Doors Are the Key to This Couple’s House

Lynn and Gary Verhagen live in a house with 54 doors, but they don’t carry a lot of keys because only two of the doors open.

The one-bedroom home is made of doors from the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco.

The house has no support beams and the exterior walls are made from doors standing upright on the floors. The roof rests on the door tops for support. The roof and attic get total support from the doors.

The house has proved sturdy despite its lack of a strong support system found in a house built in the usual way.

“A tree fell on it in 1981, right over the living room,” Lynn Verhagen said. “I don’t know how the house withstood it.”

The house was assembled on its present location, right off busy California 92 leading to Half Moon Bay, by a saloon-keeper named Fred Nordholz in 1927. Nordholz used it occasionally as a hunting cabin in the woodsy area, but it mainly stayed vacant until Ann Howe, Lynn’s grandmother, bought it in 1947 for $900.

“I have to say it’s done very well for its age,” Verhagen said. “It’s amazing when you think that the builder laid a platform, put doors all around the side with a roof on top. It’s a wonder how it’s withstood all the years the way it has.”

Verhagen moved into the house, which has been featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum, after her grandmother died in 1971, to look after it for her father and aunt who inherited the dwelling. After a few years, she and her husband bought it.

The house may be haunted, according to June Morall, author of the book “Half Moon Bay Memories.”

“I’ve heard that some mysterious woman ghost comes out in front of the house on 92 and makes cars crash,” she said. “I haven’t seen the ghost myself or talked to anyone who has.”

Verhagen said she hasn’t seen the ghost either.

“But one time I thought I heard a woman’s laughter coming from the attic, and the tinkling of champagne glasses toasting.”