History
Located at 659 First St., the Gable Brothers, Amos and Harvey, had the home designed and built for them by Edward Carlton "Carl" Gilbert, the owner of "Gilbert & Sons", for the sum of $16,000. The home was designed as a fine example of Victorian architecture.
Gilbert published some of the plans he drew up for the Gable Mansion in California Architect and Building News, a trade journal of the American Institute of Architects's San Francisco chapter. An elevation and the first floor plan of the Gable Mansion was published in October 1887's edition of the CABN that showed similarities with another home previously published several years earlier.
The first floor plan of the Gable Mansion includes a central "stair hall" that has a curved stairway visible from the front entrance outside the home. The second story has several bedrooms and (although rumored to be a ballroom) the third story was an attic. It has since been remodeled into a living space.
During the 1970s and 1980s many Woodland residents began to restore historic residences south of Main Street. In 1972 the Gable Mansion was among these homes as Robert McWhirk purchased the property from the Gable estate and spent twenty years rehabilitating it. Today it is a California State Landmark for being an example of 19th century Victorian Italianate architecture and for being "one of the last of its style, size, and proportion in California".
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