A house of stories

Henrietta Barnes’ Balboa Peninsula home isn’t particularly large, but she values every square foot.

“Everything in here comes with a story,” Barnes said as she flipped through photo albums and early 20th century Newport Beach paraphernalia. “I got about 80 years to talk about.”

Barnes has been alive for 90 years. And so has her house on the 1100 block of East Balboa Boulevard. It has been in the family’s possession for all but nine of those years.

Barnes’ father, Fred Walter, purchased the home -- one of the oldest in the neighborhood -- as a summer getaway for the family.

Barnes said her father paid about $6,500 for the furnished house. The family lived in Pasadena, where Walter was in the savings and loan business. Barnes and her sister, Alice Walter, both worked for a time at the California Institute of Technology.

The sisters drove the family fishing boat, named Jack S. Phogbound. It was often entered into the Character Boat Parade, for which owners decorated their vessels.

“We had more fun chugging around here in the Bay,” Barnes said. “Our mother could always hear when we came home, because we made a lot of noise in that boat.”

They later owned a motorboat called Miss Chief.

As boats went past the house, passengers often noticed one of the house’s defining characteristics. It had what is known in the boating world as “a crow’s nest.” (The place where a captain goes to see a far distance.)

Neighborhood residents know the house by that name. And Barnes named the house’s entryway “The Tunnel of Love.”

“I’m a compulsive namer and punner,” she said.

In 1959, the home became a permanent family residence. Walter had a blood clot in his leg that required amputation at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian.

For a time, while he was healing, Walter lived at the Balboa Bay Club. He was one of the first members there.

The family packed into the waterfront house. Barnes remembers sitting and staring across the bay at Balboa Island and Irvine Ranch.

“It’s amazing to see what happened,” Barnes said. “I used to look over at the hill and see cows running around.”

The family has added onto the property on several occasions and eventually purchased the adjacent property, giving them access to one of the oldest piers in the city.

There is no cement slab under the house -- only the original sand -- so water comes rushing up under the property during high tide.

During low tide, the family enjoyed hosting parties on the small beach in front of the house. They invited friends and often enlisted the help of a local band called The Frank Ortega Trio.

The musical group also played at The Dollhouse, an establishment down the street started by Al and Drusilla Thompson.

Barnes said the family became so close with the Thompson’s that they would go to the restaurant nearly every night. Barnes even adopted two of the couple’s children.

Fred Walter died in 1964, and his wife died four years later. They had already put the deed in their children’s name.

“I was so grateful for the place,” Barnes said. “It’s given me so many good memories.”

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