Home Sweet (Official) Home

Thirty years ago, Nancy Reagan denounced California’s venerable, and creaky, governor’s mansion as a firetrap unfit for habitation by the state’s first family. The Ronald Reagans promptly moved to a rented home in fashionable East Sacramento. The mansion, the governor’s residence since 1903, became a museum.

To this day, California remains one of the few states that does not provide an official residence for the governor. It’s a subject that has produced controversy and more than a few laugh lines over the years, but no new mansion.

Now a solution may be near. There’s a movement afoot to renovate and modernize the Victorian-era home of Leland Stanford--Sacramento merchant, railroad baron and California’s eighth governor (1862-63)--as a reception and entertainment facility with living quarters for governors. The four-story mansion near the Capitol could be the solution to California’s gubernatorial housing dilemma.

The state did have an official residence briefly, a sprawling house built on a suburban 12-acre site on a bluff above the American River with funds contributed by Reagan friends and supporters. But no governor ever lived there. The architects called it modern Old California ranch style. Critics said it looked like a Safeway store. Frugal Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. refused to live in it, preferring a spartan apartment. The property was sold in 1983 to a local developer; the proceeds and interest now total $2.7 million. More funds have been raised by a Stanford Mansion restoration foundation.

The state ought to proceed with renovation of the 19,000-square-foot Stanford Mansion, built in 1857 but expanded greatly since then. The total cost is estimated to be $10 million to $15 million. About $6.5 million is now available, counting the Reagan house funds.

If renovated properly, the home will be an appropriate residence and entertainment facility, evoking the post-Gold Rush era and the construction of the transcontinental railroad, in which Stanford was a major figure. It would nicely complement the nearby 19th-century Capitol. And California’s longest-running housing problem would be solved.