Ginny Pfluger, executive director for the center, the nuns just don't have any money to put into the house. The LGMA is racing to beat the deadline, but the hard part will be having to come up with more than a half-million dollars, executive director Beverly Pvarnick says. Pvarnick submitted a grant proposal for that amount to the county Historic Preservation Commission on Nov. 30, and says she's scheduled a meeting with town manager Dave Knapp to discuss the LGMA's options. The house is in an unincorporated area of Santa Clara County. If the LGMA can get the money to save the house, the best option, Pvarnick says, will be to dismantle it and move it, possibly to the Forbes Mill Museum site.
Nobody has any documentation.
According to Boutelle, the house was most likely built sometime in 1906 or 1907 for a San Francisco doctor, Lloyd Tevis, whose estate was just up the road from the current Presentation Center. Tevis had five other houses on the now-subdivided estate that were confirmed Morgan designs, but the house at the Presentation Center was moved there when the estate changed hands. And no records were ever kept. Part of the blame for the house's uncertain origins lies with Morgan herself, who ordered most of her records, sketches and blueprints for 768 homes and buildings burned before her death in 1957. Pvarnick says she wants the house saved because it's a significant contribution to the history and architectural history of the area, in part because the Junior Statesmen of America was founded in the house.