When it was new, the house at 1624 S. J St. made people stop just for the pleasure of looking. Florence Stang Hansen said it was one of the loveliest on the Hilltop.
In 1928, many of the neighborhood homes were built by craftsmen like her grandfather whose families would live in them. People noticed the high quality of materials Anton Stang put into his house. The family was in the plywood business and invested in the best, from beams to doors to graceful practicalities.
The cabinets were cedar. The phone lived in a cubby atop a built-in corner cupboard. The basement was roomy enough for Hansen’s grandmother to dry laundry.
Once her family finished building, they landscaped. The gardens were like a park, the lawn smooth and thick as a bowling green.
Hansen was 6 when she, her sister and their father moved into the new house with her grandparents.
“It was a good neighborhood,” Hansen recalled.
It was still a good neighborhood two decades later when the Stangs sold the home to another family, the Salatinos, who’ve had it ever since.
“It was a wonderful neighborhood full of children,” said Paula Salatino White, whose parents bought the home in 1951.
Today, St. Joseph Medical Center is the neighborhood.
All around the hospital, stores and single-family homes were gradually swallowed by medical progress.
“It was so slow and subtle, you didn’t notice it,” said Julie Salatino-Nicholson.
Ground was broken last summer at the $62 million Franciscan Medical Building at St. Joseph.
Soon, the craftsman house at 1624 S. J St. will also be gone.
A HOUSE TO GROW IN
When Hansen was growing up in the four-bedroom house, the original St. Joseph Hospital was still two blocks away.
She and her sister, Helen, had standards, and jobs. They were not allowed to read the Sunday comics until after church. They were not allowed to rent bikes and ride through the neighborhood of single-family homes until they had done their chores.
When the wood delivery man came, it was their job to toss the load into the basement bin. On Saturdays, they baked cakes and cookies for Sunday church and dinner.
Hansen had the upstairs bedroom with three small windows overlooking J Street.
Her family sold the home in 1951 to Paul and Judith Salatino. They had three daughters, Paula, Julie and Joy.
In 1998, Paula Salatino White was a hostess at Grassi’s Garden Cafe when Hansen came in for lunch. They chatted, learned first that they grew up in the same neighborhood, next that it was in the same house, finally that they both had the bedroom with three little windows overlooking the corner store where they’d both enjoyed the penny candy.
Last week, Hansen, 89, and two Salatino sisters – White, 70, and Salatino-Nicholson, 60 – sat in a St. Joseph lobby and looked across J Street at the lone house – their old house.
Like the old man’s house in the movie “Up,” it was perched on the edge of a construction site.
White had worked at the hospital. So had her mother.
As the hospital expanded over the years, officials offered to buy the house.
“We let them know that when they were ready, we were ready to make the transaction,” said Franciscan Health System spokesman Gale Robinette.
“My mom and dad always said no,” Salatino-Nicholson said. “They liked it and wanted to stay.”
‘OVERWHELMED’
There were advantages to living next to the hospital. It had good security, and the gang violence of the 1980s and early 1990s skipped their block.
Salatino-Nicholson inherited the property in 2003 and set about restoring it in honor of her parents, who loved it so.
Surrounded by a parking lot, she also liked the security.
Then, on Aug. 18, the hospital broke ground on the Franciscan Medical Building at St. Joseph. It will be five stories tall, 120,000 square feet, with a sky bridge over J Street. Its parking garage will have retail spots on the ground level along Martin Luther King Jr. Way.
“I felt overwhelmed and sad,” Nicholson-Salatino said of the prospect of living in its shadow.
She looked into moving the house. Well-built as it was, the lath and plaster interior might not fare well. It would need new wiring, new plumbing, a new chimney and a sheaf of code work.
The “Up” method of attaching balloons to the house was a no-go, as well.
“I had a reality check,” she said.
She accepted the hospital’s offer. The county assessor’s office lists the sale price at $142,000.
“It’s enough that I can get another house, very similar,” she said of her plan to build near 19th Street and Union Avenue.
THE TREASURES
The hospital team, she said, has been lovely. They have allowed her to salvage cupboards, facings, trim, even chimney brick.
“We have worked with Mrs. Nicholson and the family with respect because it is their home, and we know the importance of that to them, Robinette said. “All the little memories. It’s a treasure trove of life and memories. Think of all the times friends and neighbors have walked through the doors and shared the kitchen.”
There is one more element in the home’s story, Salatino-Nicholson said: “It is going to be a park.”
It will be a green space, with landscaping and, perhaps benches.
Once again, people will stop for the pleasure of a sweet green space. If only they could know the history built and lived on that spot.
Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/street
