Dwelling on the Past : Old-Time Atmosphere Restored in Old Towne Orange

When Vern and Marilyn Dorn sold their “average tract house” in Fullerton to buy a turn-of-the-century wood-frame house in the oldest residential section of Orange in 1976, their friends questioned their sanity.

If there was ever a house that defined the term “fixer-upper,” the $45,000 two-story house on South Olive Street was it: Twenty-two windows were broken. The front porch sagged. The sewer pipes were rotten. The upstairs was lit with bare light bulbs strung from room to room with extension cords. The plaster on the walls was cracked, exposing the lath in the children’s bedrooms. The soft cedar floors were gouged. Brittle asbestos shingles covered the exterior clapboard siding. And the back yard was choked with weeds.

“Everything,” says Marilyn Dorn, “was a mess.”

But the Dorns saw beyond all that. They saw beyond the rewiring job, the new roof and the installation of drywall in all but three of the 22 rooms. They saw beyond the exterior and interior painting, the wallpapering and the stripping of half a dozen layers of paint on the built-in redwood china cabinet and wainscoting in the dining room. And they saw beyond having to eat out for two months while the kitchen was torn up and the 11 solid months of working on the house weeknights until 1 or 2 in the morning and all day on weekends.

Today, the Dorns’ antique-filled 1901 Classic Revival house is one of the finest old homes in an area that has become well-known for its old homes: Old Towne Orange, the largest concentration of pre-1940 houses in Orange County.

With the restored Old Towne Plaza at its core, the mile-square area boasts more than 1,400 vintage homes that reflect a diversity of architectural styles ranging from 1880s Victorian to 1930s Mediterranean Revival.

The Dorns and their five children were among the first of a wave of newcomers settling in Old Towne, many of them “thirtysomething” couples with children and DINKs (couples with double incomes and no kids). They are breathing new life into the old tree-lined neighborhoods of the city, which is celebrating its centennial this year.

Tired of living in look-alike stucco tract houses in homogenized suburban communities, they are lured by the small-town atmosphere and sense of community in a city that has taken steps to preserve and enhance its old downtown area and--above all--the custom qualities and features of houses that don’t look exactly like their neighbors’.

“It’s so different than living in a tract,” said Marilyn Dorn, 45. “Ever since we had been married we had talked about living in an old house. It’s emotional, a romantic thing. You picture the furnishings and how they lived in those days.”

“Every house in Old Towne is as different as the people living in it,” said Bill Smith, 40, whose wife, Tita, and their four children live in an 1888 two-story Victorian Italianate house that features 6-foot-tall windows with detailed eaves and scrollwork.

Tita Smith, who grew up in Old Towne, said she and her husband agreed when they got married that they didn’t want to live in a tract house. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with living in a tract, the Smiths say. It’s just not right for them. They wanted to live in an old house in an old neighborhood where they could feel safe taking a walk at night alone: Old Towne.

“We liked the atmosphere of it: all the trees, that neighborhood feeling of people sitting on their front porch and walking up and down the street,” said Tita Smith, 40. “It’s close to parks, the church, library--everything you’d need in daily living you can walk to.”

Dan Slater of Orange Realty Associates said that until several years ago Old Towne was regarded as a declining area. With much of the area zoned for double or multiple residences, he said, Old Towne had a lot of rentals and was a good place for first-time home buyers to find bargains.

“Now,” said Slater, “Old Towne isn’t a bargain anymore.”

The prices of houses in Old Towne have increased dramatically in recent years because of the trend of the real estate market and also the growing desirability of vintage homes. Slater said a 2,800-square-foot Mediterranean Revival recently sold for $277,000. (“It was nice but had some problems.”) Some homes sell for even more, and virtually nothing sells for less than $150,000.

“People have started recognizing the quality and charm of the old houses,” said Nick Ross, a broker with Orange Realty Associates. “It’s become a real strong trend. Now the hottest thing is to buy and fix up a vintage house.”

Indeed, because of the higher prices, most people buying homes in Old Towne are no longer bargain-hunting first-time buyers and investors looking for inexpensive rental properties. Now, Slater said, “it’s people that have the patience to actually improve the properties and put a lot of time and money into them.”

People such as construction manager Norm Fast and his wife, Dr. Barbara Towne, a pediatric surgeon.

Four years ago they were living in a three-bedroom, single-story house in Irvine. “Our children, interestingly enough, said this is a pretty sterile environment,” said Fast, 48, who agreed with that assessment. “We wanted to live in an area with a more varied background of people. In our area, it was dominated by white-collar professional people.”

Because Towne wanted to eliminate the long drives to Childrens Hospital of Orange County in Orange, the couple went house-hunting in Old Towne in late 1983. Fast said they were driving along Palmyra Avenue when they “saw this beautiful house.”

That “beautiful house,” a two-story Queen Anne Victorian on the corner of Palmyra and Orange Street, is one of Orange’s most historic homes. It was built in 1888 by pioneer Orange land developer C.Z. Culver as an annex to the three-story Palmyra Hotel, which he built across the street for tourists shopping for land in the area.

“The old-town atmosphere and the proximity of the Plaza provided a lot of the charm that we were seeking in a community,” Fast said. “Irvine really doesn’t have a sense of community, in my opinion. There just wasn’t an esprit de corps as there is in Orange because in Orange there is a movement to preserve and protect the historical integrity of the community.”

That movement coalesced two years ago with the formation of the Old Towne Preservation Assn., a nonprofit community service organization representing 250 households. To help ensure that the old community retains its small-town atmosphere, the association has opposed Chapman College’s expansion into residential areas and has supported a proposed city ordinance that would make current design guidelines for Old Towne mandatory.

That doesn’t mean the association is against new development, Dale Rahn, the association’s president, stressed. “We want new construction, but we want it to be compatible with the current look of most of our neighborhoods,” he said. Particularly irksome to association members is putting stucco on a wood-sided house or replacing wood-frame windows with aluminum.

Rahn sees a variety of benefits in an architectural design ordinance. A survey of similar old communities commissioned by the association found that an ordinance would increase property values, tax revenues and community pride.

When it comes to community pride, the nursery company vice president and general manager is already one of Old Towne’s biggest boosters.

“I love old Orange; there’s no place like it,” said Rahn, 36, who moved with his wife, Suzanne, from a Costa Mesa condominium in 1980 to a 1930 Mediterranean Revival house that they now share with two young daughters. “New neighborhoods are built so the garage is in front and the living in back. They’re built without front porches and picket fences. You just get so much more interaction (in Old Towne).

“What’s unique about Old Towne and the old city in general is there was always that economic mix as well as social, and it’s still there.”

Despite the increased prices of houses in Old Towne, Rahn said the community still offers affordable custom-built houses with amenities not found in many modern houses: walk-in pantries, built-in ironing boards, detailed woodwork, hardwood floors, wood-frame windows and cut glass.

“All that was just normal building policy then,” Rahn said. “They are houses that have stood the test of time and proved themselves out. Homes 100 years old have as much appeal as when they were built. I don’t know that you’re going to get that out of the ‘50s. They’re just still stucco houses.”

Rahn’s Mediterranean Revival house is stuccoed. But, as he says, the amount of detail, time and effort that went into building the house 58 years ago is evident throughout the three-bedroom home.

“It’s such a solidly built house, we don’t even have any cracks,” he said. “Everything has rounded edges to it--ceilings and doors. Nothing is squared except where it hits the floor.”

As for most home buyers in Old Towne, the Rahns had their work cut out for them. “Nothing had been done to the house since it was built. Nothing was changed, wrecked or whatever,” Rahn said. “But that means no place for a refrigerator in the kitchen, a single sink and three feet of counter space. So we gutted the whole kitchen and started over.”

The Rahns also have re-roofed, rewired and insulated the house, in addition to putting in a driveway. And they recently extended the master bedroom and built a walk-in closet and extra bathroom.

“There was just one bath, and with three girls it gets pretty tough pretty quick,” Rahn said.

In all, Rahn said, they have put about $60,000 into the house they bought for $80,000 eight years ago. Although they have no intention of moving, he figures the house is now worth about $225,000.

Fast and Towne have put even more time and money into their 100-year-old house. Such renovation projects are usually labors of love, but as Towne wryly observes: “Renovating an old house has been known to destroy more than one marriage.”

“It’s a lot of hard work,” Fast agreed. “I think anybody who gets into an old house like this, they’re kind of misleading themselves if they don’t realize they’re going to have to put in a lot of work.”

Excluding his own time and labor on many of the projects, Fast said he and his wife have sunk about $120,000 into the property. Last year alone, they spent about $65,000 for a new roof, a new garage and exterior painting.

Fast said he and Towne paid about $200,000 for the Culver house and about $100,000 for the adjoining property, which has an 800-square-foot house built in the 1920s. After renovation is complete, Fast said both properties could sell for about $600,000.

Although they plan to turn their home into a bed-and-breakfast inn next fall by renting out a couple of bedrooms, Fast and Towne are not thinking of selling.

“We’re here for the long run; we really are,” Fast said.

Like many Old Towne residents, Fast and Towne have furnished their home with antiques. They are not, however, purists. Fast prefers reproductions for lights and plumbing because “they’re more state of the art and safe.” They also plan to modernize the kitchen. “It will be a little bit out of character, but still we like some of the modern amenities: microwave, trash compactor, dishwasher”--Fast’s favorite--”a built-in electric toaster.”

Because of its prominence in the history of Orange, the Culver house is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Of course, living in a house with a history leads to the inevitable question.

“Many people ask me if there are any ghosts in this house,” Fast said, laughing. “No, we haven’t been able to detect any ghosts in this house.”

But, he said, one story has it that years ago a boarder robbed $15,000 from a local bank. Police followed a trail of blood back to the house, where they caught the man. The money has never been found.

Marilyn Dorn said that when her family moved into their old house in 1976, her five children--then ages 5 to 14--were afraid to sleep upstairs alone. And to this day, she said, her oldest daughter, Wendy, now 26, swears the house was haunted.

Dorn said she believes in spirits but has seen no evidence of ghosts. There was one time, however, when the family was having dinner in the back of the house and heard the front door open and the tiny bell on the door ring. When they went to look, the door was locked. “It was weird,” she said. Then she laughed. “Don’t put that in there; they’ll think I’m crazy.”

Dorn, whose house has a parlor decorated with a player piano, a Victrola and other antiques, says she sometimes feels wistful when she visits modern homes. “I wouldn’t want to live there, but I sometimes envy them: Everything’s new.”

The feeling doesn’t last long.

Although the Dorns are finding that their 2,800-square-foot house has become too large for them now that four of their five children no longer live at home, it would take a lot for them to leave the house they have invested so much time and effort in. Besides, Dorn said, it’s a great party house.

“We had a Victorian mystery party last Christmas for 20 people,” she said. “I could not believe the costumes. . . . You can’t have a bad party here because of the atmosphere. People get into the homey, friendly atmosphere.”

That is what has Fast and Towne hooked on Old Towne too.

But there is an added benefit for the couple. Not only is Towne only a mile from Childrens Hospital, she is able to walk to her office. The couple bought and renovated a small, single-story house built in 1898 on Glassell Street, less than two blocks from their home.

Fast has an even shorter walk to work: His office is in the guest house. When they hear the morning traffic report on the radio, Fast said, “we just kind of laugh.”

And at the end of a long day, they retreat to their broad front porch, shaded by the spreading 2-story-tall camphor trees that line the parking strip on their corner of Old Towne.

“The front porch is a great thing,” mused Fast. “You come home from work, get a glass of wine and sit out on the front porch and kind of watch the world go by, just like they did way back when.”