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When Patricia McDaniel and her husband, Brian Skinner, were buying their first home in 2010, they didn’t intentionally set out to find something historic. They viewed a number of different homes in San Mateo, seeking a good location, close to downtown. When they came upon a charming Queen Anne Victorian on North Claremont Street, it caught their attention.
“We thought it was very beautiful, and we really liked the architecture, so we decided to take a bit of a risk in buying an older house,” McDaniel recalled.
That purchase led them on a journey of discovery and restoration of the property, which is known as the Amelia Vollers House and is now included in the National Register of Historic Places.
McDaniel will make a presentation about the house, its history, and she and Skinner’s research and preservation efforts at the San Mateo County History Museum on Saturday, April 26.
Uncovering the home’s original owner
When they first moved in, not much was known about the house other than its appearance on some city surveys of historic buildings and a tidbit of information in the property description, noting that in 1901, 15 feet of the property were sold to Southern Pacific Railroad by a woman named Amelia Vollers.
How to identify Queen Annes
Many of the following features are not unique to Queen Annes, except when combined with the towers:
– Round, square, hexagonal corner towers
– Asymmetrical design
– Steep roof line, gables
– Variety of textures, materials: brick, shingles, clapboard
– Cantilever bay windows
– Deep overhangs, covered large porches
– Columns, relief panels, balustrades, dentils
The couple pored over microfilm records in the San Mateo County Historical Association’s archives, finding old photos and tax documents. Eventually, their research revealed that Vollers had purchased the property in 1890 and that in 1891 she had paid tax improvements, meaning the house must have been added that year. It was built by James Sharpe Tannahill, they discovered, who also built homes in Redwood City and Menlo Park, as well as the Kearney mansion in Fresno (which is now a museum open to visitors). They were able to find out just a little bit about Vollers herself as well. A Russian immigrant, she married an immigrant from Germany, had three children and died in 1906.
Gaining ‘National’ recognition
When McDaniel and Skinner bought the home, they knew it was eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, and the city encouraged them to go through that process. They entered into a Mills Act contract with San Mateo, which offers tax incentives to help people who own historic properties to maintain and preserve them.
There are a few different ways a home can qualify for the National Register. In the case of the Amelia Vollers House, it was due to it being a fine example of the Queen Anne style, with sufficient original features remaining, including the distinctive shingles, spindlework and windows with colored panes on the house’s exterior, McDaniel said. Inside, there were some original doors, with hinges and hardware in the Eastlake style, along with original fireplace tiles.
Restoring the home inside and out
When McDaniel and Skinner moved in, they worked with Raven Restoration, an expert on wooden windows to fix those that didn’t close properly, and sourced places such as Urban Ore in Berkeley for original Eastlake-style doors to replace ones that had been removed.
“The hinges that were original but not in the greatest shape, we had those removed and replated so they looked bright and shiny and new,” she said. They also replaced some of the light fixtures with some that were more period appropriate and added reproduction push-button light switches, typing up notes on all the hardware of the house.
“We had a lot of other less-exciting things we needed to do, like some plumbing issues and things like that,” McDaniel said. While there were sometimes challenges and frustrations, such as the time-consuming process of trying to schedule repair work, and expenses ending up higher than initially planned, there were also joys involved in living in the historic home.
“It’s just a really beautiful house, and it smelled really nice all the time because it’s made out of redwood, especially … up in the attic,” McDaniel recalled. She took pleasure in noticing the visible ties to the world of the past.
“I would think to myself, ‘Oh, they had three hooks in the closet because they just didn’t have many clothes back then,'” she said, imagining Amelia Vollers’ few dresses hanging there more than a century before.
Looking back
McDaniel and Skinner sold the house in 2021 and moved to the East Bay. When they put it on the market, most potential buyers were not particularly interested in its history. “We were kind of sad about that,” she said. But local history buffs are out there. Recently, someone from the San Mateo County Historical Association happened upon the house, found the website Skinner had set up and got in touch about hosting a presentation on their research and restoration experience.
McDaniel is enjoying life in Oakland but retains affection for her time with the Amelia Vollers House. While putting together the presentation, she said, “I felt a little nostalgic about not living there any more.”
Patricia McDaniel discusses the historic Amelia Vollers House on Saturday, April 26, at 1 p.m. in Courtroom A at the San Mateo County History Museum, 2200 Broadway St., Redwood City. The event is included with admission to the museum (free to members and children under 5; $6 for adults; $4 for seniors and students). More information is available at historysmc.org/courthouse-docket/.
