Past Waits to Die : Good Intentions, Red Tape Pave Road to Demolition for Church, Parsonage

The street doesn’t look like a place of demise.

Driving south on Beach Boulevard between Utica and Adams, one sees a Burger King next to a Spires Restaurant. On one corner is Mother’s Market and Kitchen, a bustling New Age health-food store offering yoga classes, aroma therapy and macrobiotic cooking. And nearby, the well-known Newland House Museum--a gleaming white Victorian in mint 1898 condition--affords a glimpse of old Huntington Beach restored.

Hidden from the motorist’s view, across a parking lot in Bartlett Park, however, is a scene of another sort. Here, sitting on blocks behind a jagged barbed wire fence, two structures sagging beneath years of neglect await demolition in undignified repose.

Welcome to this city’s architectural death row, the place these historical buildings have come to die. Once they brought joy to the eyes and lives of local residents. Now sentence has been passed, all appeals have been heard, and their fates are a foregone conclusion.

“It’s inevitable,” Barbara Milkovich, archivist for the Huntington Beach Historical Society, said of the old buildings’ impending destruction. “It’s very much a tragedy.”

Said Michael Mudd, the city’s cultural services manager: “We’re losing a part of the past and everyone in the community feels some sadness.”

The two buildings--an 88-year-old parsonage and a 72-year-old church--have colorful histories replete with sermon and song. But the story of how they wound up sitting on blocks, condemned to demolition behind Mother’s Market, is a dimmer tale involving costly bureaucratic delays, economic woes, uncontrolled vandalism and good intentions hampered by the lack of a unified municipal vision regarding how to preserve the past.

The story began in 1905 when the oldest of the buildings, a 1,200-square-foot Colonial Revival-style home, was built at 511 11th Street in downtown Huntington Beach to serve as a two-bedroom rest home for retired Methodist deaconesses. In 1944 the house became the parsonage for a nearby Methodist church. And in the early 1960s, it was purchased by a man who lived there with his family until 1988 when, rather than see it demolished by developers, he donated the structure to the city for preservation as a historically significant building.

The church has a shorter but even livelier past. Completed in 1921 near (but unaffiliated with) the parsonage on 11th Street, the building for years was known as the 11th Street Church and later dubbed the “little blue church.” It was built by a group of Pentecostalists who had been holding revival meetings in a tent at the site for several years. In its early days, the classic 40-pew church--complete with a wooden cross and belfry--was attended largely by fundamentalist “Holy Rollers.” It later became affiliated with the Assembly of God and, then later, the Church of God until 1988 when the structure too was donated to the city in the hope that it would be saved.

At the time, according to Milkovich, there was serious talk of developing a “historic village” of restored buildings at the Newland House site. So about four years ago, she said, both structures were moved--at a combined expense of about $40,000--to their current site in Bartlett Park.

Then the haggling began.

The historic village idea soon got nixed when local history buffs rejected a developer’s proposal as too commercial. Other proposals--including one to use the church as a wedding chapel and another to convert the parsonage into a living history museum--proved too costly, city officials said. And all the while the structures’ fates were being discussed, vagrants and vandals began sneaking past the barbed wire fence, knocking holes in walls and generally wreaking havoc on the two little buildings.

“They were vandalized,” said Jim Engle, a deputy director in the city’s community services department. “We’ve had homeless people living in them, people have started fires, kids have been in there playing. It was finally determined that the houses were beyond the point of being restored.”

Recognizing that restoring the buildings had now become financially unfeasible, the Huntington Beach City Council last September authorized their demolition.

“The blame is squarely on the (city) and its lack of appreciation for historic resources,” Milkovich charges. While the buildings are not architecturally significant--a fact recognized by the city’s Historic Resources Board--they are part of the social fabric of Huntington Beach’s past and should have been preserved, she said.

“They were in excellent condition when they were moved and better care could have protected the city’s investment,” she said. “It was almost as if they were abandoned immediately; there was no commitment from the city, staff or council for a preservation effort.”

But the mayor blamed the city’s failure to save the buildings on a lack of finances, rather than a lack of commitment.

“We had great intentions,” said Mayor Grace Winchell, “but we didn’t have a clear plan. In the scheme of things, the city has to establish priorities, and our budget constraints have not allowed consideration of this type of restoration as much as our hearts might wish.”

Current plans call for a park and golf course to be developed at the site by a private company, Engle said. If approved by voters, he said, the plan will include the demolition of the old church and parsonage--which, at a cost of $15,000 per structure, is beyond the city’s means--to be carried out by the developer sometime late next year. In the meantime, he said, city staffers are planning a public meeting in the Newland barn this Wednesday to solicit ideas from residents regarding the future of the site.

Still, demolition can’t shake the fond memories longtime residents have of the buildings.

Albert Watkins, 75, recalls napping in the aisles of the old church as his Pentecostalist mother attended services there in the early 1920s. Once, he recalls, the congregation prayed for his diseased tonsils to be healed. And lo and behold, Watkins claims, the hand of God intervened: The tonsils miraculously disappeared without the benefit of a surgeon, he said.

Lilly Nelson, 73, met her future husband at the 11th Street Church when she was just 14. Later, as the congregation’s minister, her husband presided over what she describes as “beautiful Christmas programs,” weddings, funerals and picnics in the park.

And Frank Rohrig, 80, remembers a time when the little church served as a buzzing hub of spiritual activity for the residents of old Huntington Beach. “There was a little shouting there,” he said, “and lots of heartfelt singing and clapping of hands. They believed in the baptism of the Holy Spirit and there was usually somebody who spoke in tongues. It was a pretty lively church and whenever we had an evangelist there, we usually had people looking in the windows.”

The only people looking in the windows these days are kids who have sneaked past the no trespassing signs or vagrants searching for a place to stay. Among other things, they’ve punched holes in the walls, weakened the floors and burned the paint.

“It’s too bad that the city doesn’t have the revenue to fix (the buildings) up,” said Bonny Cleland, 47, who lives in an RV, which she often parks nearby.

She paused while continuing to gaze wistfully at the two old buildings, looking wobbly in the afternoon sun.

“It’s a shame,” she said finally, shaking her head. “Our heritage is important. I hate to see them just blown up or torn down.”