The Move to the Museum

The Lopez Home will move north on Calloway Drive to Olive Drive, east on Olive Drive to Roberts Lane, south on Roberts Lane to Chester south, and enter the museum property south of the Beale Memorial Clock Tower. In preparation for the move, the home will be banded and raised on huge metal beams. Specialized trucks will then use the beams to navigate the home down streets and past a variety of obstacles. The house will be prepared for the move by day, but the actual move itself will occur in the dead of night to minimize traffic and utility impacts. Once situated over its new site at the museum, a new foundation will be formed and poured to the outline of the structure, and then the home will be lowered onto it. At that point additional research will be done to restore the home as authentically as possible in time for a 2009 dedication recognizing the 100th anniversary of the home’s construction.

The home will be situated directly across from the 1891 William A. Howell House. It will be one of the first structures seen by visitors using either our current entrance south of the Main Museum or the planned northern entrance closer to parking. The long range physical plan for the museum calls for an entrance plaza that engages visitors right away with a density of authentic historic buildings, and by this placement the Lopez/Hill home will forward this plan. The museum’s existing Adobe structure is also in close proximity to the home’s new site. The Adobe was a 1970s project of the Hispanic community and based on a typical Tejon Ranch structure. Obvious links between the home of J. J. Lopez, early manager of the Tejon Ranch and the Adobe can be made to the visiting public.

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