The Campbell Reporter

Community

History is restored 300 miles from home

By Beth Hobbs

In 2000, Campbell resident Carolyn Eichin met her future husband, Chris, while she was working for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority. Chris is an expert in electrical light rail systems and he had emigrated from Switzerland in 1983. He became the VTA operations manager for engineering. The two fell in love and were married.

Four years later, they fell in love again, but this time with a worn-down house in Nevada.

"We saw this house on the Internet and fell in love with it," Carolyn Eichin says.

The house was a dilapidated but still charming Victorian built in 1875.

Chris Eichin had always wanted to build a house, and Carolyn Eichin was a history major in college. Combining their two interests, the couple thought the house would be a great project.

"It seemed like the right thing to do," she says.

There was one minor problem--the house was nearly 300 miles away in Virginia City, Nev., located on the site of the famous Comstock silver lode that created millionaires overnight.

And history is deep in Carolyn Eichin's roots. Her great-grandfather was an Iowa nurseryman who moved to Campbell in 1894. He built a beautiful Queen Anne Victorian home on the corner of Grant Street and Harrison Avenue, Eichin says.

Albert Williams and his wife, Eliza, sold fruit trees to the local orchards. Their son, Worthin Williams, was a partner in the Blaine-Williams photography studio in the early 1900s. Many of the historic photos in Campbell's public buildings were taken by the duo. Photos of the house are now owned by the Campbell Historical Museum.

"I never got to see the interior of my great-grandparents' home in Campbell. It burned down in 1958," Carolyn Eichin says.

She did discover a hidden gem in the interior of the B Street House the couple purchased in Virginia City.

Built by Henry Piper, owner of Piper's Opera House, which still stands a half-block away, the home later became a boarding house and was eventually sold to a woman who intended to turn it into a museum. Following a car accident, she closed the house and left it vacant for 20 years.

Copying a 1908 photo of the house, the Eichins carefully deconstructed the dwelling piece by piece, so that they could bring it back to as much of its original state as possible. While removing the old sheetrock that covered the plaster and lath, the couple discovered beautiful silver and gold damask print wallpaper.

Eichin says, "It speaks to the knowledge the original owners must have had that their fortunes were tied to the great Comstock Lode beneath their feet."

The tongue and groove floor of the home was constructed with green wood that had shrunk over the years. Chris Eichin carefully made small pieces of wood, using the lathe in his Campbell workshop, to fill in the gaps.

It took three years and thousands of commuting miles from Campbell to Nevada to restore the home with its charming bay window and gingerbread trimback to its former glory.

Chris Eichin even replicated the windows to their original 1876 style. No detail was too small as the Eichins restored the home into a bed and breakfast.

The renovations include three guest bedrooms with private baths, all upstairs. One room is named for newspaperman Sam Davis, an 1878 guest, and features a picturesque 100-mile view from the east window.

Another room is decorated in Nevada sage green and named for the V&T Railroad. The middle room is named Uncle Henry's Room, a joke on the fact that Henry Piper hired his relatives as bartenders for his saloon. Carolyn Eichin also had an Uncle Henry who lived in Campbell from the 1940s through the 1960s. An 1897 Blaine-Williams photo of Uncle Henry graces the wall of the guestroom, bringing a little bit of the Orchard City to Nevada.

For information about the B Street House, contact Chris and Carolyn Eichin at 775.847.7231 or visit www.BstreetHouse.com.