History : CORONA DEL MAR : 1909 House Now a Local Landmark

Lured by an advertisement to “beautiful Newport Beach,” Mary Everett and Alice Aldon took a free ride on the Red Car in search of a summer retreat from sizzling Pasadena. They were appalled at what they found--a seaside hamlet filled with fishermen, canneries and saloons--but entranced by the bare cliffs of Corona del Mar. On a whim, they bought a parcel of land.

That was in 1908.

“There were no roads, there were no semblances of roads, they just plowed through the tall grass,” recalled Mary Burton, Everett’s daughter, who still lives in the house her mother built. “When she saw the view of the beach from up here, she just said, ‘Eureka!’ ”

But Burton’s father was horrified.

“ ‘My dear, I’m afraid you’ve thrown your money away,’ ” Burton, 89, remembers her father telling her mother. Of course, Burton added, “the family never made any investment as good as this.”

Listed in the city’s register of historic landmarks, “Happy House,” the Cape Cod-style grayish brown shingle house with redwood floors and walls, stands today almost identical to the way it appeared when it was built--by 22 workmen in just two weeks--back in 1909.

The porch, with a view clear to Capistrano, has since been enclosed in glass. And the Burtons added French doors off the dining room.

“He got a good stiff drink, grabbed an ax, and chopped a hole in the wall,” Burton recalled of her husband, who died 18 years ago. “And there, we’ve got those windows, just like we wanted.”

A timeline of sorts is scattered around the rambling old house.

Nestled on the white chintz spread in Burton’s childhood bedroom is a 1913 guidebook, “Paris and Its Environs.”

Fanned out on her dressing table, a sterling silver-backed set of hairbrush, comb, nail file, nail buff, lint brush and mirror that Burton got as a wedding gift in 1929.

In the study, under framed degrees from Radcliffe College and Boalt Hall School of Law, an ancient black typewriter’s dustless keys show continued use.

And in the kitchen, there is a Cleaver family-style rotisserie oven.

When she brought the broken rotisserie to a Santa Ana fix-it shop a few years ago, they told her to throw it out, that they couldn’t find parts for such a relic. But she said they better send away for the parts and fix it--and they did. “You can bake in it, roast in it or rotisserie in it,” Burton said proudly. “I cook all the time in it.”

It is the memories, Burton said, that make the house a treasure.

She climbed barefoot over the rocks of Corona del Mar. Her brother brought a rattlesnake home from a camping trip. A group of kids charged a nickel admission for a play to raise money for Belgian relief.

The only rules were: Don’t swim when the tide is going out, and if you leave the house before 6 a.m., take the ladder from the bedroom window, not the squeaky steps, so you don’t wake your parents.

Burton still nurtures her garden daily and cooks dinner for herself most nights, though someone comes to trim the hedges and someone else visits biweekly to run a dust cloth around. She can no longer handle the 15 steps to the bedrooms, so she installed an electric chair along the railing to tote her up and down.

Because of her bad back, she now enjoys the beach only from afar.

“I ran like a rabbit up and down that hillside for a million years, it seems,” she mused. “Now I stay at home. If I take it slow, I do OK.”

But Burton scoffs at the idea of selling the house--she doesn’t even know what it’s worth.

“I’m just happy as a clam sitting right here,” she said. “I’m just going to stay right here as long as the Lord lets me.”