The city saves a vintage Long Beach foursquare

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES

The so-called “school house” isn’t a historic landmark, although it’s survived 104 years of floods, earthquakes and development in downtown Long Beach. But in conversations with surviving members of the Hunter family—three generations of whom lived there from 1906 to 1977—acts of God and the city council pale in comparison with life in a really old house.

“Everybody came in the back door. If you came in the front door, you were company,” remembers Hunter sister Anna Hunter Bates, whose grandparents bought the place when it was two years old. She and sisters Louise and Elaine grew up here, which was a unique experience.

“It was an odd kitchen,” Hunter remembers. “All the appliances were from Sears, so it was kind of a nothing room.”

Today, those appliances are probably collectible—and the “nothing room” is transformed.

The “school house”—a square, “foursquare,” two-story frame-siding house with a pyramid roof—got that name because it originally stood in the 200 block of Maine Avenue, and was slated for demolition to make way for Cesar Chavez Elementary School. Remembering that near-miss makes First District Councilwoman Bonnie Lowenthal sad.

“I think I’m going to cry. We had to force a commitment with the redevelopment agency to preserve this history. But we needed to let the RDA know that historic houses are not blight,” Lowenthal said recently as city officials threw open doors at the newly-restored house, owned by the city’s RDA, which is selling it. (Her quarrel was with a former RDA official—not Craig Beck, director of the city’s department of development services, the councilwoman said.)

“In order to go forward to a wonderful future for this city, we needed to preserve that past,” Lowenthal said. What did they end up preserving? Whatever was left.

When Anna Hunter Bates’ father Fred Hunter died, the family home passed out of the family for the first time in 70 years—and by the time the city moved it to its current location in the 400 block of Daisy Avenue, its interior had been picked over. You won’t find original light fixtures here, or vintage faucets—or even the original hardwood banister leading to four second-floor bedrooms and two gleaming bathrooms. That’s because when this house was still boarded up, someone broke in and stole that banister.

Master woodworker Tim O’Shea, president of the Bluff Park Neighborhood Association, had to be tapped to recreate it from old Hunter family photos. (How the Hunter sisters, in town for a visit, happened to drive down Daisy Avenue and reconnect with their childhood home—after they thought it had been demolished—is a story in itself.)

Now, it all looks seamless. The stairwell fairly gleams in polished dark wood, matching ornate doorframe moldings. Elsewhere, contractor Glen Ripley of Glen-Built Construction Co.—a Long Beach native who grew up in an old house—delivered old-timey bathrooms with pedestal sinks, a clawfoot tub with chrome feet, and everywhere subway tile: little hexagons for the floor and larger rectangles on the walls.

Then there’s the kitchen—now a testament to modern design. Once, stove and sink admired each other from opposite sides of a deep, double-hung window. Glen-Built moved the sink to a scratchbuilt island facing that window, which gave the cook a view and eliminated an awkward space. It’s all new, but the sisters Hunter said it functions better than the old ever did. Around the corner, as we walk through, is new piping for a washer and dryer, overlooking windows into the side yard.

This reminds them of mom—Susie Morrison Hunter, who wasn’t a fan of washers.

“They finally got a Maytag automatic washer,” Hunter Bates remembers. “Mom never trusted it, so the whole cycle she’d stand there waiting for it to overflow.”

No telling if this house will see another Maytag.

Tags: foursquare, Long Beach, rda