ASTORIA, Ore. — The 115-year-old Flavel mansion, known for decades as a house of mystery and a symbol of faded glory, opened to the public this month.
Greg Newenhof, who bought the iconic residence last year and plans to make it his home, hosted two fundraising tours with Clatsop County Historical Society Executive Director McAndrew Burns and John Goodenberger, a local historian and expert in historic preservation.
Some people have waited many years to see the interior, Burns said. Only the basement was closed to visitors.
“We’ve had people talking about: ‘We used to dare each other as kids to go up and touch the front door and run away,’ ” he said. “We knew the interest factor was huge here. And for (Newenhof) to basically give us this gift, and allow us to have a significant fundraiser because of this house — that’s incredibly generous.”
Built in 1901 for Capt. George Conrad Flavel, the house straddles the Victorian and Colonial Revival periods and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.
In the early 1990s, Mary Louise Flavel, the captain’s granddaughter, and her now-deceased mother and brother, Florence and Harry, abandoned Astoria and the family home.
Boarded up and neglected, the house became a community curiosity, and the property a neighborhood blight.
Finally, Newenhof, co-owner of City Lumber Co., purchased the property for $221,901 in cash six months after Mary Louise’s conservator put it on the market to help end a conflict with the city over code violations.
Time warp
Newenhof dismisses the idea that the house is haunted.
But, with a dumbwaiter in the kitchen, sinks in every bedroom, pastel paints and floral wallpaper, old-fashioned cabinetry, small collections of antique books and household items dating from the 19th century through the 1980s, it’s hard not to feel the presence of the past.
Though the attic has been largely cleared out, there are still artifacts of the Flavel lifestyle: a vintage bureau, a pile of rusty box springs, moth-eaten clothes hanging in the closet, and a broken bassinet that cradled the Flavel children.
The class distinctions of turn-of-the-20th-century America appear in the architecture: The woodwork in the family area tends to be rather ornate, whereas, in the servants’ quarters, the door casings and staircase are flat and ordinary.
“Servants had just the basic stuff,” Newenhof said. “The family had the fancier stuff.”
The tours offer a chance to see the progress Newenhof has made toward fixing up the long-unkempt but structurally sturdy house.
Inside, he has, up to the second floor, restored the electricity and installed new plumbing. He dry-walled the bedroom ceilings, rewired the original light fixtures, replaced window glass and frames and set up a new gas furnace in the basement. He is refurbishing the stair railings and balusters.
Outside, he put new cedar shingles on the roof, rebuilt the chimneys, replaced a section of the porch railing and, more recently, built a fresh set of steps leading to the portico.
Newenhof said he works on the project a couple of hours most nights, and often all day on the weekends. He thinks he may be at it the rest of his life.
“People ask me when I’m moving in, I say, ‘Next week,'” Newenhof said. “And also: ‘I’m 6-foot-2 and have a full head of hair.’ ”
‘Bringing it back’
Across the street live former City Planner Rosemary Johnson and her husband, Curt. The couple moved into their 15th Street home in 1992, shortly after the Flavels skipped town, but remembers the family returning on occasion.
“They would come back periodically and go through the house,” Johnson said. “In fact, they would call my kids and ask if there were any police hanging out in the neighborhood before they came. It was really weird. But they would just go in and check; they wouldn’t stay long.”
Johnson, who has toured the house with her husband, reckons that the last time a significant segment of the public was allowed into the mansion was probably when Mary Louise or her mother threw a dinner party there.
Newenhof, she said, “instead of just saying, ‘This is my private house, I’ll do what I want’ — I mean, he could; he could just say, ‘This is my home’ — but instead, he’s opening it up,” she said. “I think it’s a fabulous idea, and just exactly what I would expect out of Greg.”
The tours, Aug. 13 and 14, benefited the historical society.
Burns said that, as an Astorian and a lover of its history, he’s grateful that it’s Newenhof who bought the house.
“Greg has respected the house,” he said. “(He’s) bringing it back to life and that takes a very special person to accept that challenge.”
