John Lindblom – Record-Bee staff
LAKEPORT ? It stands there in a little out-of-the-way corner of downtown Lakeport where many residents of Lake County, even those who have lived here quite a while, have yet to see it.
And that”s a shame, because “the Carriage House,” a two-story Victorian-style home which became 100 years old this year, is a sight to behold.
It offers not only the opulence of a century ago, when it was built by prominent Lakeport attorney H.V. Keeling, but the pride of excellent maintenance reflecting the way George and Cheryl Smith, residents of the Carriage House for the last 32 years, have maintained this precious structure and its surroundings.
The Carriage House takes the name the Smiths gave it not from the residential dwelling but from the matching two-car garage they had built to the west side of it. Tennis courts to the east that once adjoined the house, however, were long ago removed.
“I was a teacher and a friend of mine who taught shop built it,” says George, who reveals that despite the garage”s similarity to the house, it is only 15 years old.
The house at 60 Clear Lake Ave. has gone unnoticed largely because it is on the lake side of Lakeport”s Main Street. On the other side is 11th Street, which, because it is the street where numerous stores and businesses are located, is well traveled. Quite possibly, none of the bustling crowd going up and down 11th ever had a thought about what”s on the other side of Main.
And that”s fine. Mention the thought of having their well-maintained residence with its manicured lawn (George does it himself) on the National Register of Historic Places and the Smiths shudder.
But there”s no denying the Carriage House does have a history.
Wilda Shock, the great-granddaughter of Keeling and a fifth-generation Lake County resident, says that there”s an effort to learn whether the home”s designer was Willis Jefferson Polk, credited with “redirecting the course of architecture” in the pre-earthquake San Francisco of the 1890s.
It would make sense. Polk was the architect of Lakeport”s Episcopal Church.
Keeling and his family, incidentally, were reported to be in San Francisco selecting furnishings for their new home on April 18, 1906, the day of the quake.
Built at an overall cost of $3,000 ? a tidy sum for the times ? the house took a year to complete. It was a year well spent. Moored on a foundation of rocks from Scotts Valley, the house is constructed of cross-beamed redwood. It gives the appearance that it will never fall down.
Ironically, Keeling, who came here from England, lived in the house only a very short time, moving elsewhere soon after the deaths of his first wife and a daughter while residing in the house in 1909. But the house has been continuously occupied.
Keeling, once a Lakeport mayor, was a prominent civil attorney and a highly skilled player in cricket, the sport of choice in his era.
“He was very much the proper English gentleman,” says Shock. “He played the violin and his second wife, Gertrude, was a singer. There was an opera house and a lot of places for music in the area then.”
The court case for which Keeling is most remembered in Lakeport is one he lost.
“It was in the 1920s and it was known as the ?Spencer case,”” said Shock. “Mr. Spencer was a pastor in Sonoma County who had a paramour in Lake County. I don”t know the background, but he managed to invite his wife up here, then pushed her overboard from a boat. She drowned. He was found guilty. Apparently it was the testimony of a young Pomo Indian boy who, from somewhere nearby, could hear the conversation and saw (Spencer) push his wife overboard.”
Shock is working with Chief Deputy District Attorney Jon Hopkins in an effort to develop a play on the incident for the Courthouse Museum.
So, in that way Keeling may live again. In the meantime, the house he built lives on quite well. Again, thanks to the Smiths. While George meticulously looks after the exterior, Cheryl fusses over the interior, constantly on the hunt for antique furnishings that fit the house.
She is an artist, talented enough to have designed an ornament that hung on President Clinton”s Christmas tree, so the touches she adds with her paint brush can only help.
What”ll happen today or tomorrow; well, who knows? But the Smiths sure know how to take care of yesterday.
Contact John Lindblom at jlwordsmith@mchsi.com.
