SOUTH GATE : Seaborg House Is Site of Landmark Debate

Looking at a row of bungalows on San Antonio Avenue, it is difficult to imagine that one of them is a historic monument. But the tiny white home with green trim at 9237 San Antonio Ave. is where Nobel laureate Glenn T. Seaborg, who discovered plutonium in 1940 at age 28, spent much of his childhood.

Now, the little house is growing into a big controversy over whether the city should save the 700-square-foot structure as a landmark. The historical significance of the home, currently occupied by a caretaker, has run up against South Gate’s increasing need for low-income housing.

“I would just like to see the house I was raised in kept,” said Seaborg, now 82 and a resident of the Northern California town of Lafayette. “Who likes to see their house . . . demolished? I suppose there is a little bit of ego in (fighting to save) it.”

The city last week commissioned an analysis to figure out how much it would cost to move and refurbish the house. The outcome of that, city officials say, may help decide whether the house will be saved.

“We want to go the least expensive route,” said Mayor Albert Robles, who supports preserving the house. “I don’t want to put the city in the position of demolishing the house.”

Seaborg is probably the most famous native of South Gate. He won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1951 and served on the Atomic Energy Commission, the forerunner of the Department of Energy. He was also chancellor of UC Berkeley, where he still works as a professor.

Seaborg, who moved out of South Gate around 1930, sold the spacious lot to the city in 1991 for $175,000 and donated the house with the agreement that it would be preserved. But today the house, in need of a paint job, is looking less and less like a museum.

The man who has taken up the fight to save the Seaborg house is Sam Echols, a 70-year-old who also volunteers as president of the city’s one-room museum.

“This is a great man,” Echols said of Seaborg. “He has met (Nikita) Khrushchev. He has met kings and premiers and, you know, he is from our little town here.”

Echols has collected boxes of Seaborg’s letters, research, and copies of Time and Business Week from 1961 and 1964 that have Seaborg’s picture on the cover. There are more boxes of Seaborg memorabilia in the City Hall basement.

“It is quite a sight to see,” Echols said. “I have a soft spot for stuff like this.”

Earlier this year, after a passionate debate, the City Council voted 3 to 2 to move the house to make way for affordable housing. The city staff began drawing up plans for the project, which in addition to moving the house to a parking lot near City Hall would also include sprucing it up and retrofitting it to meet earthquake safety standards.

“We can move it to another location, but, like most cities, there is no money to do that,” said Ruben Lopez, deputy director for redevelopment. “In terms of architecture, (the house) is not a historical landmark aside from the fact that it is where Dr. Seaborg grew up.”

Lopez said that, because the funds are not on hand, the city may have to scrape for private funding from historic preservation foundations dedicated to saving such landmarks.