Reader David McMurray points out a recent LA Times story on a Long Beach Craftsman saved from the wrecking ball. David walked his dog by this house regularly and was particularly happy to see it appreciated after years of neglect. Above photo by Christine Cotter, taken from the slide show at the attached link.
When Wendy Harn rescued a 1913 Craftsman from the
wrecking ball in 1989, she didn't know much about the Long Beach house
except that it was free. A developer had planned to demolish it to build
condos, but first the city insisted that he offer the house to anyone
willing to move it. Harn stepped forward, and the following year she
relocated the two-story, five-bedroom behemoth from its Ocean Boulevard
site opposite the Long Beach Museum of Art to her lot in the Bluff Park
Historic District.Twenty years and hundreds of thousands of dollars later, Harn, a Long
Beach native and assistant director in charge of crime analysis at the
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and her partner, Sasha Witte,
are nearing the end of a painstaking renovation that makes the house
radiate with new vitality. Here, Witte descends the entry staircase with
a scroll-like banister — one of the elements that first attracted Harn
to the house.