House by Side of Ortega Turns Into Roadblock

To someone not versed in the nuances of architectural history, the old house on Ortega Highway doesn’t look like much.

Peeling, dirty white paint clings to its sides, and age has rotted its window screens. Old tires are stacked by a side door and laundry flaps in the breeze created by passing cars.

But where some see just a dilapidated building standing in the way of widening the highway, others see living history. And, for the moment at least, history has won.

The turn-of-the-century clapboard farmhouse in San Juan Capistrano has been declared a historical landmark, putting one of Orange County’s top priority road projects on hold again.

“It is one of the last remnants of San Juan being agricultural,” Ilse Byrnes, a local historian, said Saturday. “The craftsmanship is absolutely wonderful.”

The house, now a duplex, is part of the estate of Edwin Rosenbaum, whose family was among the earliest settlers in the area, long before the days of freeways and the expensive tract developments that now surround the structure.

As such, the state architectural historian recently declared the farmhouse off limits to Caltrans, which had hoped to widen the highway at the curve where the house and another smaller structure of the former Rosenbaum complex now stand. Other delays to the widening project have included an endangered bird species and an Indian archeological site on San Juan Creek.

While Caltrans studies alternatives to razing the building, such as moving the structure farther back in the orange grove where it stands, the highway widening will be pushed back from November, 1989, to June, 1990.

Byrnes said the house was “one of the most significant types of architecture of that time.” Like the others who have fought for its preservation, Byrnes suggested the structure be moved and restored.

Caltrans has estimated the cost of moving the house at between $250,000 and $300,000. A spokesman for Younger & Son House Movers in Santa Ana on Saturday estimated the cost at between $12,000 and $20,000. The cost of renovating the house was not known.

The house is owned by Melvin Rosenbaum, Edwin’s son, and is occupied by renters, who said Saturday that they were unaware of the house’s historical significance or of any controversy surrounding it.

Residents of a small yellow house next to the farmhouse, who have rented the property for 14 years, said they have been hearing for years that they would have to move.

The houses are so close to the road that the noise of passing cars drowns out conversation. After an accident involving a drunk driver, guardrails were erected to prevent cars from ramming the houses.

Pamela Gibson, a historian specializing in San Juan Capistrano, said the local Rosenbaum legacy began in 1869, when German immigrant Henry George Rosenbaum arrived in the area after stays in San Francisco, Monterey, San Jose and Mexico.

Henry Rosenbaum, Edwin’s grandfather, was not suited to farming, however, and later sold his 450 acres of land and moved to Los Angeles, where he wrote and produced several plays. But one of Henry’s nine children, Oscar, moved back to the area to grow wheat, barley and lima beans and raise cattle. Edwin was one of Oscar’s 18 children, 14 of whom grew to adulthood.