If you build a house in Orange County today, come armed with a big pile of cash, a real estate broker, an architect, a contractor, and maybe an interior designer and a landscaper. At least. Don't forget to visit the local planning department to determine if your land is in an assessment district or if there are easement restrictions, and prepare for city building inspectors and a half dozen other official rights of passage before move in day.
When the Japanese Mission Building Committee built the residence for the Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Mission in 1910, they sketched out a design (above) and prepared a reasonable two-page, handwritten contractual agreement and two-page handwritten building description for the builder. The builder, J. Hori, would receive a total of $425.00. No extras, no change orders.
The building description specifies four rooms and a front porch of redwood construction, five windows, "good quality" doors, and that the front two rooms be "covered with a lining of cloth and well tacked when stretched tight and covered with paper." The residence colors would be selected by the Building Committee, which specified "two coats of mixed paint." The Committee concluded the building description by advising J. Hori to perform all work "in a Good Work Man Like Manner."
J. Hori fulfilled his contractual obligations. More than one hundred years later, the residence still stands.
All rights reserved. No part of the Historic Wintersburg blog may be reproduced or duplicated without prior written permission from the author and publisher, M. Adams Urashima.
All rights reserved. No part of the Historic Wintersburg blog may be reproduced or duplicated without prior written permission from the author and publisher, M. Adams Urashima.
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The Historic Wintersburg blog focuses on an overlooked history in Huntington Beach, Orange County, California, in the interest of saving a historic property from demolition. The author and publisher reserves the right not to publish comments. Please no promotional or political commentary. Zero tolerance for hate rhetoric. Comments with embedded commercial / advertising links or promoting other projects, books, or publications may not be published. If you have an interesting anecdote, question or comment about one of our features, it will be published.