Category: Arts & Architecture

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What’s Happening to The Hetebrink House?

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This magnificent structure is like no other house in Fullerton.

About 23 years ago, the Chancellor of FJC told me that the NOCCCD was interested in acquiring the magnificent Mission Revival Hetebrink House because the JC needed more parking and the property would make a great parking lot. Little did he know that I was the founder of Fullerton Heritage.  I was however, unable to convince him that the house was a significant structure and should not be torn down (especially with our tax dollars) for a parking lot.

The following week I introduced myself to the old-timer who lived on the property and who had been living there since he was 14 years old! His dad had built the house out of concrete bricks that were made on site. Oh, the stories John “Pete” Hetebrink told me about growing up in Fullerton were just amazing, I just wish I owned a video camera in those days.

Over the next several years Pete and I continued meeting and then one day I asked if he would like the house to be registered on the National Register of Historic Places to help save the house from the wrecking ball after he was gone. Heck, he was in his late 90’s at the time. He told me that decision would require both his sisters Hyacinth and Dorthy’s consent. So we arranged for a meeting at which time I had prepared an application for the National Register of Historic Buildings and Places. They were very exited that the house their dad had built and the house that they all grew up in was going to become a landmark. So we had a “signing party” and the rest is history.

Pete has since died, and the house has been passed on to other family members.

A friend of mine called me this morning and asked if I knew what was happening to the Hetebrink house, so I drove over there and this is what I saw.

This old house is falling apart

The property had some serious structural problems twenty years ago that were  unaddressed because the Hetebrinks didn’t have the resources to make the repairs. Things have only gotten worse as indicated by the deteriorated balcony at the second floor loggia.

Hopefully the heirs of Pete Hetebrink can start addressing the deterioration of this great house.

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The Making of An Eyesore; And a Hell of a Climb, Too

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49 steps up and 49 steps down

A little less than 20 years ago, some friends and I stood in front of the Fullerton City Council pleading with the Redevelopment Agency to build a pedestrian underpass at the train station instead of a steel bridge overpass. We had three reasons. The first was expense: an underpass was about half the cost of a bridge. Second was the matter of practicality and convenience: it is easier for a pedestrian to climb 24 steps versus 49; not to mention the cost of maintaining two elevators. Third, the bridge was going to tower over the Historic Santa Fe Depot – a real incongruous pairing and one in which the Depot suffered.

When the question was asked to the city staff during the public hearing about the possibilities of an underpass the Fullerton Redevelopment Manager Terry Galvin answered that an underpass would be too dangerous and could end up smelling like urine and besides, “nobody builds underpasses.” He even dug up an incident (and only one!) where somebody got stabbed – in Raton, New Mexico. Ooooooh, so scary! The fact of the matter is that an underpass would have been a mere 50 feet long – a little more than half the distance from home plate to first base!

The staff also dismissed Vince Buck’s brilliant idea of using the existing Harbor grade separation to get people from one side of the tracks to the other, a solution that would have been the most practical and cost efficient of all!

What has always bothered me about the city staff is that when they want something they will not give the city council all of the pertinant facts to make an intelligent decision; or they will deliberately inflate the project they want and diminish options they don’t want. And then the city council does not hold anyone on staff accountable for the messes they create. And that my Friends, is the history of Redevelopment in Fullerton.

A couple years later I was at the Oceanside train station and guess what?

25 steps in all

Of course lots of local Metrolink/Amtrak stations now have underpasses including Orange, Tustin, Laguna Niguel and many others. Money was saved, citizens were spared visual monstrosities, and maintenance costs were minimized.

But in Fullerton we have Molly McClanahan (who voted for the bridge), and her immortal words: hindsight is 20/20.

Almost twenty years later and the City of Fullerton doesn’t even seem to bother with the graffiti etched into the elevator towers’ glass.

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Mid Century Modern Gems at Hope University May Be Safe – For Now

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The word in academic circles is that the CSUF is busted. Or at least it doesn’t have the wherewithal to swing a deal under consideration to buy back property it once owned across Nutwood Avenue.

The site is the current home of Hope University and it contains some wonderful buildings designed and constructed as part of a modernist master plan. The rough idea was that the CSUF Auxiliary would acquire the property, and, after a lease-back period to Hope, would start knocking everything down – presumably to throw up more out-of-scale, hideous erections. We first wrote about it here. And our expert consultant defined the term “exaggerated modern” here.

So the recession may have a silver lining anyway – at least as far as historic preservation is concerned, but we shall see what the future brings.

In the meantime, just to the south, the giant hole in the cityscape left by the demolition of perfectly fine modern-style buildings to make way for the Jefferson Commons swindle are a silent yet eloquent testimonial to the lack of foresight exercised by our elected leaders.

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Theater Review. Cuckoos at The Maverick

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Last Saturday the hubby and I dropped in on the Maverick Theater to see their production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” a theatrical adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel.

Now I’m not much of a theater goer, I had never been to a local Fullerton production, and I have never written a critique of a stage production, so I apologize ahead of time, and you can take this review for what it’s worth.

The Maverick Theater is in the back of a  pretty unprepossessing industrial/warehouse building at 110 East Walnut Avenue, and you’ve got to give the Maverick folks a lot of credit – the single scene stage is about the size of my living room, and requires a deft choreography by the director and the cast. The venue lends itself to an extremely intimate relation between performers and the audience – the sort of proximity that lends itself to close study of the actors – for good or ill.

The story itself is the (pretty well known) dark comedy about the battle of wills between the conman Randall P. McMurphy, who has gotten himself committed to avoid a jail work detail, and the control freak-spinster-evil bitch-monster, Nurse Rached, who plays the nuts in the mental ward off each other for her own perverse satisfaction.

The leads are engaging actors; both Brennan Thomas as McMurphy and Julie Patzer as Nurse Rached were able to capture and hold audience attention, although Brennan’s choice of a Southern-sounding accent was a strange affectation in a story that takes place in the Pacific Northwest. I got the strong impression that a lot of Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke had been injected into the performance, particularly in the scene in which McMurphy chastises his fellows for feeding off of him. Still, Thomas’ rollicking performance was satisfactorily charming and ribald.

The part of Chief Bromden, the Indian narrator in the Kesey book, was played by Enrique Munoz. It seemed like one of the toughest roles in the play, and Munoz essayed it with energy, but ultimately in what I thought was an overly hand-wringing and lachrymal manner that seems to miss something of the Native American character: the overtly disturbed and wounded-child of Bromden’s introspective monologues didn’t seem to translate well into the outward character’s relationship with McMurphy in the Second Act.

The performances of the supporting actors was uneven. David Chorley did a wonderful job portraying the shy and stuttering Billy Babbit; Scott Keister as Frank Scanlon, pulled off an uncanny rendition of Christopher Lloyd’s character “Taber” in the film version.  But some of the other parts were performed somewhat awkwardly or overly mannered. The ward attendants just didn’t seem to be able to get into the comic spirit of their parts while the sexually conflicted Dale Harding, as played by Stan Morrow, seemed too much like an over-the-top homosexual caricature.

Although it seemed a bit long, the productions was pretty entertaining and is worth seeing. I’m glad we went. The show runs through February 21.

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