Most Treasures Saved : Landmark Museum Rescued From Flames

On the main floor of the Villa Montezuma Museum are tiled fireplaces, delicate gold-painted Bavarian china cups and stained-glass windows depicting Shakespeare, Goethe, the Greek poet Sappho, Beethoven and Mozart.

Inside the historical landmark, which crowns the corner of K and 20th streets near Golden Hill, there are gold-leafed cloth- and velvet-bound books, a wooden harp and piano, redwood and linoleum-like Lincrusta Walton ceilings, stained glass transoms and a French beveled china closet, all more than a century old, according to museum curator Lucinda Eddy.

Early Tuesday a fire broke out, threatening irreplaceable period pieces and the structure itself.

Had firefighters summoned to fight the blaze been delayed by even one minute, everything in the house would have been lost, the house burned beyond salvage and there would have been no 100th birthday celebration for the museum next year, the curator is convinced.

“The firefighters worked quickly to save the priceless artifacts. They brought everything to the center of the room, covered it with tarp and took paintings and bric-a-brac down . . . They were wonderful,” Eddy said.

They even saved a 100-year-old organ on the second floor, she said.

“The Fire Department regularly gives tours to the new recruits so they are very familiar with what’s in here and where we are located,” Eddy said.

“We’re fortunate that the fire was mainly confined to the second floor. The main floor paintings, collection of antiques and woodwork were not burned,” she said.

But on the second floor, two-thirds of an exhibit of works by 25 black artists was damaged by the blaze, Eddy said.

Tuesday’s fire and water damage to the ceiling, the roof, walls and moldings exceeds $100,000, said Rurik Kallis, who has done restoration work on the house for years and will now help to restore sections damaged by the blaze.

Among the works damaged were batik paintings and a pencil drawing of Masai tribal dancers, although Eddy said if the glass covering is removed from the drawing it may be salvaged.

The Historical Society, which operates the museum, will have to pay for the destroyed works, Eddy said.

Twenty-five firefighters arrived on the scene a little after 1 a.m. Tuesday and had the blaze under control in about 20 minutes, spokesman Lance Bellows said.

Live-in caretaker and community projects director Larry Malone was awakened by the fire, and had to climb out a second-story window, slide down some pipes and jump the rest of the way to escape, Bellows said. To make his already bad night worse, Malone said, he was held at gunpoint a few hours later by two men, who were hoping to enter the museum. But Historical Society executive director Richard Esparza said the confrontation took place outside the building and “nobody got in the house.”

The fire started in a small office on the second floor, but investigators are still trying to pinpoint the cause of the blaze, Bellows said.

The Villa Montezuma Museum, built in 1887, originally belonged to Jesse Shepard, an Illinois-bred, English-born musician and author, who designed the three-story house.

Eddy surmised that Shepard named the house Villa Montezuma because of his interest in the Aztec culture, some symbols of which he had put into stained glass.

Although many of the antiques in the museum have been donated through the years, the stained glass windows have been there since the house was built to Shepard’s specifications by developers eager for him to “bring culture” to San Diego, Eddy said.

Shepard was “something of a vagabond . . . a professional house guest who spent time going to people’s houses and entertaining and in return was given a place to stay and expensive gifts,” Eddy said.

When the elegant house was built, Shepard had furnishings and tile imported from England and ordered special windows from San Francisco, Eddy said.

He didn’t stay in the house very long, however, and it went through a series of owners and dwellers, including war industry workers during World War II, until four members of the Historical Society purchased the building in the late 1960s, Eddy said.

They turned it over to the city, and after 2 1/2 years of painstaking restoration work, the house was opened as a museum in 1972, Eddy said.

The house, artifacts and artworks are insured, but at this time there is no cost estimate on the ruined works, Eddy said.

Although no one is sure how long it will take to restore the house this time, the Historical Society is planning a centennial celebration from June to December of 1987, and, “We’re going to make sure we’re open for it,” Eddy said.