At age 65 in 1932, she commissioned one of the city’s most ornately-designed decorated homes

PHOTO by ZACK PIANKO

A childless widow with investments in the oil and movie industries, Minnie Butler must have been the youngest 65-year-old ever. How else to explain the way she spent the year 1932? At an age when many people were slowing down—and the Great Depression was on—Butler put the pedal to the floor and hired one of the city’s top architects to build her a house. Even better, she did it for spite—maybe.

“The story, according to neighbors and the rumor mill, is that her sister lived next door,” says Long Beach Cultural Heritage Commissioner Layne Johnson. “They had a fight, and she decided to have this house built—to show her sister.” The subject of the fight, and what Minnie Butler had to prove, are lost to time. But so much else has survived: photos of Minnie with her sister, and with her two beloved parrots, Polly and Paco; her scrapbook full of yellowed obituaries and ancient clippings (sample headline: “Fatal Suit of Lincoln Auctioned”), and especially her two-story Spanish Colonial Revival house, now a city historic landmark owned by Johnson and his partner Chris Hogan.

“We were on Home & Garden Television because of it,” Johnson says of their inspirational 1996 purchase. “I ended up on the Cultural Heritage Commission because of it. All because of a house.” What a house it is.

Architect Harvey Lockridge is perhaps best remembered in Long Beach today for designing the historic Insurance Exchange Building. The Minnie Butler house is one of his relatively few residential buildings: an outwardly unassuming two-story Spanish Colonial Revival with some stained-glass windows and a textured stucco finish.

Its lush interior is what stays with you. Butler’s house is one of a handful in Long Beach with woodworking, murals and stenciling by Jens Christian Raven and F. Julious Fischer. Both consummate artists, the two men aren’t all that well known today, and may only have collaborated a handful of times. Together, their talents made the Minnie Butler house a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath mansion.

It’s not known precisely who handled what, but generally, Raven painted the numerous murals and Fischer the stencils—of delicate patterns, high across the sturdy plaster walls. Raven’s piece du resistance has to be the dewy, foggy nature scene he painted around the wall of the tile stairway to the second floor. In cool shades of blues and greens, it seems to lead to a woodland—not just the second floor bathroom and bedrooms.

Not surprisingly for a four-owner house, those bathrooms are well preserved, though some walls have been repainted. Upstairs is green and black, while downstairs is a riot of tiles in alternating shades of deep and medium purple. On the wall over the bathtub fly dainty little songbirds, all from Raven’s brush. It’s like standing in an aviary, albeit one with an original built-in vanity, and a purple pedestal sink and toilet.

“It’s transitional Arts & Crafts,” Johnson says of the purple walls and the floor—tiled in intricate hand-laid squares, “and [upstairs] is Art Deco.”

What it is today is ornate. Extras are everywhere: hardwood floors, an original set of hardwood pocket doors with wavy 1932 glass—and the original china hutch in the alcove designed for it. Even the kitchen is a wonder today.

“Many people have the ironing board,” Hogan says with a smile as he pulls the fold-up ironing board out of the wall. “But we have the iron.” And there it is, the original iron, behind a little steel door.

“And then there’s the shoe shine rack,” Hogan says, and he opens out another alcove for your shoe polishes. “And then there’s the drying rack.” And there it is: a little row of wooden sticks behind a cabinet door, set high in the wall. Like Minnie Butler and her house and her story, it’s a survivor.

Tags: homes, Long Beach, minnie butler, Shelter