Cottage Survey Results in Corona del Mar
By Tom Heffernan
Dubbed ‘Happy House’, 2920 Ocean Boulevard was the first house in CdM, built in 1909. In 2004, as CdM celebrated its 100th Anniversary, it was torn down to build a new residence.
We officially founded the Corona del Mar Historical Society in January 2020 with the goal of discovering, celebrating, and preserving the history in our village in Newport Beach, which was once its own separate city when it was founded in 1904. Corona del Mar – which means Crown of the Sea – and popularly referred to as ‘CdM’ has been more recently said to stand for ‘Construction del Mar.’ As property values have skyrocketed over the past 30 years, it has become a popular target for developers. Our first goal was to identify, quantify, and prioritize the historical resources that we have remaining in our village. Nobody had answers to simple questions like ‘what is the oldest house in CdM’, ‘how many pre-1930 homes remain’, ‘how many original cottages are left’, so we sought to find answers to those questions along the way.
History of CdM
To understand the task, let me tell you a little about CdM’s history. Originally part of the Irvine Ranch, John Irvine II sold the 700 acres along the ocean bluff to real estate developer George E. Hart in 1904. Hart laid out the original tract for the city, which at that point was basically just the area that we now call the ‘Flower Streets’. The grid he laid out the for the city still basically holds today with some adjustments when Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) cut through the center of it in 1926 and additional communities were added around the periphery starting in the 1960s. Prior to PCH, CdM was relatively inaccessible and as a small independent city suffered from other challenges like a lack of reliable water service.
Hart would eventually sell off CdM after a decade with only a couple dozen houses having ever been built. The land would change hands several times over the next decade and did not really gain traction until the 1940s. The first home was built in 1909 and they would trickle in through the teens and 1920s. Annexation by Newport Beach in 1924 led to more reliable city services and with improved access from the construction of PCH, construction started to pick up but the Great Depression slowed it down again through the 1930s. In the 1940s, development took off and through the 1950s and 1960s the lots filled up with beach cottages.
Survey Scope
620 Orchid, built in 1952, exhibits the charm and character of the original cottages.
The eclectic cottages which dot the Flower Streets giving the village its charm, have been our most rapidly declining resource so we put extra emphasis on them while identifying all pre-1960 homes remaining in the original approximate 2,200 lot tract. The charming little cottages which once likely numbered around 1,600 have been a frequent target of developers as the value of a regular 30 x 120 lot is now over $2 million. Regardless of its condition, it can be very profitable to buy and bulldoze a cottage to build lot line-filling front and back houses on the 3,600 sq ft lots which are all zoned R2. In the process of identifying all pre-1960 residences, we set a goal of understanding how many cottages are left, which ones are our best and most important examples by creating a Top 100 List, and tracking the rate at which we are losing them.
CdM’s oldest surviving home, 214 Dahlia, was built – or possibly moved from a field in Irvine, depending on the story you believe – in 1910. This original photo is from 1910 along with a current photo. The cottage remains very much the same – except for the observation deck that was added in the 1970s and provides ocean and bay views.
With a relatively manageable area that we were covering we used Google Maps and Streetview to create a spreadsheet with all of the existing structures and their addresses, online real estate listing data provided the build date for each, and then we walked up and down each street to confirm the data, get photos, and add personal observations. We came up with 665 pre-1960 homes out of a total of 2,050 homes. (Note: front and back houses were counted as just one home.) We also learned that our oldest surviving home is 214 Dahlia, which was built in 1910, and there are a total of 25 pre-1930 homes remaining.
Cottages vs Other Residences
From those 665 homes, we then focused in on the cottages. Longtime CdM resident and noted Southern California architect Ron Yeo went through those 665 and made a determination of which could be considered as cottages. With a very loose and inclusive definition, we had 540 pre-1960 cottages remaining which meant that just over 25% of the homes in CdM are original cottages. In 1960, that number was probably closer to 90%, with some larger homes along Ocean Boulevard and Poppy being the primary exceptions. If we accept the estimate of 1,600 being the original number of cottages that were built, then only 1/3 of them remain today.
500 Acacia, a surviving original cottage, was built in 1934 and is one of the 40 oldest homes remaining in CdM.
The Top 100
With a goal of identifying the best examples of the cottages, we had a small panel led by Ron that narrowed the 540 cottages down to 250 that would be considered for Top 100 status and further research into their histories. We put together a diverse panel of 12 judges to review the 250 cottages and rank them. The panel was designed to represent the village – we had several longtime residents (over 50+ years) but also included some younger people that may offer a different viewpoint. In the end our panel included a former mayor, a city planning commissioner, the 2020 citizen of the year, the director of the Sherman Library, a longtime real estate professional that had sold many of the cottages, an owner of one of the most significant historic homes (not a cottage) in CdM, several members of the CdMRA Historic Committee, and about an equal mix of men and women that represented ages 32-88. The one thing all judges had in common was a love of CdM and the cottages.
Averaging out the judges’ scores, we now have our Top 100 and have begun by researching 10 of them at a time. The plan is to have as complete a story of each home – old photos, ownership history, stories from former owners, and any significant events and then actually rank the homes from 1 to 100. The goal being to create pride among the owners – and the community – in each of these cottages and tell them about the history so they will appreciate the value of the cottage and share its history with their friends and neighbors as they go on their nightly strolls.
Preservation is Urgent
Two thirds of CdM’s original cottages have been demolished by developers to make room for lot-line filling condos. Pictured is 514 Acacia, built in 1942, which was torn down in March 2021.
One of the benefits of surveying our current landscape is that we can now track it going forward and see the rate at which we are losing the cottages so that we can help make our community aware of the extent of the problem. Since we did the first survey in March/April of 2020, we have started updating the results. Initial estimates suggest that we lost about 20-25 cottages this past year bringing the number down around 520 and all but guaranteed to fall below 500 in 2021. The covid situation slowed down the teardowns this year as construction loans and permit approvals were slowed down or restricted for a good portion of the year so I expect that this past year’s losses are much lower than the previous or following years. The cottages will likely take a big hit in 2021 as housing demand has given even more incentive for developers to buy up anything on the market and tear it down. We will continue to track these results, share them with the community, and use them as evidence in pushing for programs like the Mills Act that would encourage and reward their preservation.
Research Help Needed
To learn more about Corona del Mar and our efforts to discover, celebrate, and preserve its history, please visit us online at cdmhistorical.org and check out the Blog or follow us on Instagram (@cdmhistorical). To see more photos of the homes of CdM – both current and historical – visit the great photo collection that the Sherman Library has compiled online at images.thesherman.org. If you would like to adopt a Top 100 Cottage to research or help in any capacity, please contact me at tom@cdmhistorical.org.
The original tract map for CdM as surveyed by S.H. Finley for developer George E. Hart who purchased the 700 acres from James Irvine II in 1904. Courtesy of Sherman Library & Gardens.
Tom Heffernan
Tom Heffernan lives in a 1930s cottage that he is restoring in the Flower Streets of Corona del Mar. He founded the Corona del Mar Historical Society and previously served on the board of the Orange Community Historical Society. When not researching old cottages or painting his own, he runs the North America Marketing for TCL, a fast-growing consumer electronics company.