VENTURA : Funding Is Key to Home’s Restoration

The winding wooden stairs lead to a dusty attic that is empty, except in Johanna Dudley Overby’s eyes.

When the 71-year-old Ventura native climbs to the third story of this 19th-Century Victorian farmhouse she remembers the gowns of Southern belles, boxes of costumes and old dolls from her childhood.

“This is the best room . . . where we played our best games,” Overby said. “There was trunk after trunk after trunk to explore.”

By next year, if a group of Ventura residents can finish raising money, Overby’s attic and other rooms in the historic Dudley House will be filled with marble-top furniture and antiques, organizer Sheri Oelschlager said.

The Dudley House, with its wraparound porch and double-door entrance, stands at Loma Vista Road and Ashwood Avenue in Ventura and housed five generations of farmers. For 86 years, the Dudleys farmed walnuts, and later lima beans, on 40 acres until 1978, when commercial growth reduced their property to nine acres.

“We couldn’t afford to stay,” said Overby, granddaughter of the house’s designer and owner.

Since then, the city and about 15 volunteers have been raising money to restore the house for tours.

A state grant helped paint the exterior, wire the house for electricity and repair the staircase, but the inside walls need to be plastered before organizers can begin decorating, Oelschlager said.

The group, San Buenaventura Heritage Inc., needs an additional $150,000 to complete the project, including landscaping the yard as it used to be. Several lemon trees that surround the house will remain, Oelschlager said.

“I remember mainly being outdoors, because we had so many trees to climb,” Overby said.

The group attends street fairs and sells rag dolls and pins to help raise money to restore the landmark, Oelschlager said, but most comes from donations.

Calendars with old black-and-white photographs of the city will also be available in stores this week to help raise at least $2,500, she said. Donors can also sponsor rooms or projects.

“We would have liked to have had it done already,” Oelschlager said. “I just want to see it keep going.”