Vallejo’s historic Herbert House gets guerrilla makeover

VALLEJO — The Herbert House on Vallejo’s waterfront, a quaint Queen Anne Victorian home across the street from the Vallejo Yacht Club, has been empty for 15 years. The curved porches, turreted roof and flared walls are coated with moss and grime. Since the mid-2000s, the only people who have made use of it are squatters and campers on its porch.

The city recently installed fresh plywood boards over all of the first floor doors and windows. But on Saturday, Jimmy Genn and six other local activists picked up paint rollers to give the bare plywood a makeover by painting the boards a pale gray that matches the exterior paint of the historic house and stapling two faux flower boxes to the window frames.

“Of course we understand that economic conditions sometimes force the city to close properties,” Genn said, “but it’s important that those vacant properties still look nice and that’s why we’ve come together to do this.”

But the three-bedroom house, one of Vallejo’s 24 city landmarks – a quintessential example of the Queen Anne building style – is a long way from being restored, and the city appears to have no plans in the works for the building and is even considering moving it. The city’s Architectural Heritage and Landmarks Commission will receive an update on the house at its meeting Thursday.

The Herbert House was built for the prominent meat merchant George Herbert in 1901. The Herbert family later donated it to the Solano County Historical Society for public and cultural purposes.

It was moved from Virginia Street downtown to the corner of Kentucky Street and Mare Island Way in 1959. It first served as a museum and later housed organizations including the Artists League of Vallejo and the Native Sons of the Golden West. The house was gifted to the city of Vallejo in 1984.

In the early 2000s, the St. Vincent’s Hill Neighborhood Association took over the management to fulfill the donor’s intent for the house as a public facility.

The Herbert House Management Team nonprofit was formed by the neighborhood association in 2003. They shared the house with The Native Sons of the Golden West, who were leasing it from the city for $1 per year and had an agreement to maintain the home.

The Herbert House Management Team held events like fundraisers for building maintenance, neighborhood association meetings and an annual art and antiques flea market with live bands. Most events were held on the grounds outdoors because of the house’s small size and lack of accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act. New Year’s celebrations were held in a heated tent.

Janet Sylvain, former member of both the St Vincent’s Hill Neighborhood Association and Herbert House Management Team, said they considered building an extension to the back of the house that could fit 100 people.

The Native Sons had slapped together a tiny kitchen that was a step down from the main floor. “Things were not up to code, they didn’t match the style of their house,” Sylvain said. “The area that probably was the kitchen was converted into a bar.”

The Native sons lost their lease in the late 2000s. The city offered the house to the Herbert House Management Team for $2,800 a month, but the nonprofit couldn’t afford it.

Vallejo’s property and asset manager Steve England went on a campaign in 2009 to stop offering city-owned properties to nonprofits for extremely low rent. England told the Vallejo Times-Herald that the Herbert House would remain vacant until he found a tenant who could afford maintenance and improvement costs.

In 2011, England told Susan Noll of the Vallejo Waterfront Artists group that her group couldn’t have art shows at the Herbert House because it lacks bathrooms that are compliant with the ADA, according to Noll.

The barriers to anyone seeking to rent the Herbert House are high. The city is asking for $4,500 a month to rent. The zoning requires any tenant to upgrade the bathrooms and wheelchair ramp to be ADA compliant. And, because the house’s original kitchen was not included in the move, an expanded commercial-grade kitchen would need to be installed if tenants want to serve food.

Despite repeated requests from Vallejoans for the city to care for and make use of the property, no progress has been made. Vallejo activist Anne Carr calls the inaction “demolition by neglect.”

Many people, including Carr, have suggested converting the house to a bed and breakfast. In a Jan. 24 email to Carr, Assistant City Manager Gillian Hayes wrote that the zoning doesn’t allow for a bed and breakfast.

Yet the city has the power to change the zoning to whatever it wants, as Hayes herself pointed out when the city council discussed the city’s recent purchase of two shuttered school buildings at its Feb. 28 meeting. “Once the city owns the property, we can change the zoning district to whatever project that we propose, since we are that authority we could do that,” she said.

The city has no immediate plans to make use of the Herbert House. The city manager’s office recently added a new twist by suggesting that the Herbert House could be moved again, though they haven’t said why.

In a Jan. 23 email to Carr, Hayes said, “We are looking into quotes for fencing and re-boarding up the house as well as potential relocation expenses.”

Neither Hayes nor City Manager Mike Malone responded to the Vallejo Sun’s request for comment.

Genn has concerns about lack of transparency in the city’s reasons for considering moving the house. “Code enforcement is gone,” Genn said, referring to the adjacent building vacated when the code enforcement department moved to city hall.  “That automatically makes from Florida to Kentucky available to be developed. You can get quite a bit of condos and commercial space in this. The easiest way to do it is just to move the Herbert House.”

Hayes told Carr that the city is researching grants for restoration, and will be partnering with the San Francisco Academy of Arts to conduct a student-led outreach process. “Once we have those costs and the outreach input, we can present options and next steps to the public and the City Council to decide direction,” Hayes said.

“The Herbert House is an important historic resource, but to your point, it is not our #1 priority currently,” Hayes wrote. “We are dealing with many other issues as you outlined, daily, so this plan is a longer term plan to gather input and then create the path forward for the future of the house.”

That statement echoes former Mayor Bob Sampayan, who told Brendan Riley for the Vallejo Times-Herald in 2019, “I don’t want to say the Herbert House is a low priority, but we need to move on other issues.”

Genn’s team’s painting effort paid off immediately. The painted plywood now blends into the house, muting the image of abandonment.

Genn fears that the home will suffer more damage if it is moved again, and believes that the current location in St. Vincent’s Hill Heritage District will make it easier to obtain preservation funds and to renovate according to more lenient historic building codes. He said he is not opposed to new development, but believes the Herbert House can be incorporated into the design.

“It'd be best that it stays here,” Genn said, “for its survival.”