According to legend, this 1913 Swiss chalet-style bungalow was commissioned by a woman—but who was she?

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES

Neighbors think Wendy Harn paid the royal sum of $1 for this immense two-story 1913 bungalow in the Bluff Park Historic District, but they’re wrong.

“Wendy got the house for free,” all 3,287 square feet of it, says her partner Sasha Witte. The catch was that Harn had to move it from its original Ocean Boulevard location facing the Long Beach Museum of Art parking lot, because a developer was planning to knock it down.

Moving it wasn’t free, except for the neighbors who got a free show late at night. It was expensive, even in 1989 dollars. Harn, who had just recently bought an expansive lot in Bluff Park—vacant, save for a small 1929 apartment building at the very back—had to ask her parents for help. But—surprise again—they loved it!

“It was just kind of like a mystery house,” Harn says as we consider intricacies like its system of rain gutters which actually ran inside the roof. “My dad was so excited—we just knew we were going to find stuff.”

He was right; they found original Arts & Crafts-era tile and stained-glass windows, built-in cabinets and quarter-sawn oak behind years of false walls, bad paint, shag carpeting and that wretched ’60s wood paneling. And now, after nearly 20 years restoring it and living elsewhere, Harn and Witte are doing the unthinkable: they’re moving in. Finally.

“I told Sasha, I would never be able to afford a home of this size without finding something like this,” says Harn, our voices nearly echoing in the expansive wooden foyer of their home. “Now Sasha’s making it beautiful, with design and love.”

The original wood floors are reinforced and refinished, the coffered ceilings fairly gleam, and all the gorgeous quarter-sawn oak paneling is restored—wainscoting, built-in cabinets, door frames, pocket doors. The bathrooms have been redone in vintage-inspired subway and hexagonal tile, and nearly all the painting is complete.

Now all they need to do is confirm this house’s history. They’ve heard that some time in its past, this was a fraternity house—and they know it suffered greatly through a series of uncaring owners who punched holes in the walls to rewire it, and carpeted right over kitty litter and pellets of dry cat food.

“The neighborhood legend is that it was built by a single woman in 1913,” Witte says—though as yet, they have no idea who. But Witte, an interior designer herself, finds a woman’s touch everywhere: in the sensuous curve of the oak staircase in the foyer, in the lack of fussy details like crown molding; even in the many front windows—first built to command an ocean view, but commissioned by someone who didn’t need a lot of walls on which to place furniture.

“This was a design challenge. There’s almost no walls to put furniture against, because she maxed out the windows,” Witte says as we regard the front of the house, which echoes a Swiss chalet with its smooth stucco second story, the emphasis of its beams, and the way the roofing shingles embrace the edges of the roof.

“There’s all these things that I feel may have had the inspirational hand of a woman.”

Now, of course, they have a woman’s guiding hand again. Harn and Witte have made minor concessions to modern living—adding some pocket doors to improve traffic flow, and updating the bathrooms with vintage-inspired modern appliances to replace horrid ’60s-era fixtures. But wherever possible, they’ve tried to let the house and its first mystery owner lead them into getting their hands dirty.

When you work on it, Witte says, “In a way I think you bond with the house, and it becomes part of your DNA.” This house has certainly done that.

Tags: Long Beach, long beach museum of art, Shelter, swiss chalet