Presidential Casa for Sale: South Pasadena's Garfield House

The Greene & Greene Craftsman gem was commissioned by the president's widow.

When we think of presidential homes, we think of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in our nation's capital first, and then the many estates and manors dotting the Midwest and the East Coast. Picture Monticello and Mount Vernon and the dozens of grand houses that once served as shelter to a Commander-in-Chief and his family, or his family following his death.

But while the other coast dominates in this domestic field, the West Coast has its own stately clutch of presidential pads -- Ronald Reagan's Rancho del Cielo and Richard Nixon's La Casa Pacifica among them -- and the very occasional president-related home you can buy.

Meet The Garfield House, one of Southern California's prime examples of Craftsman architecture, an example made even primier by the designers of the South Pasadena home: Greene & Greene, the legendary team behind The Gamble House (which first posted about its sibling house going up for sale).

The Greenes designed The Garfield House for Lucretia Garfield, widow to President James Garfield, and the home was completed in 1904. And you can own it, a century and a decade and a year after its debut.

Well, the asking price is $2,995,000, so best take that into account before digging out your checkbook. The Craftsman, which is chalet-style -- picture a dramatically peaked front entryway -- has five bedrooms, five bathrooms, "a generous living room," and the mature oaks and deodar cedars one daydreams about when one daydreams of living in an historic Crown City Craftsman.

The home went on the market earlier this month.

The Greene & Greene Virtual Archives at the USC School of Architecture describe Lucretia Garfield as a "distant relative" of Charles Greene. She gave a lot of input regarding her winter residence, which once held a laundry porch (which sounds quite 1904 to the modern ear).

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It also once held an elevator.

For more on the history of the home, and see a vintage photograph, click. To eye The Garfield House's modern updates, renovations, and interiors, there's a virtual tour of the abode at 1001 Buena Vista Street.

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