Benjamin and Hilarita Lyford House, Second Empire residence in Tiburon, California.
The Benjamin and Hilarita Lyford House is a two-storey Second Empire house built in 1876, with a mansard roof and ornamental detailing typical of that style. It stands at the edge of Richardson Bay in Tiburon, California, on land that is now part of the Richardson Bay Audubon Center and Sanctuary. The building is used by the National Audubon Society.
Benjamin Lyford, a Union Army doctor born in New Hampshire and raised in Cabot, Vermont, moved to San Francisco after the Civil War and married Hilarita Reed, daughter of Irish immigrant John Reed, who held the Rancho Corte Madera del Presidio. Their Second Empire house was built in 1876 at Strawberry Point as part of Lyford's Eagle Dairy Ranch. Threatened with demolition, it was moved by barge in December 1957 to land donated by Rose Verrall, added to the National Register in 2000, and reopened in 2004 after a tree damaged the roof in 2002.
The house is named for Benjamin Lyford, a Union Army doctor from New Hampshire, and his wife Hilarita Reed, daughter of Irish immigrant John Reed, who was granted Rancho Corte Madera del Presidio. The ranch name means "the place where wood is cut for the Presidio." The building now serves as the headquarters of the Richardson Bay Audubon Center and Sanctuary, a bird refuge on the bay.
The house stands on the grounds of the Richardson Bay Audubon Center and Sanctuary, which Rose Verrall donated after living there for decades. The center occupies eleven acres along the bay in Tiburon. Because the site operates as a bird sanctuary, check at the center before walking the grounds to see which paths are open.
The house stood at Strawberry Point as part of Benjamin Lyford's Eagle Dairy Ranch before December 1957, when it was moved by barge to land owned by Rose Verrall. Verrall had lived on the eleven-acre property for decades and donated the land that became the Richardson Bay Audubon Center and Sanctuary.
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