City Gets Into the Home Trade : Preservation: Council accepts a 1912 Craftsman house from Claremont’s Harvey Mudd College. In 1979, Claremont’s Pomona College saved Pomona’s Seaver House.

A California Craftsman house built in Claremont in 1912 has been saved from possible demolition by officials in neighboring Pomona.

“Claremont couldn’t save it, so Pomona’s going to save it for them,” Mayor Donna Smith said this week as the City Council voted unanimously to accept the house from Harvey Mudd College, refurbish it and find a buyer.

Larry Hartwick, the college’s director of facilities planning, said the house stands in the way of the new $8-million F. W. Olin Science Center, which will house the biology, mathematics and computer science programs. The project is scheduled for completion in December on a 2.5-acre site that includes the lot on Foothill Boulevard where the house has been for 80 years.

About two years ago, Hartwick said, the college began trying to find somebody willing to take the 2,500-square-foot house. A deal was set to move the house to north Claremont, but the prospective owner changed his mind a month ago. College officials and Claremont Heritage then began seeking an alternative.

M. Margo Wheeler, Pomona’s community development director, said the Craftsman house will be moved to a location near Pomona City Hall within a week. The agreement calls for the college to pay the $15,000 moving expense.

Ginger Elliott, executive director of Claremont Heritage, said the three-bedroom house is “a beautiful example of a Craftsman-style bungalow.”

It is roomier than most bungalows, she said, and has a number of distinctive features, including ornamentation around the windows that reflects an Oriental influence.

Elliott said efforts to keep the house in Claremont were unsuccessful because owners of the few vacant lots in the older section of town were not interested and potential owners of sizable lots in the newer north Claremont area want larger homes.

Robert Herman, president of Claremont Heritage, said the most important thing is to save the house, even if it must be moved elsewhere.

“Any result other than demolition would be a good thing,” he said.

The house, built by a citrus grower, has been owned by one or another of the Claremont Colleges for rental to faculty members since 1926, Hartwick said.

The council’s action this week was the reverse of what happened in 1979. Then, Pomona’s finest turn-of-the-century home, the Seaver House on Holt Avenue, was about to be demolished to make way for an El Pollo Loco outlet. It was saved by moving it to the Pomona College campus in Claremont.

Wheeler said there are several state and federal programs available to assist potential buyers in financing the mortgage and the costs for rehabilitation, which have yet to be determined. The community development director said she has no doubt that a buyer will be found.

“It’s a pretty special house,” she said.