LA CENTER — If you ever wanted to live like a 19th Century lumber baron, a retired couple in La Center has a house for you. You just have to haul it away.
Marsha and Lloyd Lytton bought their 20-acre ranch off Northeast 379th Street in La Center in 2012. On the property is a three-story home built in 1889 by Portland lumber baron Olaf B. Aagaard, who owned the West Highland and East Highland mills. His La Center property was used as a summer home.
A century later, the roughly 2,700-square-foot house is more than the Lyttons want, both in living space and in property taxes. Their plan is to install a manufactured home. Since they moved onto the property in 2014, they’ve been living in the dairy barn.
After purchasing the ranch, their real estate agent told them to bulldoze the house. But they felt bad about razing such a historic home, said Marsha Lytton, 69.
Instead, they’re giving it away. There is a catch: you have to be able to move it.
“We’re just trying to find a good home for this house,” Marsha Lytton said.
The house was listed on the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation for free or to salvage last week, as first reported by Curbed Seattle. Since then, Lytton said she’s received at least five calls from interested parties, but no serious offers as of Friday afternoon.
Chris Moore, executive director of the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation, said the nonprofit does not have an official real estate section or program.
“When we get wind of different advocacy issues that come up, we do what we can to help out,” he said. “Moving a historic home is not our first choice. Ideally, you can retain a historic structure in its original setting and incorporate that in a new development scheme or find a new use for it.”
Still, he said the trust was willing to try to help.
“We think there’s simply a value from retaining the structure from a sustainability standpoint,” he said.
Moore said the trust looks at a few factors when determining if something is of historic value, such as its architecture style, its occupants, or its architect.
He added that no trust members have been to the house to see if it’s worthy of entry onto some sort of historic registry, and there are no plans to look into it.
“This was a way to help spread the word to our audience, who are people interested in saving old structures,” he said. “It was designed to see if we could find someone interested in taking the house.”
The Lyttons are in a bit of a time crunch. They’re looking for someone to come take the house within the next two months. They’re hopeful they’ll have their new home in that same time frame. Lytton hopes the timing works out so the manufactured home can come in around the same time the historic home leaves so they can bring them through the same field on their property. Neither home will fit through the front gate or down the gravel driveway sandwiched between trees and vintage-looking lamp posts.
The Lytton’s goal is to turn their property into a working farm. Currently, they have 20 chickens, five horses, three cats, two dogs, one guinea pig and two goats, Laverne and Shirley.
If they can’t find a taker, there are a few other options. They could knock it down, or give to the fire department for burn training. Lytton reached out to the La Center Historical Museum to see if they’d want it, but the cost of moving it was too expensive and the museum had no room for it, said Judy Hickman, board member and treasurer for the museum.
Anyone interested in the house can call 360-600-4186.
