A Victorian Homecoming in Carlsbad

One’s abiding passions in life do bring moments of curious disadvantage, which is a suitably empurpled Victorian way of expressing just what Patricia Watkins feels sometimes.

Like when she peers from the widow’s watch of her lavishly recreated 19th-Century home on the coast of Carlsbad and observes how passers-by act when they come upon the home, with its tall cupola, witch’s hat and a virtual dessert tray of gingerbread ornamentation.

Once, Watkins recalled, “these people pulled up and took a tablecloth out. They had champagne, a bucket, a flower vase and a little ghetto blaster. They danced, they kissed. They set up a tripod and a camera and took pictures of themselves.

“It was so bizarre.”

Life can be like that when your home is dubbed “Disneyland South” by the neighbors and its Victorian ostentation rises like a frosting apparition in a seaside community that didn’t even become a city until the Eisenhower Administration.

Gawkers, shutter-snappers and occasional folks who simply knock on the door for a well-meaning inquiry are the price Watkins, her husband, William, and their six children are willing to pay for owning one of the most unusual and prominent residences on the North County coast.

Lyn Pinney of the Carlsbad Convention and Visitors Bureau said, “It’s pretty outstanding. If you drive up the coast, you don’t find many homes like it. In fact, I can’t think of any.”

But only three years after the couple finished building their dream house, business demands are requiring them to spend more time in Las Vegas, where they’re from. So they put their Carlsbad Victorian on the market four months ago. The asking price is $3 million, but, hey, that includes the antique furniture. The price is $2.5 million if sold nude.

So far, 150 parties have expressed interest in the 3-story, 14-room blue-gray residence with burgundy and plum trim that was hand-milled from redwood. However, most potential buyers want to convert it into a bed and breakfast for tourists, and they disappear upon learning the city won’t allow it.

The couple is taking the sorrow out of selling their house by planning to erect an almost exact duplicate in Las Vegas, where 19th-Century architecture is about as natural to the desert as showgirls in rhinestone G-strings.

But for the Watkins family, their long-held affinity for a style popular during the long reign of England’s Queen Victoria--a style most later generations regarded as silly and dandified--goes wherever they go.

William Watkins is a well-known Carlsbad area developer and Patricia is a former art teacher who specialized in portraits. They married 10 years ago, creating a perfect union for collect-aholics who decided to design and furnish a Victorian retirement home with a sea view. First, she recounted, the couple set about searching for the house that would be right for them--to copy.

“We took an extensive tour of Victorian homes in Northern California,” that included Ferndale, Eureka and Arcata up in redwood country. They also scrutinized San Francisco’s “painted ladies” but decided the architecture “was more pure in Ferndale because it’s more rural” and thus hadn’t been modified over the years.

They chose a scheme with familiar Victorian features and began two years of building in 1984. Neighbors in Terramar, a 1950s-era residential enclave just south of the Encinas power plant, watched the construction with considerable amusement.

“People were calling it ‘Disneyland South,’ ” recalled Bailey Noble, president of the local homeowners association.

People were friendly enough, but there was some suspicious talk that drifted back to Patricia Watkins.

“Coming in from Las Vegas and putting all these phone lines in because we have children, somebody asked if we were bookies,” she said.

When the house was done, raised to its full 35-foot height, perhaps the most impressed observer was the city’s building inspection department.

“It’s all 2-by-4 lumber studding. It’s way overbuilt, you wouldn’t believe it,” said Tony Mata, chief building inspector. “I had to take my whole department down there to see it. They were amazed.”

Not everybody shared that enthusiasm, like the man who laboriously delivered 24 brass and bronze ceiling fans. “He said, ‘Why the hell didn’t you put in air conditioning?’ ” Watkins said.

Although somewhat crowded on a 69-by-105-foot lot, not unlike an original Victorian fit, the inside of the Watkins abode has a feeling of spaciousness and warmth. Actual 19th-Century homes had cold, tiny rooms with high ceilings, but the building code and a desire for comfort caused the family to elect bigger rooms, each crowded with antique furniture, lamps, stained-glass windows, art and curios.

“We collected Belter furniture. He was the premiere furniture-maker before the Civil War,” Watkins said. But amid all the antiquity--the 1870 parlor stove and the Tiffany window and much more--are splashes of pure whimsy.

In one downstairs bathroom, the toilet has the old-fashioned pull-chain from the tank located on the wall about six feet above the bowl. The bowl sits beneath a sturdy oak chair with a high back and arms decorated with red velvet pads. It resembles a formal dining room chair. The seat is flipped to the side to make way for relief.

In the second-story office sit two late 1800s barber chairs at the windows overlooking the ocean. William and Patricia sit there and gaze. But her chair also has a more practical use.

“I sit here and blow my hair dry and watch the people go by,” sometimes ducking from photographers, she said.

With few exceptions, they rather enjoy the attention and the typical uncertainty of viewers about whether the home is a genuine Victorian.

“I actually had a person ask me whether we dragged this house down from San Francisco,” she said. “Right down I-5. Right.”

People with modern taste usually regard Victoriana as gaudy and foppish.

“It’s all of those things,” said Watkins. But “you look at something like a piece of furniture and you think, look what’s happened over the last 100 years, and this is still here. . . . It’s just so good to feel there was something yesterday.”

What Watkins and her husband, owner of Watkins Development Co., hope for tomorrow is that a buyer will come along so they can focus entirely on building their next new Victorian in Las Vegas.

Despite all the inquiries on the Carlsbad house, the city’s restrictions on bed and breakfasts have turned most of the interested parties off.

City Planning Director Michael Holzmiller said five years ago, the city acted to safeguard areas with single-family dwellings, and as a result has only one B and B. “The city wanted to be cautious and conservative. One issue of concern to Carlsbad residents is protection of the R-1 zone,” he said.

But, he added, “maybe we’re being a little too cautious and we should consider (bed and breakfasts) in unique single-family zones.”

Patricia Watkins is sure her house will sell and her family will go on to the next Victorian adventure. But as much as she loves that era, even she has limits: “I enjoy the beauty. The next thing I enjoy is the microwave and running water and how lucky I am that I wasn’t living back then.”