Put It in a House Museum?
Weddington House, originally uploaded by lavocado@sbcglobal.net.
This is Weddington House, in North Hollywood, in the San Fernando Valley. According to family lore, the house was first built in Storm Lake Iowa in the 1880's. When its owner, Wilson Weddington, decided to move his family someplace warmer, he had the house dismantled. moved and reassembled in the San Fernando Valley. That was in 1891, in a little farming community named Toluca, which was the parent of the valley neighborhoods of Toluca Lake, Toluca Woods and another Toluca whose name I have forgotten, and Lankershim, which is now called North Hollywood, or NoHo for short. The house was moved 150 feet to a new foundation in 1904 and then two blocks east in 1924. Weddington became the first postmaster of Toluca, and his house was used as the post office. Wilson Weddington's son Fred became the first deputy sheriff, and later became a land developer and opened a bank. The street where the house now stands is named Weddington Avenue, after Fred, no doubt. It's a disjointed little street that goes on both sides of the river (but doesn't cross it.)
The house will be moving again soon, but where it will go is under debate.
A developer has purchased the land on which it stands, and wants to build the kind of thing they've been building in NoHo.
It might have just been torn down if it hadn't been declared L.A. Historic Cultural Monument # 883 last year. Now the debate is whether to move it to Heritage Square 15 miles away in a very different neighborhood, or keep it somewhere in the valley. The valley dwellers want to keep it in the neighborhood. "...the valley has been systematically stripped of its heritage," said Gerald Fecht, president of the Museum of the San Fernando Valley. It's true that you don't see much of the valley's history in the valley, but I don't think the erasure has been "systematic."
Preservationists on both sides are concerned about vandalism, and rightly so. This is Weddington House in its current context.:
The only other remnant of the old neighborhood is this little converted studio on the other side of the street.
