THE LAST WORD:Old house, new broom

This old house has taken on a different meaning this year in Newport Beach, when everything that is old has been new again. (Whew, that’s a lot of cliches, even for us!)

Among the sites and people being celebrated as Newport Beach finishes up its 100th birthday is a house at 1920 Court Ave. on the peninsula.

Highlighting the house is yet another little bit of fun in the year-long celebration, which wraps up in grand fashion on Oct. 8 with a party at the city’s two piers.

Now owned by the McNichols family, the home is believed to date to 1905 — a year before Newport became a city (and, admittedly, not all that old in the scheme of things, but if you don’t know by now that almost nothing is very old in Southern California, it may be too late to convince you).

At the least, it is one of the oldest houses in town — if not the oldest. And it’s one of those little beach cottages that are slowly, but seemingly surely, disappearing, and therefore all the more deserving of historical recognition.