnesota, these playground pieces are anything but child’s play,” said Houzz.

Perhaps no residential slide is as famed as the one at Skyhouse, a penthouse apartment in lower Manhattan. Perks of the pad “include a four-story open living room, glass walking bridge, a climbing column and a stainless steel slide that snakes through each floor,” said HuffPost.

New York Architect David Hotson “built the tubular slide into the upper levels of an 1896 skyscraper, which had not previously been used as a residential space. Per Hotson’s website, “The entrance to a tubular slide, constructed from mirror-polished stainless steel, emerges through a circular hole cut in the seamless sloping glass partition at the south end of the Attic. The cylindrical helical slide flares to an ellipse which is sectioned on the angle of the inclined glass wall resulting in a circular opening where the slide emerges through the glass. This circular opening creates an illusion of flatness contradicted by the sideways path of the slide as it begins its descent.”

The slide even has windows that “admit natural light from the dormer windows and provide fleeting vistas through the entire length of the penthouse.”

This slide isn’t just for transport; It helped transform a space with added function. Created by Seoul studio Moon Hoon in a South Korean house, the “wooden slide is slotted into a combined staircase and bookshelf,” said dezeen. The homeowners asked for “various spaces where their four children could play, so the architects designed a house where different floors belong to different residents. The ground floor is dedicated to the children and includes the wooden staircase and slide. Open treads create bleacher-style seating areas for a home cinema, but they also double-up as bookshelves for a small study area tucked underneath.”

Not all slides are quite as architecturally distinct. “Rather than serving as a sculpture or major design statement, some slides are surprises hidden in the walls,” said Houzz. “The basement rec-room fun begins with the trip down a level in this Minnesota home. This one’s entry point is tucked away in a first-floor closet. The round opening does not give away what the slide experience will be, which builder Steve Kuhl describes as ‘severe tubular craziness.’ He estimates that installing a slide like this somewhere else would run from $2,500 to $5,000.”

Sometimes, you can have both: an architecturally significant slide that’s a showpiece on one floor and a hidden gem on another. Found in the Rainbow House in West London, from designer AB Rogers, this slide travels from an upstairs bedroom down into the wide-open living room. Even in the vibrant, yellow-and-white space, the sculptural metal slide is a standout. But the entry from upstairs isn’t just demure; if you don’t know it’s there, you might miss it. Instead of a typical slide opening, you instead get a trap door that, when closed, blends right into the patterned floor.

Located in a fashionable London neighborhood, the vibrant Rainbow House by designer AB Rogers is a traditional four-bedroom town home that was renovated in 2009 for maximum fun and personality. Wild prints, rainbow-colored spiral stairs, color-coordinated floors, conversation pits, and a bed that rotates 360 degrees are notable features, but the most fun by far is the slide linking a bedroom to the open-plan living room via a trap door in the floor.

We especially love this example by Archology because:

1. The slide is especially attractive, using timber in “close collaboration with a maker skilled in the ideas of boat building,” said Wood Solutions. “This collaboration allowed the structure to be curved in both directions. This was achieved by using narrow strips of plywood that were then smoothed and finished with a hardwearing polish finish.”
2. It exists side-by-side with the curved staircase, so you can pick and choose which mode of travel you’d like every time you head down to the lower level.

WRITTEN BY JAYMI NACIRIPOSTED, 31 MARCH 2020