HOLLY HILL HOUSE

When traveling anywhere on foot throughout Avalon, many visitors will notice a victorian era type house perched on a south hill facing northing into Avalon with a pink cone roof. This is the Holly Hill House. The Holly Hill House dates back to the late 1800s and was one of the first wood framed houses to be built in Avalon and on Catalina Island.

 

The Holly Hill house was originally constructed in

in 1889 by Peter Gano. The house has a fascinaed construction story as it was built with the help of Gano's horse mercury. When construction first began for the house and the plot of land picked for its location, there was a sloping hill that led directly from the house into Avalon harbor. Mr. Gano was an engineer and devised a cable car system for bringing building supplies from the beach up to the construction site. His horse, Mercury, was trained to walk downhill, pulling a cable over a pulley at the site of the house, which was attached to a cable car. Gano would load lumber from his boat, the OSPREY on the cable car near the beach. Gano would then blow a whistle and Mercury would walk down the hill pulling the supplies up the steep hill to the house. This process lead the construction efforts to take a little over two year.

 

When the home was finished Peter Gano named the home, "Look Out Cottage". To this day there are small stones on the north wall above the main door with the engravings, "Look out Cot" . Peter Gano lived in the house until 192`. In 1929, the owners of the house were the Giddings family. It was they who changed the name of the house to the Holly Hill Housedue to the abundant Catalina holly plants in the hills around the structure. Today the house has been restored to what it looked like upon its first completion. The house is listed on the National register of Historic Places and is available for tours by the Catalina Island Museum Society during certain times of the year.

 

The house is very visible from most parts of Avalon. Those looking to get the closest view of the Holly Hill House without actually climbing up into the hills will find it when walking on the Cabrillo Mole where Pebbly Beach Road takes visitors from the main boat terminal onto Crescent Avenue.