Historic Benicia: Frisbie-Walsh House - Marker 18

Right up the street from Wellington is the house with perhaps the most historic significance of any house in Benicia - known as the Frisbie-Walsh house. John Frisbie was General Vallejo's son-in-law. He had this house built in Benicia in the 1850s. It was a "pre-fab." The timber was cut and numbered, then shipped to Benicia. Captain Walsh actually lived in this house until 1880.The two photos above were courtesy of the MLS. This house sold two years ago. It was starting to get a reno when we moved into Wellington, but things seemed to be on hold until just a few months ago, when renovation began in earnest.

I first talked about the Frisbie-Walsh house on January 12th in this post.


The pic below was taken on June 12th, right after they finished replacing some siding that had visible dry rot.The three photos below were taken today. The chimneys were repaired a couple of months ago, then the new roof went on - just like the old one. Now they've finished the siding, primed everything and painted the house a bright yellow - probably the original color. They've also done a great reno job on the detached garage. You can see it from the alley. The Benicia Historic Society has a lot to say about renovations of historic homes, and I'm sure they wanted this one to be as true to the original as possible.The black and whites below are old photos taken from the Library of Congress. You can see that the neighboring properties were not built at the time these photos were taken. Other than that, not much has changed with this house. I got the photos here , the Library of Congress (dot) Gov site. This is the entry on the Frisbie-Walsh house in particular.