Calif. couple living the dream
FRESNO, Calif. — The moment Ed and Margaret Lujano walked into the white Colonial house at Terrace and Palm avenues in Fresno, Calif., 14 years ago, it became their very own dream house.
"We walked in and said, 'This is it,"' Ed Lujano said recently as he sat in the home's formal living room where drapes hanging in sculpted folds frame large sash windows and the fireplace is faced with black marble.
The Lujanos fell in love with the home's character and charm: the crown moldings, the turned railings in the bannister, the wainscoting, the used brick fence and mature trees shading the back yard.
But the house also came with a mystery — a real estate flier called the house "Mr. Blandings' Dream House." Margaret Lujano recalls thinking, "Who is this Blandings person?"
The mystery didn't put them off. They bought the house in 1994 for about $165,000.
Soon after the Lujanos and their young daughters, Jacqueline and Arissa, moved in, the mystery of Mr. Blandings was solved by neighbors who told them the story.
It seemed the Lujanos' dream home was part of a publicity stunt of nationwide proportions.
In 1947, producer David Selznick and RKO Radio Picture's publicity department came up with a plan to promote the upcoming movie, "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House," a comedy starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy, released in 1948.
The studio sent blueprints of the movie set house to contractors across the country, hoping to see 100 replicas of the house built. Eventually, 73 dream homes were built in places like Fresno, Bakersfield, Calif., Phoenix, Ariz., Ottawa Hills, Ohio, and Portland, Ore.
The movie was based on Eric Hodgins' 1946 novel, a thinly disguised story of his own nightmare experience building an 11-room Colonial dream house, "Blandings Way," in New Milford, Conn., in 1939. It still stands today.
When the movie's art director Carroll Clark designed the sets, he included many of the rooms from Hodgins' book, including a room for cutting flowers.
It was Clark's plan for the movie set that was sent to contractors. The only glitch was that the plans didn't include closets or windows, so contractors had to fill in the details.
The Lujanos' version of the Blandings' dream house was built in 1948 by Taylor-Wheeler builders and furnished by the Slater Furniture Co.
The home has a living room, formal dining room — still with two original built-in corner china hutches—a small den, bathroom and kitchen on the ground floor.
The original kitchen had "modern cooking equipment," a garbage disposal and steel cabinets. The service porch included "a washer, a dryer and space for a mangle," or pressing machine.A master bedroom and bath suite, two other bedrooms and a bathroom are on the second floor.It was the first house in Fresno finished with aluminum siding.In December 1948, thousands of people toured the house for 25 cents apiece. The proceeds went to the student welfare fund of the Fresno State College Religious Conference.An April 1949 Fresno Bee story said the house was sold to fruit broker David Freedman. The Lujanos found a souvenir from another family who lived there later: 11 sets of initials written under the words "The DeYoungs — '65" on a slab of concrete in the back yard.Jerry DeYoung of Fresno said his parents, seven brothers and a sister lived in the house from 1958 to 1967. "Back then, everyone knew about Blandings' Dream House," he said. His brother, Wally DeYoung of Alamo, remembers that living in an historic house was "something special to brag about.""I mean, being able to say that people paid admission to go through our house does earn a kid bragging rights. I also remember criticizing the movie when its house design differed from ours," Wally DeYoung wrote in an e-mail.Ed Kashian of Fresno bought the home from the DeYoungs in 1967 and raised his family there for about 15 years."We put in the wainscoting, restored the shutters, built a new porch, the family room and the brick patio," Kashian said. "I think it looked more like the movie house after we restored it."The Fresno version of the dream house is not an exact copy of the house in the film. A movie poster shows Grant, Loy and their two movie daughters — played by child stars Sharyn Moffett and Connie Marshall — in front of a Colonial-style house with white siding and dark shutters similar to the Lujanos' house."We've seen the movie. It was a big mansion on top of a hill. This is a minimansion," Margaret Lujano said.Mr. Blandings' Fresno dream house still draws attention today. The Lujanos say strangers have even rung the doorbell to ask for a tour.The only downside of the house is that it's not very energy efficient. "In today's economy, it's expensive to live in an older home," Ed Lujano said.
