A couple embarking on a spot of home improvement made an unusual discovery when they found a giant handprinted Monopoly board underneath their carpet.
The huge board - which features street names and stations from the American version of the popular game - appeared to have been painted onto the floor by the previous homeowners years ago.
Street names such as Connecticut Avenue and Baltic Avenue, as well as classic Monopoly features such as the Chance square and Community Chest can be seen painted on the larger-than-life board.
The couple’s son-in-law posted a photo of the discovery on Reddit, with the caption: “While tearing up their carpet, my in-laws found a giant monopoly board.”
While tearing up their carpet, my in-laws found a giant monopoly board from r/pics
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His post went viral, drawing more than 119,000 upvotes and over 1,900 comments.
One theory posted by a commenter was that painting or tiling board games onto floors was a popular interior design trend in the mid-1950s.
The commenter said: “Showed this to my wife, and she reminded me that there’s a whole neighbourhood near us, built in the mid-50s, that has game board painted or tiled onto their basement floors. Seems to have been a selling point or something.”
Another appeared to bolster this theory, saying it “was a style for playrooms back in the day”.
One person said their grandparents’ house had shuffleboard, a floor game that uses cues and weighted discs, tiled into their floor.
Many Reddit users hoped the couple will keep the giant board, as does their son-in-law, who said he was “trying to convince them to cover it in epoxy and do the rest of the flooring around it how they originally wanted”.
It might have been a trend in the 1950s, but one women in Minnesota brought it back in 2020 when she painted a 1970s version of the board game on her driveway.
According to the Associated Press, Diana Brennan embarked on the “afternoon project” with her daughter Samantha during the coronavirus pandemic, as a way to spend time together while being socially distanced outdoors.
The result was a 17ft by 17ft Monopoly board, complete with life-sized tokens, a large pair of wooden dice, and big laminated paper money.
Monopoly was invented by Elizabeth Magie in 1903, originally called the Landlord’s Game. It was created to reveal flaws in the capitalist system of property ownership, inspired by her father James Magie.
But it was modified and sold to games company Parkers Brothers, who re-launched it as Monopoly in 1935 as a more competitive and ultimately capitalistic game.
