When Evan Chambers and his wife, Caitlin, lost their century-old, 980-square-foot bungalow on Mountain View Street in Altadena, California, to January’s devastating Eaton Fire, they knew it would be a struggle to rebuild. The couple was underinsured, with the California Fair Plan cutting them a check for just $300,000 in the wake of their total loss, and with projections for new builds running anywhere from $500 to $700 per square foot, Caitlin says she quickly knew that reconstructing “our tiny little house would be super expensive.”
Scrolling around on Instagram, she stumbled across a post on a history-focused account called Before The 101 alerting followers to the potential demolition of a 2,400-square-foot, 1911 Craftsman-style home in Hollywood. The owners were tearing it down to make room for a multiunit affordable housing project—which the city desperately needs—but Caitlin says she felt like it would be a shame to see the house go to waste. “I didn’t think I would be able to get that specific house, but I started thinking that (moving a house) was something I wanted to do,” she says. “It was only a couple of weeks after the fire, but I thought that maybe I could do it eventually.”
Fortunately for the couple, Evan’s dad helped move a home from Pasadena to Altadena in the 1970s, doing rockwork on-site once the house was situated. (Fun sidenote: In the ’90s, that same home played Dylan’s residence on Beverly Hills: 90210.) “We’d always talked about moving maybe a boxcar or a caboose to our lot,” Evan says. “I would never want to live in a new house, really. I just have zero interest in doing a new build.”
A one-dollar sale
Through friends of friends, the Chamberses got hooked up with architect, creative director, and fourth-generation Angeleno Morgan Sykes Jaybush of Omgivning, who had long been interested in preservation of historic properties. “I was doing some work on some new construction rebuilds in Altadena, and it hit me like a lightning bolt: Why couldn’t we relocate houses like they used to do in the old days in L.A. when they were building the freeways or downtown?” Jaybush says. “People were looking at doing prefab houses in Altadena so I was putting all the pieces together, like, Why can’t this be a different version of prefab? Let’s find a way to relocate houses instead of throwing them into the landfill. Evan and Caitlin were thinking the same thing around the same time and within two days of us both having that epiphany, we were working together.”
Jaybush reached out to an acquaintance, retired banker and active preservationist Brad Chambers (no relation), who previously moved five classic but threatened Victorians from one L.A. neighborhood to another. Over time, Jaybush says, Chambers has figured out how to break down homes into component pieces that fit neatly on flatbed trucks, making the often-tricky moves both easier and cheaper. “If you move a house in one piece,” Jaybush says, “you have to move streetlights and cut trees and relocate power. If you partially deconstruct and cut a home, you can’t get on the freeway and just drive it across town but you can figure out a way to get there a little bit at a time, avoiding railroad tracks and overpasses and difficult intersections.”
A professional house-moving team prepares the Chambers couple’s 2,400-square-foot residence for relocation.
With Brad Chambers’ guidance and experienced team of house-moving construction workers, Jaybush pushed forward with Evan and Caitlin, somehow managing to track down the owner of the original home Caitlin had seen online. The couple offered to buy the house from the developer for $1, saving the company the cost of demolition, and a deal was struck.
“It’s a beautiful home,” Evan says. “When we were starting this process, I drove around L.A. a lot looking at possible houses, like the oldest farmhouse still surviving in L.A. and other places that are in danger of being demo’d. Some of the houses had bad vibes or were too big or crazy or had low ceilings or whatever, so I just kept going back to that original house. It’s got original architectural features, like a lot of wood I can strip to expose the Doug fir, and there’s really just no problem with it. It’s not like there are a thousand options, either. There are like forty houses being demo’d in L.A. at any given time, two of which you might be able to do in your timeline and one of which might smell just a bit less like piss.”
The home was cut into roughly five “pieces” and transported on flatbed trucks.
Both of the Chambers are artistically inclined—Evan is a glassblower and Caitlin teaches creative writing at Pasadena’s ArtCenter College of Design—and Evan renovated their previous home, gutting the inside and installing all new drywall, plumbing, and electrical. That’s given them a level of comfort with their new project they say they know some people just won’t have. “It’s a really emotionally tumultuous process,” Caitlin says. “Timelines are weird and there are only a couple of house movers in this area that can do the work because it’s kind of a dying art form.”
“There are all sorts of logistical challenges,” Evan adds, “but we’re trying to figure out the process not just for ourselves but so that someone else less adventurous could handle it.”
The house sits on box cribs after its relocation to the Chambers couple’s Altadena lot. It will be reassembled on the box cribs so that a new foundation can be built and inspected beneath it.
Caitlin says that, all-in, she thinks the move will end up costing them somewhere around $550,000, or about $230 per square foot. That’s markedly cheaper than a new build, she notes, and should prove to be a little less stressful as well. “There are all these supply chain issues that people building new have to deal with,” she says. “We don’t know what we’re in for, but we’ve got sinks and a clawfoot tub already…. We have doorknobs, flooring, and windows, too.” All of that means that they’ll be back home sooner: Jaybush estimates that, barring any major moving-related disasters, the new Chambers family home will be livable in as little as six to eight months, compared to two to three years for new construction.
Move and move again
The Chambers’ aren’t alone, either. Another couple, interior designer Gwen Sukeena and mechanical engineer Jacques Laramee—have already moved a 1910 Craftsman from L.A.’s Los Feliz neighborhood to their lot in Altadena, and Omgivning says that they have more than 100 other families who are interested in doing the same.
“Relocating houses used to be much more common in Los Angeles, but it’s rarely done nowadays,” Jaybush said in the firm’s press release announcing its Historic House Relocation Project in July, of which the Chambers couple’s and Sukeena and Laramee’s homes were the first two to be relocated. “It’s the most sustainable way to rebuild, by not throwing an entire house into the landfill. It’s also a great way to bring some historic character back to these neighborhoods which have suffered so much loss. And in addition to being a quicker solution, it’s a more affordable option; we estimate that these moves are half to two-thirds of the cost of a new build.”
Gwen Sukeena and Jacques Laramee stand with Morgan Sykes Jaybush outside of the couple’s 1910 Craftsman-style home during its relocation process from L.A.’s Los Feliz neighborhood.
Sukeena and Laramee are living in a vintage 1948 Spartan Manor trailer on the site of their former home, just steps from the shell of the house they moved from Los Feliz in late August. They know it’ll take time to reconstruct, but that’s okay with them: They’d moved into their funky little Spanish-style ranch house on Poppyfields Drive 10 days prior to the fire, and they say part of the reason they bought in the neighborhood is because they liked the vintage charm.
“I’m a designer and the thought of having all these new, modern homes being built in Altadena just doesn’t sound appealing to me,” Sukeena says. “Moving a house seemed like a cool way to inject some vintage vibes back into the town. We looked at a number of options and a couple spoke to us, but they just didn’t work out with our timeline. But then we saw our new house and just immediately fell in love with it.”
Sukeena and Laramee’s 3,600-square-foot house (pictured) and the Chambers couple’s home are the first two to be relocated as part of Omgivning’s Historic House Relocation Project.
A 3,600-square-foot, five-bedroom Craftsman from Saint George Street, Sukeena and Laramee’s new home also has a bit of an interesting history. It was actually moved to that site from East Hollywood back in 1948 by then owner Alice Blackburn, an enterprising single mother who ran two local Nash car dealerships. Facing demolition because of the construction of the 101 Freeway, Blackburn decided to make the best of her situation and threw a 150-person candlelit soirée in her house while it was being moved to its new address, ultimately ending up in Life magazine.
While Sukeena and Laramee paid more for their house than the Chambers couple did—having to cover the developers’ mortgage costs for about two months while they prepped for the move, to the tune of about $150,000—the pair say they’re still 100 percent sure they’re getting a bargain. “The new house is double the size of our old one and we’d never be able to afford to build a house that size,” Sukeena says. She also says the two are going to try to have the house named a historic landmark as part of California’s Mills Act, something that should ease the couple’s tax burden. “We really want to do this house justice, because it does deserve it,” Sukeena says.
“We’re really excited about the project that comes with it, too,” Laramee adds. “I’ve always been pretty picky about homes, but I think with losing everything, I’ve just become less picky. It’s like now, I know that you can make do with little or nothing at all. It’s not like I ever needed the best or shiniest of anything, but now, I’m sure that I can make do with whatever’s given, no matter what.”
Sukeena and Laramee’s Altadena lot marks the residence’s third location in its lifetime, having been moved from a East Hollywood site to Los Feliz in the late 1940s by its then owner.
Coming home
Sukeena and Laramee say that while there have certainly been challenges surrounding the breakneck speed of the structure’s relocation, they’re looking forward to settling into their home. Not that they think Altadena will be home yet, since as Laramee explains, “we lost our house and all our stuff, but the hardest part was losing our neighborhood. Until everybody’s back, it’s not going to feel the same.”
Evan and Caitlin agree, with Caitlin saying she won’t really be content with her new home until “everyone that wants to be back in Altadena can be back to Altadena.”
“Preservation is important and that is part of our project, but the more I think about it, I just want people to be able to go back, whatever form that ends up taking” Caitlin says. “There’s been a lot of anxiety about what people are building and how it’ll look, but I just want our neighbors back. The whole point of doing what we’re doing is to be able to figure it out so that other people can really know what it’ll cost so that they replicate the process themselves.”
Top photo of Gwen Sukeena and Jacques Laramee’s house during the relocation process by Gary Leonard, courtesy Omgivning.
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