Santa Ana : The Chance for a New Life Awaits Old-Time House

It was a matter of one old-timer making way for some others.

In the predawn hours today, if all went well, an 82-year-old Victorian house that had stood in the path of a planned senior citizen complex was to be spirited away from South Sycamore Street.

Then it was to be placed on an empty lot on North Lacy Street in French Park--badly in need of repair and a new owner but with a brighter future than it has had for several years.

The white clapboard house, built in 1905 by William L. Duggan, had deteriorated under its most recent owner and sat on a block that was going nowhere. The developer of a nearby apartment building had run out of money midstream, leaving behind his uncompleted project. Overcrowded, run-down houses also blighted the neighborhood.

Last year, however, the city contracted with a developer to raze the entire block and put up a senior citizen complex. The Duggan house could have faced the wrecking ball if no group had shown interest in saving it, according to Patricia Whitaker, the city’s housing manager.

But residents’ groups in Heninger Park--the house’s former neighborhood--and French Park, both of which have helped preserve the city’s dwindling stock of California bungalows and Victorian-style houses, wanted to find another spot for it. So did the city’s Community Development Agency.

Alhtough 10 to 20 Victorian-style houses remain on the eastside, Whitaker said, “We’ve lost so many old ones. In our eastside neighborhoods, a great number of Victorians were torn down because of high density development. . . . The grandiose Victorians are long gone.”

While the Duggan house is not architecturally significant, it is one of the few houses remaining in Santa Ana with a turret window upstairs, Whitaker said, and it will be placed on the city’s historic register. David Fraunfelder, past president of the Historic French Park Assn., said much of the woodwork inside the four-bedroom house is original.

Duggan, who moved to Santa Ana from Northern California in 1896, worked for the New York Life Insurance Co. and served as president of the Santa Ana Board of Education from 1911 to 1915.

Space could not be found for the Duggan house in Heninger Park, but all parties agreed that a city-owned lot on Lacy Street in French Park would be a good place to put it. Another historic structure, the Harmon-McNeil house, had already been moved to an adjoining lot.

The developer gave the house to the French Park group, which is spending almost $20,000 in community block grant funds to move it to its new location, current president Glory Allender said. The group hopes to sell the house to someone who will agree to carry out repairs estimated at $50,000, she said.

The city-owned lot on which the house now rests is worth between $70,000 and $80,000, Whitaker said, bringing the total cost of the house to about $150,000.