Undergoing a Conversion

The city’s oldest Protestant church could soon become a bed-and-breakfast inn, a plan that could boost downtown revitalization and satisfy even stalwart preservationists.

The 110-year-old building, whose previous lives include 70 years as St. John’s Methodist Episcopal Church and two decades as a wedding chapel, will become the Victorian Rose Bed and Breakfast this summer.

Even though historians bemoan the loss of the church, they are glad the structure will no longer sit vacant, as it has since the wedding chapel went out of business a few years ago.

“I’m just happy the building is going to be used,” said Don Shorts, a member of the nonprofit San Buenaventura Historic Preservation Committee. “I don’t like to see historic sites sit vacant.”

Once the building was converted from its original use as a church, it could not be switched back, said new owner Richard Bogatch, who bought the building in 1996 with his wife, Nona. That’s because the city imposed new requirements for parking that went into effect after the church closed.

The structure, at the corner of Main and Kalorama streets, is the oldest Protestant church still standing in Ventura, said city historian Richard Senate. Senate himself was married in the building in 1985 when it was a wedding chapel.

Built in 1888 as St. John’s Methodist Episcopal Church, its last worship services were held in 1959. After that date, several Protestant congregations used it on an interim basis. More recently, some 300 weddings a year were performed during the building’s second incarnation as a wedding chapel.

Its status as a city landmark will not be affected by the remodeling because the Bogatches are remodeling only the interior of the building, which is on the outskirts of Ventura’s downtown-revitalization area.

The structure is a pastiche of carpenter Gothic, Victorian and Norwegian steeple architecture.

“Its 96-foot Norwegian steeple has three different shingle styles,” Richard Bogatch said last week as he and two workmen dug new water lines outside the church’s base. “The stained glass in the windows came from Germany.”

The building’s designer, Venturan Selwyn Shaw, also designed and built such well-known Ventura landmarks as Bard Hospital and the Dudley House at the turn of the century, according to the Ventura County Historical Society.

In its newest incarnation, the church’s sanctuary will become the inn’s common room, and the choir loft with its arched stained-glass window is being converted into a guest suite.

“We’re trying to keep it original, when possible,” said Bogatch, an Oxnard building contractor. “We’re painting the outside the colors of Victorian churches in the 1800s. They were more earthy tones, with a splash of color around the steeple.”

Bogatch added that the surrounding neighbors “seem to love” the renovation project. “They like that we’re giving it TLC,” he said.

One of those neighbors is Ventura Councilman Sandy Smith, whose Rosarito Beach Cafe sits two blocks away on Main Street.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Smith said of the plans for a B & B. “It’s going to help us all in the long run.”

The Bogatches expect to open the five-bedroom Victorian Rose Bed and Breakfast in June and plan to live in the inn’s basement after renovation is complete.