On 1/10/2014, the Californian (
visit link) reported the following story:
"Saving Steinbeck’s house
By Dave Nordstrand; 9:06 p.m. PST January 10, 2014
The volunteer group who saved and maintains Salinas’ most famous landmark, the 117-year-old Steinbeck House, is turning 40. That calls for a celebration, say members of the Valley Guild, as the group calls itself.
Maybe a spaghetti and meatball dinner should be part of the festivities, because spaghetti and meatballs was the Nobel Prize winning author’s favorite dish. Maybe a free lunch each day for a month to various customers. Plans by the guild are in progress.
Meanwhile, group members continue their daily work. Over four decades, the guild has kept the 15-room Steinbeck House, in which the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist was born Feb. 27, 1902, in pristine shape.
“The value of this house is that it’s the birthplace of John Steinbeck, and we’ve opened its doors to people world-wide who want to see where Steinbeck was born,” said Nancy Montana, a guild volunteer and spokeswoman. “At the same time, we attract visitors and money into Salinas.”
The guild bought the house at 132 Central Ave. in 1973 from the diocese of Monterey. In doing so, it saved the house. The wrecking ball had been scheduled to turn the Queen Anne-style Victorian’s sturdy timbers into piles of redwood splinters just three weeks later.
Had that happened, more apartments might have stood where the Steinbeck House sits today.
“Instead, people come from around the world because they’ve been enthralled by Steinbeck’s vivid use of the language and by the tempo of his work,” said Toni Bernardi, guild president. “We can’t let this valuable piece of history just disappear.”
Visitors arrive at the house. They come for a lunch prepared by a professional chef and served by guild members. They sit and visit in the same spaces in which Steinbeck thought and interacted with his family. The guild even retrieved items that had belonged to Steinbeck – his harmonica, his graduation ring, his silver baby spoon – items which it displays and which become part of every visitor’s experience. The guild also operates the house’s Best Cellar Gift Shop.
The visitors come from the Salinas area, of course. They come, too, from Ohio and Iowa and New York and Florida but from Germany, Japan, Denmark, Australia and most every country, Bernardi said. Slowly, reverently, they step off their tour buses. A sense of Steinbeck lingers in the rooms of the house. It radiates from the framed family wall-photos.
Emotions surface. Some visitors cry, Bernardi said. It was in the Steinbeck House, after all, that young John, a 1919 Salinas High graduate, wrote his first short stories. With a false name attached, with no return address, he’d wrap up his fledgling stories and mail them to magazines. Then he’d wait to see if they’d be published. It was in that house on Central Avenue, too, that he wrote his first books, “The Red Pony” and “Tortilla Flat.”
Preservation of all that became a possibility in 1971, when the guild was organized.
A small group of civic-minded women who shared a love of cooking and admired the freshness of valley produce had the idea to create a restaurant. Profits would go to charity. The group’s first recorded business meeting was in January 1972. The “Valley Guild,” was the name they gave themselves. The guild’s first fundraiser was a garage sale.
The women were also hunting for a location for their guild. By 1973, the Steinbeck House was on the market. The women launched a fast-paced campaign to raise the needed money. Volunteers washed cars, held raffles, cooked homemade dinners and asked for donations. A jumbo thermometer at Alisal and Main streets kept the public apprised of the progress. The guild raised over $80,000 in 49 days.By September, it was able to buy house from the owner, the diocese of Monterey. Remodeling began.
On Feb. 27, 1974, Steinbeck’s birthday, the guild opened the house to the public.
It’s obvious from scattered references that the house in which Steinbeck grew up influenced his imagination and seeped into his prose. In “East of Eden,” for example, Steinbeck described the room in which he was born as “a pleasant little bedroom.” It was, he said, “crowded with photographs, bottles of toilet water, lace pin cushions, brushes and combs and the china and silver bureau-knacks of many birthdays and Christmases.”
Steinbeck was born in the house’s master bedroom Feb. 27, 1902. The outside look of the structure crops up in “East of Eden,” too.
“On an impulse he turned off Main Street and walked up Central Avenue to number 130 …,” he wrote in that novel. “It was an immaculate and friendly house, grand enough but not pretentious, and it sat inside its white fence surrounded by its clipped lawn and roses and contoneasters lapped against its walls.”
The guild has made extensive work on the structure to include upgrading its foundation. Front and side porches have been repaired. The home has been repainted several times in colors true to the original ones.
The house has a great future, provided the public doesn’t take the effort for granted and so long as people step forward to join the ranks of volunteers, Bernardi said.
“What surprises me most is that I meet so many people from Salinas and Monterey who’ve never been to the Steinbeck House,” she said. “So one thing we’ll be doing in the future is trying to get more of the community to support us, because I just can’t imagine Salinas without this house.”
To get involved
The Valley Guild is always in need of new members. To volunteer, call The Steinbeck House at 831-424-2735. Leave name and number for the volunteer coordinator.
Volunteers agree to work eight hours a month. Volunteers can work in The Best Cellar Gift Shop in the house basement, in the kitchen with the chef, as a server or manager or in any one of several other jobs.
The Steinbeck House is open for lunch 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Reservations are required for groups and suggested for individuals.
In 1995, the house was designated a Literary Landmark. In 2000, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places."