When good houses go bad

Never look a gift horse in the mouth -- unless that gift horse is

trying to unload a rotting, decrepit, 80-year-old house on you.

Uh huh. You guessed it. The Huscroft House.

The Costa Mesa Planning Commission will discuss tonight what to do

with the arguably historic house, which is sitting on blocks next

door to the Bark Park.

The house was donated to the city in the 1990s and was saved all

these years because of its craftsmanship.

I’m sure it was it was beautiful in its prime. I bet one would

marvel at the painstaking efforts of hand-crafting each piece of

wood. (This was before power tools.) Many draftsman also made their

own nails.

Ninety years later, the Huscroft House is still, uh, eye-catching.

It sits on Arlington Avenue, in all its glory, one of the first

things drivers see as they enter our fair city from the Costa Mesa

Freeway. Its attractive blue tarp -- which the Costa Mesa City

Council spent $2,000 on to protect the house from winter weather --

flaps gently in the ocean breeze. Its boarded windows don’t have that

pesky glare like normal glass ones.

I’m sure each creak and moan from the wooden planks of the

decaying home tell a story about Costa Mesa -- or perhaps the tales

are about Santa Ana, where the house was originally built in 1915. It

was moved to Costa Mesa in 1954.

If that house could really talk, it would probably beg to be put

out of its misery. Any mystique the old home once had has been

stripped by Costa Mesa officials and their inability to do anything

decisive with the home. They have slowly suffocated the structure by

keeping it in such horrible condition all these years.

The donated Huscroft House encountered resistance even before the

city spent $54,000 to move it from 2529 Santa Ana Ave. to TeWinkle

Park.

Now, even those who can appreciate the historic value of the house

don’t want to keep paying for it. I doubt the house holds a special

place in anybody’s heart anymore. This issue has been beaten to

death, and the Huscroft House hangs onto its hinges by a stripped

thread.

It’s time to put the old girl out of her misery. She is past her

prime. Beyond repair. Pull the plug. Call it quits.

Of course, there is still the $35,000 it will cost the city to

safely demolish it, but you can chalk that up to proper burial costs

for a would-have-been historical monument. The house has suffered

enough. Give up the Huscroft ghost.

* LOLITA HARPER writes columns Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and

covers culture and the arts. She may be reached at (949) 574-4275 or

by e-mail at lolita.harper@latimes.com.