A Rare Late-1800s San Diego Victorian Is In Classic Condition

At the turn of the 19th century, San Diego was graced with about 2,500 Victorian-era homes. About 300 remain. Among the top 10 is the Long-Waterman residence, according to architectural historian Bruce Coons.

Built for John and Kate Long in 1889, the five-bedroom Queen Anne-style home is a masterpiece of intact Victorian design. It’s located in Bankers Hill, one of the city’s original moneyed districts known for turn-of-the-century showpiece homes.

Front and center is the home’s wraparound gingerbread porch set before a dome-topped tower. That slender form contrasts with the amply rounded design on the home’s opposite side―a standard asymmetrical Queen Anne attribute.

Up top, the widow’s walk with original iron ridge cresting commands the “grandest view in the world … the city, promontory, bay, ocean and mountains,” reads a rhapsodic real estate notice for the home from the late 1800s. Double bay windows ascend on the south side, topped with a small curved porch off the maid’s quarters in the cavernous attic.

“The home is what everybody thinks of when they mention ‘Victorian,’” says Coons, Director of San Diego-based Save Our Heritage Organisation. “The Long-Waterman home is a classic example in every way.” The home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Behind the lavishly carved redwood front door, the impeccably maintained 6,180-square-foot interior includes an ornate staircase, four carved wood fireplaces with original glazed tiles and iron grates, stained glass windows and an elegant three-color slate floor in the foyer.

Adjacent to the home is a 1,530-square-foot carriage house. The property is zoned for residential and commercial use.

“Even though we’ve owned the home for 30 years, we feel like it’s part of the community,” says John Ernst, who, with his wife, Allegra Ernst, bought the property in 1993. “It’s been a labor of love for us.” The couple is selling the home for $6.485 million, given their retirement.

The parlor, anchored with two mahogany pillars joined with an ornate transom, harbors “a very fine, unusual fireplace,” Coons says. A beveled glass screen framed in brass is set between carved pillars. A high mantel mirror tops the piece and below, hummingbirds and flowers are set in high relief on the brass ash removal doors.

“The fireplace design furthers the home’s Anglo-Japanese theme―quite the thing at the end of the 19th century,” Coons says.

The Anglo-Japanese aesthetic was in ascent from 1850 to 1900, primarily in England. Stylized motifs were employed, along with Japanese objects, such as fans with handles that edge each step on the Long-Waterman’s home massive redwood staircase.

A panel of Lincrusta bands the staircase’s curved segment that forms the landing. Lincrusta, made by steel-rolling designs onto sheets of linoleum, was billed as the first washable wall covering when it was invented in 1877.

The staircase’s hand-carved newel post, along with a similar post on the first landing, are works of fine artistry but seem incomplete and nearly bereft––of gas lights that most likely topped them.

The home is rich in wood: walnut, mahogany and redwood, although the latter predominates. “It’s all heart, first-growth redwood,” says Coons who served as a historic consultant for the recent $14 million restoration of the Hotel del Coronado. The iconic Victorian resort opened in 1888 just across the bay from the Ernsts’ home, which was built the following year―just as the 1880s boom started to dim.

The home’s $6.485 million price would have astonished California Governor Robert Whitney Waterman, the newly retired second owner who paid $17,000 for the Victorian in 1891. He died four months later, unable to enjoy much of the interior’s jewel-tone adornment. But the residence’s venerable pedigree continued through subsequent eras―in the mid-1970s, the home was still quaintly termed a “dowager homestead.”

John Long, who had the house built―he owned the Coronado Fruit Packing Company―ran into business trouble and sold the home to Governor Waterman just over a year after completing it.

Fred Root Hart was the home’s third owner. He purchased the property in 1897. His daughters May and Florence were wed in the home, and Florence Hart Gilbert (she married dentist Dr. Alfred Gilbert in 1908) remained in the home until her death in 1975.

At that time, the sale of the house was being forced by inheritance and property taxes, according to news accounts. Distress calls went out in search of an “angel” preservation-minded buyer as many feared it could be torn down or disfigured, similar to other Victorian-era homes in the neighborhood.

John Parker, the owner of San Diego’s KYXY Radio, stepped in and bought the home in 1977, paying about $400,000.

After 80 years of unbroken family ownership, the home needed far more than a refresh. A four-year renovation project that concluded in 1981 involved “effort, exasperation and quite boggling expenditure,” Parker wrote in a booklet he assembled that’s packed with historical photographs, accounts and records of the home.

New foundations were laid under the home and carriage house and wood was stripped and restained. Paint and wallpaper were also removed and then freshened. Parker also modernized the kitchen and installed new landscaping, among numerous other projects.

The home was in reasonably good shape when the Ernsts bought it. Along with a new roof, they installed new carpeting and kitchen appliances and hung brighter wallpaper. Over three decades, they’ve painted the home four times––a greige tone accented with white trim.

They also removed the home’s solid cast brass hardware. It had been blackened after a century-plus of wear.

“We removed over 30 doors, took off the hinges, the window hardware, the doorknobs―everything,” says Allegra Ernst. They sent out the pieces and screws to be cleaned as well as sealed to prevent future tarnish. The now burnished hardware gleams as it did in the late 1800s.

During its heyday, the home catered to San Diego’s cultural elite. The property retains an echo of the elaborate weddings, card parties and social whirls it once hosted―when gloved butlers and white-capped maids tread the servant’s back staircase.

In the early 1900s, lavish floral arrangements termed “bowers of beauty” adorned the home during nuptials―some were mastered by prominent San Diego resident Kate Sessions, a botanist and horticulturist who was known as the “Mother of Balboa Park.” The park is a seven-minute walk from the Long-Waterman home.

In 1906, Sessions planted a now massive magnolia tree in the front yard in commemoration of the home’s first wedding of May Hart, the owner’s daughter, to William Henry Woolman.

Two years later in 1908, the home’s gas lines were removed and replaced with wires―electricity had arrived at the Long-Waterman residence.

The listing for the Long-Waterman House, 2408 First Avenue, San Diego, is held by Christine Baker and Cornelia Siem of Willis Allen Real Estate.