The McDonald Mansion from “Pollyanna”

I am fully aware that I have a hyperbolic nature.  I use words like “favorite,” “best,” and “most” a LOT.  Caps, too, for that matter.  I wouldn’t say that I am an exaggerator, though.  I just happen to like a lot of things.  Case in point, I have more “all-time favorite” movies than I can count on one hand.  Incredibly, two of them were shot on the same street – the idyllic McDonald Avenue in Santa Rosa.  The flicks, Disney’s 1960 family drama Pollyanna and the 1996 Wes Craven-directed horror film Scream, could not be more different, but I love them both equally – and am rather obsessed with their locations.  Though I grew up in Northern California, I somehow never stalked McDonald Avenue – until this past October, that is.  While visiting my aunt who lives in the area, I dragged practically my entire family out to see both the house where Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan) lived in Scream (a locale I will be blogging about as part of my Haunted Hollywood postings this year) and the legendary McDonald Mansion, which portrayed Aunt Polly’s (Jane Wyman) estate in Pollyanna. As you can see above, I was just a wee bit excited about the latter.

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The McDonald Mansion was originally built by San Francisco-based engineer/developer Colonel Mark McDonald in 1879.  During the 1860s, McDonald had purchased 160 acres of land in the heart of Santa Rosa and began subdividing and developing it, naming the new neighborhood “McDonald’s Addition.”  His spectacular 14,000-square-foot Stick/Eastlake-style estate became the cornerstone of the upscale community.  Mark, his wife, Ralphine, and their children utilized the home, which they dubbed “Mableton,” as a summer residence.  You can see what the property looked like in its early days here.

Mark and Ralphine passed away in 1917 and 1918, respectively, whereupon their oldest son, Mark L. McDonald Jr., and his wife, Isabelle, inherited the manse and set about extensively renovating it to their own style.  Sadly, the exterior was stripped of all of its intricate detailing and became virtually unrecognizable – and rather dull.  You can see what it looked like here.  The couple lived on the premises full time until Mark’s death in 1932, at which point Isabelle moved to an apartment in San Francisco, only spending summers at Mableton.  When she passed away in 1960, the estate was bequeathed to her only surviving child, Marcia, who rarely visited the residence and left it to deteriorate.  Upon her passing in 1971, the property was deeded to both the University of Southern California and Stanford University.  The schools ultimately offered to sell the home to the City of Santa Rosa.

Shockingly, and with no apparent regard for its history, the city made plans to tear the mansion down and build condominiums in its place.  Thankfully, a pathologist named Dr. Jack Leissring stepped in and purchased the home in 1974, saving it from the wrecking ball.  He immediately began restoring the estate to its original grandeur, but disaster struck in 1977 when, while Jack and fellow workers were stripping paint with a torch, a fire broke out completely gutting the residence.  A stalwart Leissring decided to rebuild and ultimately spent the next 19 months doing so.  You can read about his painstaking efforts here and here.   Of the process, he says, “The house was completely stripped of its plaster and lath, all of the bricks from the four chimneys were removed and re-used for walkways and pillars, the redwood sheathing was made into the molding for the house – I designed the knives for the molding cutter.  Thus, the crown molding, base molding, casing molding was made entirely of the original materials of the house.  Most of the dentil details were rotted or broken.  During a rainy winter, I cut-out every one of those pieces that decorate the house.  I reconstructed the railings as well, also using the materials native to the house.  This reconstruction was completely, or almost completely a work both of love and of homage to the historic nature of the materials.  This is my understanding of what historic restoration means.”  I wholeheartedly agree, Jack!  You can see the result of his work here.

Though the exterior of Mableton is ornate and lavish, its original interior was rather drab.  As Jack explains on his website, “I wish to point out just how ugly this house was inside.  To call this house a mansion was a misnomer.  It had been the summer residence of the McDonalds and was very meanly built – the second story was made of single board walls.  The only graceful aspect of the house was the exterior.”  You can check out some photographs of the property’s interior, with it’s “dark, over-bearing walls and décor,” here.  Jack was not being demeaning in his description – the original inside of the dwelling looked more like a barn than a home!

In 2005, Leissring sold the McDonald Mansion to Telecom Valley entrepreneur John Webley and his wife, Jennifer.  The couple decided to take Jack’s work even further and spent the next five years renovating the property, along with architect Stephen Rynerson and design historian Paul Duchscherer.  During the restoration, the exterior of the home was brought back to its 1879 self and the interior was completely gutted and re-designed in a Victorian style.  Sadly, Leissring is not a fan of the final product.  On his website, he states, “The subsequent buyers, to whom I sold the house in 2005, who had much too much money, completely remade the house with new materials, and it now looks like a Disneyland display.  Sigh.”  I think it is gorgeous, though.  The interior is now everything one would expect the inside of a grand Victorian mansion to be – stained glass ceilings, inlaid flooring, rich woodwork, and a library befitting the Beast from Beauty and the Beast.  (In Jack’s defense, the Main Hall is very Tower-of-Terror-esque.  But I love it.)  You can see some photographs of the finished home here, here, and here.

The McDonald Mansion was used extensively in Pollyanna.  As you can see below, though, the dwelling looked quite a bit different in the movie due to the fact that a matte painting was added to the roofline in order to make the property appear larger than it actually is.

Despite the matte painting and the many renovations that have taken place since Pollyanna was shot in 1960, the McDonald Mansion is still recognizable from its onscreen appearance.

Only the exterior of the home and its extensive grounds were used in the filming.

The inside of Polly’s mansion was an elaborately-built studio set.  Ironically – and in a case of life imitating art – it very much resembles the current, rebuilt interior of the McDonald Mansion.  So I guess the property has truly come full circle.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: The McDonald Mansion from Pollyanna is located at 1015 McDonald Avenue in Santa Rosa.  The Newton home from the 1943 Alfred Hitchcock thriller Shadow of a Doubt is located a block away at 904 McDonald Avenue.  [The kitchen of that residence was also used as Tatum Riley’s (Rose McGowan) kitchen in Scream.]  And the Newton house from the 1991 made-for-television Shadow of a Doubt remake is located across the street from the property used in the original at 815 McDonald Avenue.