 Catharine Bettner’s motivations in building a new home were perhaps twofold. First, the old house bore the sadness of a lost husband and son. Second, she was determined to have a showplace.
Her new house was designed in the Queen Anne Victorian style by architect John A. Walls, of the prestigious Los Angeles firm of Morgan and Walls, and was located on Magnolia Avenue, then Riverside's most scenic thoroughfare.
While still under construction, the Riverside Daily Press predicted that it would be one of the city's most elegant houses. The construction cost was $10,755.
Catharine Bettner died in 1928, aged 82. Her son, Robert, owned her house for the next ten years, during which time it was variously rented or vacant. In 1938, after her parents' death, Robert's daughter, Dorothy Fullerton, sold her grandmother's house and some of its original furniture to Mr. and Mrs. Daniel M. MacDavid. Mr. MacDavid had enjoyed sudden wealth in 1922 when a good oil well was drilled on property that he owned in Long Beach. It was his wife, Rena, who, in 1969, ultimately sold the house for $65,000 to serve as a museum depicting nineteenth-century Riverside lifestyles.
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