July 23, 2004

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Publication Date: Friday, July 23, 2004

Two more "turn of the Century" houses for downtown

Two early 20th Century houses being built or renovated - one on First Street and the other on Peters Avenue - will add to the turn-of-the-century ambiance of Pleasanton's downtown district.

Realtor Emil Oxsen and his wife Marge, a paralegal at Calpine Corp., found their home on page 82 of a 1923 Sears, Roebuck catalogue. Called the Kilbourne and identified as "Modern Home No. 7013," the Craftsman bungalow could be shipped by rail already cut and fitted for $2,785.

The other house, at 4568 First St., is a 1910 home that is being remodeled by its owner and general contractor Guilherme Pfeiffer, who has listed it for sale at $1,050,000. The two-story home is currently jacked up about 10 feet to allow construction crews to install a new raised foundation.

"This is also a kind of Craftsman style house similar to others along First Street," said Realtor Rosie Yandell of Prudential California Realty, who is handling the sale. "The Pfeiffers have lived there for about two years and are making a number of renovations to upgrade the home and bring it into conformance with current building code standards. It should be ready for occupancy by its new owners in October."

City Planning Director Brian Swift grew up in the house next door, living there from 1950 to 1976. He said similar homes along First Street were built starting in 1900. When the city sewer line was installed in 1906, those standing added bathrooms in the back to connect to the new sewer. Newer homes like the Pfeiffers' and the one he lived in had conventional indoor bathrooms, a feature that shows they were built after 1906.

If this was 1923, the Oxsens would have wired their order and down payment by Western Union to Sears' Chicago office. The company would then have packaged its Kilbourne model bungalow, complete with a kitchen cabinet, flooring, roofing shingles and nails and even a porch rail by train to Pleasanton. Once here, a builder would have picked up the house at the depot, built a small foundation, and put it together much like an IKEA pre-assembled bookcase, ready for occupancy within a few weeks.

Of course, Sears doesn't make or sell houses any longer, so the Oxsens took its catalogue design to an architect and built a replica from scratch. The house, whose exterior is completed, looks almost exactly like the Sears catalogue photo, but without the porch rocking chair and hanging planters. Those will come later after the Oxsens move into their new home in October with their Pomeranian dog Holly.

Although the outside looks much like the 1923 Kilbourne bungalow, the inside has all of the 21st Century amenities, including genuine cherry wood cabinets and flooring, a large walk-in glass shower, and cable for television. Special wood designs and treatment on interior posts and ceilings add to the historic charm with large living and dining rooms to accommodate guests.

"We're not big entertainers, but we already have a list of 25 friends who hope to be invited over for dinner when we get this done," Emil Oxsen said.

The house address is 370 Peters Ave., which is not yet on any city or post office register. That's because the lot Oxsen bought is actually the rear yard of a home facing Saint John Street. Under new city guidelines that encourage "granny" homes for parents and children on large downtown properties, Oxsen was able to build the Kilbourne on the site, keeping the square footage to the 1,200 foot maximum.

"We started looking at traditional Sears Craftsman designs," Oxsen said. "But those were pretty plain and we wanted something with more 'gingerbread' like the bungalows Sears also was offering."

A walk through the still-uncompleted interior, with its unique and colorful floor and ceiling designs and built in, compartmentalized shirt and sweater drawers in the large master bedroom, showed that there's lots of "gingerbread."