By Daily Press staff
14TH STREET — One of the city’s old-est houses was on the move again this weekend, this time finding a temporary home at the former Fisher Lumber yard.
The last remaining, intact shotgun house in Santa Monica, built in the 1890s, was moved to the city-owned plot of land just after dawn on Sunday.
“Friends” of the house, which had been parked at the Santa Monica Airport for the past three years, scrambled last month to find a new location because the construction of a new park prevented the house from staying there. The shotgun house was taken to the airport by preservationists in July of 2002 to avoid demolition.
The Santa Monica City Council recently voted to store the house at Fisher Lumber for two years to give a newly forming nonprofit organization, “Friends of the Shotgun House,” time to secure a permanent site and raise funds to rehabilitate it. The cost of the move was under-written by concerned residents who are committed to saving the house in light of its historic significance.
After an hour and a half of preparation, the house mover drove the house east on Airport Avenue, north onto Bundy, west on Ocean Park Boulevard, north on Lincoln Boulevard, then east to the corner Colorado Avenue and 14th Street. The circuitous route was necessary because the house, once raised on a special truck, can’t fit under the freeway underpass. The house is approximately 12 feet wide, 39 feet long and 14 feet high.
Some of those involved in wheeling it across town are hoping to raise enough money to bring it back to Ocean Park, specifically, to a small community garden on the north end of Main Street.
It cost an estimated $7,000 to move the house to the Fisher Lumber site. The group will have two years to raise money to move it to a permanent site and renovate it at an estimated cost of $450,000.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 14, 2005. Read the original PDF.