Island Style
November 18, 1993

Baby Del Celebrates Its Tenth Anniversary

By Darby Monger

Whether it be via tour bus or a personal tour conducted by a Coronado resident, there is hardly a visitor to the Crown Isle who hasn’t been shown the aptly named “Baby Del” Victorian house on Isabella Avenue near Ocean Boulevard. Along with the famous historic landmark the Hotel del Coronado, for which the house was named because of its similar design, the Baby Del is part of the eclectic local architecture for which Coronado is known and of which residents are proud. Today, the Baby Del celebrates a birthday. Precisely ten years ago the Livingston House, as it was called in the San Diego Historical Site Registry, was born to Coronado thanks to a labor of love by its owners Chris and Francie Mortenson. It cost Mortenson, a commercial developer, $120,000 and six month of planning to orchestrate the moving of the Victorian house from its Sherman Heights neighborhood at 24th and J Streets, to its present site, which had been a tennis court. It all began in 1979 when, after spotting the classified ad, Mortenson went to see the house, immediately fell in love with it and purchased it that day, beating out twelve other possible buyers. The house, he found out, had been built in 1887 by Mrs. Livingston. Mortenson’s theory about why it looks so similar to the Hotel del Coronado is that the Victorian house, built six months prior, was the training ground for the carpenters who built the hotel.

Mortenson bought the Livingston House from the Rev. Robert L. Stevens, who had restored many parts of the house. But the Reverend couldn’t prevent vandals from repeatedly marring the nearly 100-year old Victorian with graffiti. Despite the location and condition of the structure, Chris and Francie had a vision about what it could be some day. Though they never moved into the Livingston House, they kept their dream alive until four years later when they were forced to act upon their vision and bring it into quick reality after vandals broke into the house and stole the original chandeliers.

Because the house is an historical landmark, the Mortensons had to go in front of the San Diego Historic Site Board to ask if they could take the house out of San Diego. Then they met with Coronado’s planning commission to gain local acceptance. The Mortensons chose Coronado over Point Loma because they loved the island and the community was willing to bend a little to accommodate the Victorian structure’s 55-foot tower.

Then Chris and Francie began the numerous bureaucratic challenges associated with the physical moving of the Livingston House. The move had to be made at night because the 5,000 square foot house would have to travel 27 blocks — first down Island Street and then west on Fifth Avenue. To facilitate this, arrangements were requested and approvals received. SDG&E provided a substantial work crew to move and lift power lines to allow the house, intact but minus its cupolas, to pass underneath. As well, cut temporarily were 10,000 phones lines and the San Diego Trolley line.

The Livingston House’s slow trek began at 9pm and ended twelve hours later when it reached its temporary destination on port district land by San Diego Bay. Along its route the Victorian house, massive and impressive in appearance, was accompanied by an entourage of family, friends and facilitators, and was so spectacular an event that it became the focus of the national media when UPI snapped a photo which ended up on the pages of newspapers across the nation. The Mortenson’s nephew documented the journey on video tape.

Through the proper approvals from the port district had been obtained, the Mortensons encountered a major hitch just the day prior to the move when they were informed the port had rescinded its approval allowing the house to rest on their property. Nevertheless, Chris and Francie proceeded with their plans and the port district acquiesced.

The Livingston House stayed at the foot of Fifth Avenue while waiting for the tides to be right and for the USS Kitty Hawk to vacate its berth at North Island. Two weeks later a football field-sized crane/barge with an arm 420 feet long lifted the Victorian over the Chart House Rowing Club and over its deck where it was suspended for its trip across the bay to the berth. If Mrs. Livingston was alive, she’d be aghast to know the rental fee for the crane/barge was more than the $11,000 she paid for both the house and the Sherman Heights lot.

Once again on land, the Livingston House taxied down the naval air station’s runway toward Ocean Boulevard. Environmentally sensitive, the Mortensons constructed a road made of plywood to protect the local ground owl nests buried in the sand along the route to the temporarily removed back gates and fence of North Island. There, the house was greeted with incredulous stares by throngs of Coronadans eager to make the now-famous Victorian feel right at home. Another twelve hours had passed and one more segment of Chris and Francie Mortenson’s dream had come to pass.

Placed thoughtfully on the Isabella lot, the cupolas were re-attached and for the next twelve months, the Mortensons, in concert with their numerous work crews, added another sections to the back of the house, updated and painted the outside, and planted their award-winning landscape and gardens.

A decade has passed since the day the Livingston House arrived on the Crown Isle—temporarily minus its own crown of cupolas. With deliberate care, and a lot of blood, sweat and tears, Chris and Francie Mortenson transformed the rundown Victorian house. They renamed it the Baby Del, and they even added a son and two daughters who probably wake up every morning with a sense of adventure and feeling as if they live in a real life fairy tale.

Today the Baby Del stands proud as one of Coronado’s most magnificent residences and a landmark which countless Coronadans and tourists will continue to admire for decades to come.

The Baby Del is a testimony to the two people who fell in love with it, and who had a vision—a vision that began as their own but evolved to become the shared dream of many, and wound up as a very special gift from Chris and Francie Mortenson to their new home town, Coronado.