New Home, New Look for ‘Red House’

The puzzle wasn’t easy to solve: Where does a 70-year-old ranch house fit into a modern master-planned community? Certainly not Woodbridge or the Irvine Spectrum, local historians concluded.

So historians pleaded with the community to help them find a new site for the old ranch called the “Red House,” slated for demolition by Irvine Co., which needed to clear the way for Oak Creek Golf Course, now under construction.

“In Irvine, it’s so planned, where are you going to put an old house like this?” asked Sue Ann Schappert, president of the Irvine Historical Society.

A city agency came to the rescue. The Irvine Ranch Water District proposed that it take over the house from the developer and move it onto district property.

With the Irvine Co.’s approval and financial support, workers were hired to jack the house onto a jumbo tractor-trailer and drive it six miles to its new location in Rattlesnake Canyon Reservoir.

Now construction workers are busy remodeling the house, soon to be occupied by the water district’s caretaker. The district maintains 24-hour supervision at the reservoir to handle emergencies and guard against intruders.

The restoration project is expected to cost the water district about $86,000, but “it’s cheaper to restore this old home than build a new one on this site,” said Ron Young, the water district’s general manager. “And not only are we saving money, we are saving a historical building.”

With cobwebbed corners, dusty floors and cracked windows, the house at first sight is no charmer.

But a tour of the 2,500-square-foot, two-story home reveals details such as floors made of Douglas fir, twisted wrought-iron staircase banisters and large French doors with decorative antique hinges.

“It’s probably the fanciest house in Irvine Ranch that hasn’t been destroyed,” said Judy Liebeck, curator of the Irvine Historical Museum. “You can just tell the person who lived here was important.”

Liebeck said the house was once occupied by a friend of James Irvine, the ranch’s founder. Its last occupant was the agricultural manager for Irvine Co. The house was vacated in 1994.

Construction workers estimate that restoration of the historic home will be completed within a month.

The home will not be open to the public, district officials said. But they said they would consider opening it occasionally if the city were to organize a tour of Irvine’s historical landmarks.

Irvine Ranch Water District has helped the Historical Society on several occasions to preserve Irvine Ranch landmarks.

For example, the district set up a water conservation garden at the Irvine Historical Museum, luring more visitors. It also saved the last remaining wooden windmill from Irvine Ranch. The windmill is now at the Michelson Reclamation Center on Harvard Avenue.

“It’s kind of our sense of valuing the community we live in,” Young said. “We think these historical icons are important to everyone.”