Renovated Titan House soon will be home to Cal State Fullerton’s athletics director.

Titan House, above, stands incongruously at the edge of Cal State Fullerton’s playing fields, a boxy brick farm house seemingly ill fitted for its use as offices for campus athletic programs.

The university is spending more to renovate and reinforce it against earthquakes than it would have cost to clear the land and build new offices.

Why do it? Respect for your elders. The house has been there since 1886 and is one of the last remnants of the land’s history.

In 1872, Henry T. Hetebrink, then only 18 and an immigrant from Germany, bought 160 acres near Fullerton for $10 an acre. There he established the area’s first significant dairy farm and pioneered cultivation of English walnuts.

In 1880, a shepherd’s fire got out of hand and was spread by a Santa Ana wind across a large area of Fullerton. All of Hetebrink’s livestock were killed.

He turned to growing oranges and eventually built the farmhouse shown at right (with part of the picture frame showing). Today it is the third oldest house in Fullerton and the only brick house left from the city’s early years.

Empty for about two years, the house is about to reopen as offices for the athletics director and his marketing and ticketing staff.

Jay Bond, the campus’ vice president for facilities, said the university has tried to restore the house’s exterior as closely as possible to its original look. The Hetebrinks, however, would not recognize the new interior. It is now an office building.

“We preserved some of the historical features on the inside--a fireplace, for example,” Bond said.

“But we’re housing people who have to work in it, not live in it.”

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