“I lived in the Northeast for 10 years and came to love historic architecture,” he said. “There’s not a lot available here, so I decided to build a house that would look like it had been there for 150 years.”

As he looked at ads in the back of Preservation, the magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, his eyes fell on a Gothic Revival mansion built in 1858 on a South Carolina plantation. “It was a beautiful house, so we decided to re-create it here,” he said, explaining that Gothic Revival was one of two styles popular in California 150 years ago, the other being Italianate. The Gothic was “a little bit more unique,” had “a more romantic look,” and would be “fitting in a pine forest,” he decided.

The Hinman family does not foresee living in the house full-time, at least while the children (8, 7, and 5 years old) are in school.

—RG

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