One of the Most Famous Houses in Long Beach is for Sale

11 La Linda Drive, Long Beach, California, 90807
Asking Price: $3,195,000
Full listing here:
circaoldhouses.com/property/b...
Contact:
Matthew Berkley
deasy/penner&partners
[e-mail]
[phone]
(Matthew is amazing!!!!!)
Beginning with the front door with its massive, sinewy brass handle and voluptuous latch, the exceptional character of the Bixby Ranch House is indisputable. This is, after all, one of the most famous houses in Long Beach. Built in 1890 for George H. Bixby, among the City’s most prominent native sons, it was the ten-acre family seat of the huge Bixby ranch and real estate operations. Here various farm buildings stood side by side with formal landscaped gardens, a beautiful outdoor brick pergola, and long Classical reflecting pools. The property was eventually subdivided and this private community of homes is now gated, anchored by the Bixby estate at center stage. Designated in 1988 as Long Beach Historic Landmark No. 16.52.330, the 9-bedroom, 7-bath mansion was designed by the English-born, San Francisco-based architect-brothers, Coxhead and Coxhead.
With its rich, warm skin of cedar shingles, the Bixby Ranch House is an example of the “Shingle” style of architecture. This very American genre eschewed Victoriana’s verticality and ornate pastels. Instead, similar to Craftsman ideals, Shingle architecture emphasized simplicity and “honest” materials such as stone, wood, and brick. However, this humility was combined with a sophisticated aesthetic that strove for the sense of a house as one continuous volume whose various shapes, dormers, and bay windows were all unified by that taut shingle sheathing. Mostly seen in the late 19th century East Coast seaside houses of rich industrialists, finding an expression of that style in Southern California is very rare. But perhaps it should come as no surprise. Ernest Coxhead (1863 - 1933) was known for his highly personal interpretations based on the rustic, romantic ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement and his own memories of a pastoral, picturesque England. What’s even more exciting, Coxhead’s fearless exuberance in combining elements from other styles to add functionality or interest-such as an American Colonial Revival gambrel roof; the alternating curved and triangular pedimented dormer windows, straight out of Italian Renaissance and the Medici family circa 1550; or the wooden spiral “Solomonic” columns from the Byzantine era that flank an imposing fireplace-is fully on display here.