In a corner of Brand Park in Glendale, California, sits the Doctors House. It’s a charming Queen Anne cottage, complete with a tiny tower, stained glass, and delicate spindling on its white porches. Shaded by trees, it looks out over a wide, green lawn that slopes to a pond. On the outside, it doesn’t seem too different from the other 1880s and 1890s houses surviving on the West Coast. It could easily have been in this spot for the past 140 years, standing tranquil and undisturbed.So it surprised me to learn that in 1980, it was sawn in half.
In 1979, the Doctors House, then located in downtown Glendale near the intersection of Wilson and Belmont Streets, was slated for demolition. A group of determined volunteers banded together to save it. The City of Glendale was able to purchase the house for $1 from a developer, with the understanding that it would be removed from the property. But it was up to the volunteers to manage this massive task.
After separating the structure into two pieces, they loaded it onto a pair of trucks and carefully guided it up the street toward Brand Park. It was no simple undertaking: the volunteers traveled five miles in about eight hours, working overnight to avoid traffic. Finally, they were able to unload the building in its current home.
This large-scale architectural surgery was the first major action of the Glendale Historical Society, the organization that still operates the Doctors House today. After moving the house, the society’s volunteers spent the next four years converting it into a museum, researching the history of its residents and restoring its interiors to a period of 1890–1902. Since 1984, the Doctors House Museum has been open to the public, offering glimpses into late-19th- and early 20th-century life in the town.
What is it about this house, one might wonder, that spurred a group of people to pour in thousands of hours of unpaid labor to save it from destruction? For that matter, what about the house continues to draw in a dedicated crew of docents, community supporters, and visitors? I could offer a short and somewhat pedantic answer, citing the fact that the Doctors House is now one of only two Queen Anne Eastlake–style buildings in the area. But pure preservation, the mere documentation of landmarks, doesn’t explain the way that people have been drawn in by the house and its stories and have found it hard to stay away.