McMullen mansion in Coronado faces wrecking ball

One of Coronado’s architectural landmarks, the MacMullen House, has for years steadily deteriorated before the eyes of every motorist entering or exiting the island via the Coronado toll bridge. Tagged by history buffs as the “Gateway to Coronado,” the crumbling mansion sits on the tricornered lot at Glorietta Boulevard and Fourth Street, the community’s most traveled spot. But the former home of one of San Diego’s journalistic forefathers may not provide drivers with a glimpse of a gilded past much longer. It is scheduled to be demolished within the next week.

The wrecking ball will smash to a close an exasperating effort on the part of the Coronado Historical Association to save the mansion for restoration. The house was built in 1914 for James MacMullen, editor and manager of the San Diego Union and Evening Tribune from 1899 to 1933. MacMullen had been a friend of John D. Spreckels, the sugar magnate who built the Hotel del Coronado and who owned the Union. The hometown paper grew from a frontier rag with advertising on the front page into a respectable small town rag under MacMullen’s stewardship. (MacMullen, along with his son Jerry, is also credited with bringing the Star of India to San Diego for permanent display as a maritime museum.) The editor lived in the imposing five-bedroom, four-bath house until he died in 1933. The house is a cornice-roofed jumble of architectural styles; it leans toward Italian renaissance and is decorated with arches, balconies, and balustrades. Comments historical association president Gerry MacCartee, “Virtually everyone we’ve talked with, within and outside our community, agrees that the MacMullen House is of substantial historical significance to our community and indeed worth saving and restoring.”

Although a For Sale sign has decorated the houses’ unkempt lawn for more than a year, its present owner, Coronado realtor Mike Napolitano, has priced the structure out of the market, according to Coronado Historical Association members. Napolitano, who purchased the estate from MacMullen’s heirs for $420,000 in 1985, has listed it at $550,000. But now he plans to demolish the house so that he can sell off the three lots individually. Napolitano, who did not want to discuss the matter in detail, says he does not recognize any historical significance of the estate to Coronado, and he would simply like to recoup his initial investment. “If people here want the site to be preserved, why don’t they put the money that’s needed into it?” Napolitano asks. “It’s not a matter of giving ten dollars. It’s going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to preserve. That’s all I’m going to say about it at this point.”

Historical association officials say Napolitano’s overpricing of the estate has blocked attempts to preserve it. The association wanted to restore the house and use it as a visitor information center and community museum, so in January of 1986, MacCartee says, they offered Napolitano $480,000 for the estate. He turned it down.

After Napolitano rejected the historical association’s offer, La Jolla physician Martin Lizerbram submitted another proposal to Napolitano, one that was backed by the association. Lizerbram wanted to revamp the estate and turn it into a bed-and breakfast, private home, and garden. He says he made a formal written offer of $525,000 to purchase the house, which Napolitano accepted, pending adoption of a bed-and-breakfast ordinance by the city council. Current Coronado law prohibits such commercial establishments in residential zones. A change in the law that would have allowed bed and breakfast inns in Coronado neighborhoods was passed by the Coronado city planning commission in April 1986 and appeared to have enough momentum to make it through the city council. But then a handful of residents approached the council in protest. They didn’t want any bed-and-breakfast inns allowed into the somnolent community’s residential neighborhoods.

“It got very, very heated at city hall, really blown out of proportion,” declares MacCartee, adding that she believes the pending city council election made the bed-and-breakfast issue a risky political medicine ball. In June, at Mayor R.H. Dorman’s urging, the council tabled the issue for later consideration. It’s still tabled. “The corner there is one of blight and neglect, and it sets the stage to the entrance to the city,” Lizerbram remarks. “The mansion is just begging for restoration in its present tortured state.”

The City of Coronado has approved Napolitano’s request for demolition, even though the house is listed by the Coronado Historical Association as one of the 86 structures of historical and architectural significance on the island. “It makes me very sad, because in this case, the house really could have been saved and preserved if everyone would have worked together,” says MacCartee.