LANDMARKS / COUNTY HISTORICAL SITES : Senator’s Home Now an Officers’ Club
* HISTORY: The Bard Mansion was the home of U.S. Sen. Thomas Bard and his family. Built in 1912 on the site of an earlier Bard home, the mansion was part of the family’s 62-acre estate known as Berylwood. The home and its grounds were leased by the Navy during World War II and acquired by the government in 1951. It became a Ventura County historical land
mark in 1976 and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.
* LOCATION: Naval Construction Battalion Center, Port Hueneme.
* HOURS: Because the mansion and its grounds are located on the Seabee base, it is not open to the public.
With its high windows, graceful columns and red-tile roof, the Bard Mansion might have played well in a Southern California version of “Gone With the Wind.”
But the Yankees have already arrived in force. Once the home of U.S. Sen. Thomas Bard and his family, the mansion now houses the officers’ club of the Naval Construction Battalion Center at Port Hueneme.
In the tradition of the Seabees, trained to build as well as fight, the house has been remodeled. A kitchen has been added and bedrooms have been consolidated to create large halls for base social functions. The perimeter of the house has been pushed outward, so some columns that once framed exterior decks and verandas are now inside the structure. The house also underwent an extensive modification in the early 1980s to make it earthquake safe.
The land was part of the Rancho El Rio de Santa Clara land grant, and Bard settled there in the early 1870s when he helped develop the nearby deep-water port facilities at Port Hueneme. When he and his wife, Mollie, returned in 1876 from a European honeymoon, they moved into a new single-story house that is reputed to have been the first in the area with interior plumbing. The house was later enlarged for their growing family. In 1911, the original house was razed to make way for the present mansion.
The estate, known as Berylwood, had grounds lavishly landscaped with trees and plants that Thomas Bard collected from around the world. The 17,400-square-foot house featured a ground floor devoted to office, eating and kitchen space and a second floor with large, airy bedrooms. Servants’ quarters were in the attic.
Bard, who served as U.S. senator from California from 1900 to 1905, died in 1915--about three years after the house was completed. His wife continued to use the mansion until 1937. It was vacant until occupied by the Navy in 1944. Mindful of tradition, the Navy has made an effort to preserve the legacy of the Bard family, including photographs and descriptions of the rooms as they were used by the Bards.
