Tattered Queen of the ‘20s : Redevelopment: A rundown dream house built by San Clemente’s founder may become a renovation centerpiece.

SAN CLEMENTE —  Casa Romantica, the 20-room home of San Clemente’s founder, Ole Hanson, once was a plush mansion tended by servants and frequented by movie stars.

Today it is a tattered remnant of that gathering place for the glamorous in the 1920s. Its cracked ceilings are in danger of collapsing under rain, the plumbing and wiring are in desperate need of repair, and the sandy bluff under the home is crumbling from years of erosion.

The estimated cost of fixing the mess is $350,000, according to a recent city study.

In an effort to save Hanson’s dream home from natural destruction, the San Clemente Redevelopment Agency this year completed a $2.5-million deal to buy the house, the bluff it sits on and a parking lot below at the San Clemente Pier.

This total five-acre site, city officials hope, will be the centerpiece for the ongoing renovation of the Pier Bowl area, the title given to the shops and restaurants on the street fronting the pier and the city’s most heavily populated stretch of beach.

“I think the Casa Romantica purchase is an outgrowth of an ongoing effort of the Pier Bowl upgrade,” Councilman Scott Diehl said. “It will be the capstone to the pier development.

A developer selected by city officials is designing a commercial project for the site that would include a hotel, restaurant and multilevel parking lot and would preserve the home. Those plans are expected to be unveiled sometime next month.

Longtime San Clemente resident Dorothy Fuller, 64, who lived in Casa Romantica for 14 summers after Hanson lost it during the Depression, said she would “love to see this place be the symbol of the American dream of free enterprise. It shows what a young man can do by following his dreams.”

Hanson single-handedly founded the city of San Clemente in 1928 as a “Spanish Village by the Sea,” characterized by Mediterranean-style white, stucco homes topped with red tile roofs dotting the rolling hills above the secluded beach. Its first-year population was 650.

Entering into a partnership with his longtime business associate, oil magnate Henry Hamilton Cotton, Hanson built 300 stucco houses between 1925 and 1929, many of which are still standing despite San Clemente’s post-World War II growth. Cotton’s 70-acre estate on the southernmost end of the city later served as the Western White House under former President Richard M. Nixon.

In a recent tour of Casa Romantica, the 11th of Hanson’s 13 children, Eugene (Bunny) Hanson, 74, recalled the elegant parties hosted by his parents, featuring screen stars Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Mary Astor and Richard Dix.

“They used the solarium for dancing,” he said. “It was the thing to do to have these parties. We were the entertainment capital then.”

Eugene Hanson, who remembered when the family moved into the house in 1926, spun tales of jilted lovers and of gangsters running bootleg liquor through town. He laughed at the memory of annoying famed violinist Jascha Heifetz, the neighbor, by starting a sputtering power lawn mower every time Heifetz began to practice.

Charlie Ashbaugh, a 17-year San Clemente resident who has studied the town founder’s life, said, “I never heard of Ole Hanson until I moved here, and now I feel like I know everything about him.”

Ashbaugh, who is president of the San Clemente Historical Society, and his supporters are lobbying city officials to include some museum space in the redevelopment project.

Ashbaugh has made it his personal mission for the last four years to find and collect furnishings that once were part of Casa Romantica, saving them in a self-storage unit.

The list includes the desk that graced Hanson’s octagon-shaped office, a huge Spanish mosaic taken from a patio wall and other pieces gleaned from the widows of Hanson’s sons.

Hanson, who once was a millionaire three times over, died penniless in 1940 at age 66, Fuller said. The Bank of America repossessed the home in 1932. Although Hanson built it for $170,000, it was purchased by Cotton’s chauffeur in the 1940s for $8,000. In 1960, George Welsh of San Clemente bought the house for $120,000. He sold it this year to the city.

For the last five years, Casa Romantica has been leased for $10,000 a year to Maureen Capielo, who stages weddings and corporate parties in the huge living and dining rooms.

“I’d love to put $10,000 or more into this place and fix some of the things wrong with it,” Capielo said, adding that she is also interested in buying the home if the redevelopment plans fail.