How three single sisters and a German tradesman built a little slice of English countryside

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES

“The best view of our house is from the front,” Lou Gaudio says as we admire the porte-cochere on the 1928 Storybook Tudor he shares with Karen Highberger. (It’s like a vintage carport, but attached to the house on one side; this one is actually part of the house and bears an upstairs closet.)

There’s something to what he says, for the front of this cozy three-bedroom, two-bath dwelling gives you the full Disney-fied Storybook treatment. Those leaded-glass windows, laid out in a diamond pattern, that roughly-shingled roof, those dormer windows, the faux-wormy front door with gated privacy window and wrought-iron hinges: All say English countryside. But wouldn’t you rather see the rest of the house, too? Of course.

Gaudio and Highberger felt the same way when they lived nearby: They couldn’t keep their eyes off this place. He’s a contractor, she does interior design—and after restoring a Spanish Colonial Revival elsewhere in California Heights, they were up for something new.

Five years ago, this 1,800-square-foot house was it. They were the fifth owners, as they learned when Long Beach architectural historian Maureen Neeley performed a house history. And those first owners 80 years ago turned out to be everything you’d expect first owners to be. “They were three single sisters and their last name was Badenhausen. Basically, only one of them ever worked. She was a school teacher at a private school, and they had investments in a tobacco farm,” Highberger says. (This was back when you’d walk a mile for a Camel—but a miss was as good as a mile.) Sure enough, the 1928 building permit lists under “Contractor,” the “Misses Badenhausen.” The sisters had owned this lot (two lots actually) since 1925, and supposedly they had help building the house.

“They brought a German tradesman over from Germany,” Highberger says, relaying the legend. And—though the man doesn’t turn up in records of the day—he reportedly built the house for them. It’s every bit as classic and formal as you’d expect of a Tudor, yet done with the animated touches that give Storybook Tudor its name. “It’s full of whimsical details,” Highberger says.

The ceilings are lined with rough-hewn beams that don’t support them—but look as if they could. (Upstairs, the beams bisect a study room whose high ceiling is one of the points in that Tudor roof.)

There’s a Dutch door in the kitchen, a steeply curving stairway to the second floor that pauses halfway at a comfy window seat. And in the living room, the leaded-glass windowpanes have been faux-repaired with variegated bits of stained glass.

The more you look, the more lighthearted it all seems—an attitude the couple’s restoration accentuates. If a nanny and a butler showed up—singing something from Mary Poppins—you wouldn’t be surprised. After all, there’s a butler’s pantry in the short hallway that connects kitchen to dining room. Opposite it, a niche is home to a vintage wall phone. The wiring for it and similar technology is kept at bay in the basement.

Behind dark wood cabinet doors in the kitchen is almost everything else that’s new: microwave, dishwasher, refrigerator, all out of sight. (This is probably the world’s only refrigerator with wrought-iron handles.) And on the floor, a linoleum rug harks back to 1928, even though it’s new.

That mix of vintage and modern continues in the backyard, where the couple says they spend nearly as much time as they do in the house. This says something about their yard, with its hummingbird-friendly landscaping, graceful Greene and Greene-inspired pergola, and a column fountain that’s a hit with raccoons and opossums. It also speaks well of California weather, for Tudors come from a climate where outdoor living is just not done. Here, though, it all works together.

Tags: California Heights, Long Beach, Shelter, tudor