ABC TV?s ?Extreme Home Makeover? has nothing over the massive transformation taking place at 1015 McDonald Ave. in Santa Rosa.
But while TV re-do?s for entertainment and advertising can materialize in a weekend, the McDonald Mansion makeover has been the opposite ? a slow and meticulous renovation spread out over several years, with each detail carefully weighed and executed for quality, appearance and authenticity.
Some 17 months after work got under way, the home?s interior is still an empty shell. And yet by summer, Santa Rosa?s most famous address will look to passersby on McDonald Avenue more or less finished from the outside, its exterior restored and repainted to look much as it did when it was built circa 1878-79.
Developer Mark L. McDonald and his wife, Ralphine, commissioned the house as a summer ?cottage? and model home to attract interest in their then up-and-coming 160-acre McDonald subdivision.
Starting in 2006, Oakland architect Stephen Rynerson and architectural and design historian Paul Duchscherer first spent several months researching the landmark. They pored over documents, photographs, drawings, books and newspapers to piece together an accurate portrait of what it probably looked like when new.
No actual photographs of the mansion have yet surfaced from the 1870s. But a circa 1882 lithograph, Rynerson said, gives a good artist?s rendering. A 1910 Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce brochure featuring the mansion on its cover helped designers ?connect the dots? and trace the evolution of the 14,000-square-foot home, dubbed ?Mableton? by the McDonalds.
The home is striking, not just because of its grandiosity but because of its style. Unlike the more common upright Victorians commonly seen in the San Francisco area, Mableton was designed like a single story Mississippi River plantation ? set high off the ground with a more horizontal footprint, characterized by a wrap-around covered verandah on three sides.
Rynerson said the 10-foot-wide porch is spacious enough to accommodate furnishings and 50 guests without feeling crowded. The fancy fan-shaped railing is being restored and skylights ? added much later ? have been removed from the verandah and replaced with a more authentic solid redwood roof.
The mansion was originally constructed as a single-story home, with massive, 16-foot ceilings in the interior ? the equivalent of a second story in height.
At one point, the McDonalds built a narrow staircase and finished off the attic into a second-floor bedroom area with dormers. Rynerson said it was decided to take the house back to the period after the dormers were added to make it more functional for new owners John and Jennifer Webley, who have four children.
Telecom pioneer John Webley bought the mansion in 2005 for $3.6 million, a record price at the time for residential property in Santa Rosa. While the Webleys will live in the historic home, they feel a responsibility not just to preserve the house but to share it. Last summer the grounds were the site for a costumed fund-raiser for the Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery. They hope to make the home available to other events so the public can enjoy the stately landmark.
But even if one never gets to walk the grounds, the mansion can be admired from the street.
For Bob Dailey, John Cake and Martin Nelson of Masterstouch Construction in Santa Rosa, which is overseeing the restoration, the project is the job of a lifetime.
?This is the matron of all the homes in Santa Rosa. There aren?t too many of these, so we?ve been enjoying it,? Nelson said. ?Whenever we look outside there?s somebody out at that front gate looking in and reading the sign.?
While the changes being made to the exterior aren?t dramatically different, they are significant. The structure has been retrofitted and reinforced with structural steel. A solid, 3 1/2-foot-high wall and skylights at the top of the house were removed and the old cresting ? the perforated ornamentation popularly called ?gingerbread? or ?drapery? ? has been restored to its distinctive two-tiers of pyramidal decoration, like a wedding cake.
What makes the house such a stand-out is the extravagant flat sawn and cut-out wood ornamentation characteristic of the Stick and Eastlake styles in vogue during the late 19th century. The application of California redwood ornament to a Southern building form, however, makes it a unique hybrid, architects say.
Much of this wooden geometric gingerbread has been preserved, but where it was missing, uniform replacement panels were commissioned.
Martin said only about 20 percent of the fancy drapery dressing up the exterior, 10 percent of the wooden brackets on the posts and a third of the original redwood siding had to be replaced.
The bottom floor has unique, Southern-style tall windows with shutters that open all the way to the floor, like doors ? the original indoor-outdoor California lifestyle, imported from the deep South. Most have been removed and numbered and preserved, awaiting re-installation, along with the original massive glass front door.
Initially, the home was much grander from the outside than within.
?We think McDonald himself was one of those larger-than-life characters. He was a protege of the Crockers and Stanfords,? Rynerson said, ?another one of those late 19th-century characters who made a fortune in mining and bought a seat on the Pacific Stock Exchange. At one point he decided essentially to take his fortune and go into development in Santa Rosa and he developed the first water system and street-car line and the McDonald Tract. In so many ways we think the house itself was a big model home, which is why it was big and impressive from the outside and not that impressive inside.?
Although there are no photographs or documents to confirm what color the house was, designers settled on gradations of green with deep red trim, based on some hints from old woodwork and popular colors of the time.
By summer, crews will tackle the interior of the house, a phase that should take another year. By next summer the landscape structures, a cobblestone drive, a grand fountain and new pedestrian entrance will be added.
The Webleys hope to celebrate Christmas of 2010 in their new old home.
You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 521-5204 or meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com.
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