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• Downtown Lodi Shopping
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• Hill House
• Hutchins Street Square
• Lodi Arch
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• Younger Generation
Jerry R. Tyson/News-Sentinel
The Hill House Museum is located at 826 S. Church
St.
Hill House — Lodi’s fairy tale Victorian
When Maurice Hill died in 1984, he willed his turn-of-the-century home and its contents to the people of Lodi.
He left to the city his Aunt Daisy’s curling iron and the oil lamp she used to heat it.
He left his sister Nellie’s simple camera and hand-sewn Indian costumes.
He left his father’s home-made clock cabinet, his mother’s beaded dresses and working Victrola.
He also left a spring collection of his own watercolor paintings.
Today the Hill House — a fairy tale Victorian home on South Church Street — is the city’s only local history museum.
Christmas and springtime events, run by the Hill House Committee and the Lodi Historical Society, attract a few hundred people every year.
Most Sundays, though, a trickle of curious Lodians stroll through its 4,000 square feet to see photographs and pieces of history.
George Washington Hill, a local watchmaker, designed the home for his family.
In 1902, he and his wife, Mary Hill, and their children, Nellie and Maurice, moved in.
It was built in one year by the Cary brothers, who also built the Lodi arch and the first elementary school in town.
The architecture inside the home is as intricate as it is outside.
Expensive wood doesn’t trim both sides of the interior doorways, but the painted-on grain makes it appear that way.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the house is its 10-block move.
For 46 years, it was situated on School Street across from the Post Office.
When the city changed the business district in the late 1940s, all the houses that were in the way had to move or be demolished.
So in 1948, when only Maurice Hill was still living there with his Aunt Daisy, he arranged to have the house cut in half, hauled to South Church Street, then put back together.
It had to be cut in half because it was too wide to fit down the street.
At that time, some upgrades had to be made in the heating and plumbing of the house.
Maurice Hill added a dishwasher and had an addition put on the second floor — a well-lighted studio where he could paint and practice his music.
Maurice Hill never married and had no heirs. Neither did his sister, Nellie, who died at 29 of pneumonia in 1912.
Since he lived for 84 years and was born so late in the lives of his parents (his mother was 44 and his father was 60), Maurice Hill was able to maintain the home into modern times.
It was the timing of his life and also his appreciation for history that allowed Hill House to be preserved as it is today.
Many times, when homes are converted to museums, they haven’t been lived in by the original family for decades.
Pieces of furniture have been sold or misplaced, so docents attempt to recreate the decor with other furniture from that period, said Janice Roth, chairwoman of the Hill House Committee.
That’s not the case with Hill House. Of all the house museums in the area, Hill House is distinct because of what is inside it.
The home has been open to the public since 1992.
But for most of the 20th century, it was where the Hill family lived, accumulating all the artifacts that set today under glass cases and “please do not touch” signs.
“This may be the only house museum in Central California that has the original things in it,” said Ralph Lea, director of the Lodi Historical Society. “Maurice wanted to preserve the way of life of his parents so that people in this day and age could see how they lived.”
Lea knew Maurice Hill. The men, who both loved studying the past, used to sit in the Hill House parlor and chat when the museum was still a home.
“He was writing the history of Lodi when I got to know him,” Lea said.
But Hill died before he finished.
In the years after his death, Lea and the rest of the Lodi Historical Society published snippets of Hill’s work in the historical society’s quarterly newsletter.
In addition to publishing Maurice Hill’s work, the historical society has done much to keep the house in good condition.
The society is leasing the house right now, and it pays for all the maintenance with historical society money that members either raise or receive in donations.
Since the museum opened, the society has repainted the house, added landscaping and reorganized the artifacts.
The back yard is filled with multi-colored rose bushes and the front yard is lined with fuschia azaleas.
Mary Hill loved flowers, Lea said.
Volunteers from the historical society went through hundreds of boxes when they were first involved in opening house.
Although, for the most part, the home has been preserved as it was when Maurice Hill died, the Hill House committee has taken some liberties.
The committee rearranged some of the furniture and enlarged some pictures. And it added some rather unique items from the period.
There’s an elaborate doll house in what’s called the Lodi Room.
The model house is a replica of a Victorian in Ione.
Roth picked up a thumb-sized lamp and listed its components: a nickel, glass beads, a button, a large bead, a toothpick, a bottlecap, and a swatch of lace. Another Hill House committee addition arrived in December.
It’s a grand piano from Vienna, Austria with hand-painted roses inside it.
The Hills loved music so much, Roth said, the piano fits.