Centennial home houses family’s history

BALBOA PENINSULA — When Sheila McNichols’ grandparents bought the charming beach cottage at 1920 Court Ave., it cost them $1,111 — and that was with $11 thrown in for the furnishings, which included a piano.

That was around 1930. McNichols thinks the house was built in 1905, and today it is one of the oldest homes in Newport Beach — slightly older than the city itself.

City officials honored McNichols’ house Sept. 1 when they celebrated the city’s 100th birthday. There may be other homes that are a few years older, but records are spotty, and it was hard to definitively answer which was oldest, Mayor Don Webb said.

“There are a lot of little beach cottages that are sprinkled around the area,” he said. “This particular one we picked because it was kind of diagonally across from where the first City Hall was.”

It was also down the street from where McNichols’ grandfather, Bill Holcomb, ran a barbershop after he retired and moved with his wife, Bessie, from Riverside to Newport Beach.

Back then, “This was it. This was all there was to Newport,” McNichols said. “It was right in the heart of town.”

McNichols and her husband, a Newport Beach firefighter, added a master suite when they learned a set of twins would be joining their family of four, but the main part of the house has stayed largely the same for decades.

It was built as a simple beach cottage, but the house has the details that mark such older homes: built-in cabinets with leaded glass doors and a plate display rail on the wall in the dining room, weathered wood floors and a brick fireplace.

And it has the inconveniences. McNichols said she and her husband have torn apart the walls numerous times to repair the weights and pulleys that operate the home’s original wood-framed windows. The bedrooms are about 10 feet by 10 feet, so the basement is filled with the detritus of modern living.

But McNichols has never wanted to live anywhere else. As a child, she visited her grandparents there for summers at the beach. The house came down the family line and she eventually acquired it, moving in after she graduated high school.

A husband and eventually four children were added, and now that the children have grown and gone, the McNicholses share the home with two dogs and five cats.

“When my kids were little they used to say, ‘Can we sell this house and buy a new house in Costa Mesa?’ I’d say nope,” McNichols said. “I’ve just always felt so comfortable in this house.”

Old beach cottages like the McNichols’ house are becoming more scarce around Newport, said Bill Grundy, president of the Newport Beach Historical Society.

He expects some cottages to remain because some older lots are too small to meet current requirements, like two-car garages. There are several older homes on Court Avenue, Grundy said, but “everywhere else they’re tearing them down.”

McNichols plans to buy a plaque for the front of her home that will designate it as the city’s “centennial house” and bear her grandparents’ names.