Thursday, July 3, 2008

Preservation Victory Dance!


This photo is courtesy of Anaheim's newly minted preservation guy, Mike Sands, who was up all night moving a house. And you think YOU had a rough night! Under all that stucco is a Queen Anne cottage, originally the home of the ranch foreman for the Fiscus family. (See the Caldwells' amazing Mission Manse on Broadway for the "big house") Developers wanted to scrape the house to make way for a new office building, and because the structure is outside Anaheim's three historic district boundaries, it was essentially "off the grid" for preservation purposes. The Anaheim Historical Society spoke up, and with the help of the Preservation office at City Hall West, and some very vocal support from the Anaheim Neighborhood Association and the Historic Preservation Commitee, the house has now been moved to the last empty lot owned by Community Development within the Colony. That means hold your breath, if something else is in danger we have nowhere to move it to! Time to buy more land. At least these days that is getting cheaper-much to the dismay of our home values. Thanks to good teamwork, this house is going to make a great addition to the Steuckle development site, where several other homes are waiting on cribbing to be given new life-hopefully by the always committed Stephanie Hales-Panlillio team.

1 comment:

walterworld said...

This is great news!

I passed that house last week while I was documenting the former Tops Motel located across Harbor Blvd.

I snapped a picture just as the workers were demo-ing the chimney. Let me know if you'd like me to send it to you.

And thanks for the backstory...I thought it was just another house.