‘Disneyland South’ Lures the Romantic, the Gawking : Architecture: Splashes of whimsy amid antiques ornament a re-created 19th-Century home in Carlsbad.
One’s abiding passions in life do bring moments of curious disadvantage, which is a suitably empurpled Victorian way of expressing just what Patricia Watkins feels sometimes.
She feels that way when she peers from the widow’s watch of her lavishly re-created 19th-Century home on the coast of Carlsbad and observes how passers-by act when they come upon the home and spy its tall cupola, witch’s hat and virtual dessert tray of gingerbread ornamentation.
Once, Watkins recalled, “these people pulled up and took a tablecloth out. They had champagne, a bucket, a flower vase and a little ghetto blaster. They danced, they kissed. They set up a tripod and a camera and took pictures of themselves.
“It was so bizarre.”
Life can be like that when your home is dubbed “Disneyland South” by neighbors.
Gawkers, shutter-snappers and occasional folks who simply knock on the door for a well-meaning inquiry are the price Watkins, her husband, William, and their six children are willing to pay for owning one of the most unusual and most prominent residences on Southern California’s coast.
Lyn Pinney of the Carlsbad Convention and Visitors Bureau said, “It’s pretty outstanding. If you drive up the coast, you don’t find many homes like it. In fact, I can’t think of any.”
But only three years after the couple finished building their dream house, business demands are requiring them to spend more time in Las Vegas, where they lived before. So they put their Carlsbad Victorian on the market four months ago. The asking price is $3 million, which includes the antique furniture, or $2.5 million if sold nude.
So far, according to the Watkinses’ real estate agent, 225 parties have expressed interest in the 3-story, 14-room blue-gray residence with burgundy and plum trim that was hand-milled from redwood. But most potential buyers want to convert the house into a bed-and-breakfast for tourists, and they disappear upon learning the city won’t allow it.
The couple is taking the sorrow out of selling their house by planning to erect an almost exact duplicate in Las Vegas, where 19th-Century architecture is about as natural as fully clothed showgirls.
But for the Watkinses, their long-held affinity for a style popular during the long reign of England’s Queen Victoria--a style most later generations regarded as silly and dandified--goes wherever they go.
William Watkins is a well-known Carlsbad-area developer, and Patricia is a former art teacher who specialized in portraits. They married 10 years ago, creating a perfect union for collect-aholics who decided to design and furnish a Victorian retirement home with a sea view.
First, she recounted, the couple set about searching for the house that would be right for them--to copy.
“We took an extensive tour of Victorian homes in Northern California” that included stops in Ferndale, Eureka and Arcata in redwood country, she said. They also scrutinized San Francisco’s “painted ladies,” but decided the architecture “was more pure in Ferndale because it’s more rural” and thus hadn’t been modified over the years. They blended the designs of several homes they had seen when they began building theirs.
They began two years of building in 1984. Neighbors in Terramar, a 1950s-era residential enclave just south of the Encinas power plant, watched the construction with considerable amusement.
“People were calling it ‘Disneyland South,’ ” recalled Bailey Noble, president of the local homeowners’ association.
When the house was done, raised to its full 35-foot height, perhaps the most impressed observer was the city’s building inspection department.
“It’s all 2-by-6 lumber studding. It’s way overbuilt; you wouldn’t believe it,” said Tony Mata, chief building inspector. “I had to take my whole department down there to see it. They were amazed.”
Although somewhat crowded on a 69-by-105-foot lot, not unlike an original Victorian fit, the Watkinses’ abode has a feeling of spaciousness and warmth inside. Actual 19th-Century homes had cold, tiny rooms with high ceilings, but modern-day building codes and a desire for comfort caused the family to erect bigger rooms, each crowded with antique furniture, lamps, stained-glass windows, art and curios.
But amid all the antiquity--the 1870 parlor stove and the authentic Tiffany window and much more--are splashes of pure whimsy.
In the second-story office sit two late-1800s barber chairs at the windows overlooking the ocean. William and Patricia sit there and gaze. But her chair also has a more practical use.
“I sit here and blow my hair dry and watch the people go by,” she said.
People with modern taste usually regard Victoriana as gaudy and foppish.
“It’s all of those things,” said Patricia Watkins. But “you look at something like a piece of furniture, and you think, look what’s happened over the last 100 years, and this is still here. . . .”
