There was new appreciation for old construction Tuesday when fledgling architectural preservationists got a close-up look at one of Pasadena's most venerable landmarks.
Veteran restoration experts revealed to building design students the painstaking steps they took to maintain the integrity of the 100-year-old Gamble House during a recent cellar-to-rooftop renovation.
"We know that 50 years from now there will be new methods of doing things and better products to use," architect Kelly Sutherlin McLeod told students from USC's School of Architecture. "But at least you'll know what we did here."
McLeod was the project architect for the 10-month, $3.5-million restoration of the Gamble House, which was completed in 2004.
Workers repaired rotting beams, window sills and walls, plugged a stubborn, leaky roof drain system and restored the redwood-shingle siding to its 1908 luster.
Craftsmen involved in the preservation effort did it without creating any new nail holes or installing any modern fixtures or fittings, students were told.
McLeod, 47, of Long Beach, is intimately familiar with the historic American Arts-and-Crafts-style house, designed by architects Charles and Henry Greene. She lived there for two years in the late 1970s as a USC scholar in residence. Since 1966, USC has operated the Gamble House in partnership with the city of Pasadena. The 8,000-square-foot structure was deeded to the city by Gamble family members who had planned to sell it -- but changed their minds when the prospective buyer talked of painting the interior's teak and mahogany walls white.
Several USC architecture students are picked each year to live at the house and help run it. Like many of them, McLeod said she noticed something other than the building's architecture during her stay.
"There's a presence in the house. The consensus is it's Aunt Julia. She died in the house. And she lived here longer than anyone else," she said of Julia Huggins, sister of homeowner Mary Gamble.
But it is the structure's attention to detail and craftsmanship that is the real presence in the Gamble House, McLeod said.
"I knew the house was phenomenal, but I didn't know all the reasons why until I moved in," she said. "Living here, I was able to use the house like it was meant to be -- as a residence. I even used the kitchen when there were tours taking place."
The kitchen is where McLeod discovered the Greene brothers' unfailing attention to detail.
