An elegant, 140-year-old iron fence has found a new home on Eureka Heritage Society property, thanks to its members’ donations and volunteer help. The ornate fence originally surrounded a Eureka mansion that was built for Hans Heinrich Buhne in the 1880s. It is now being installed on the E Street side of the society’s Annie B.
Ryan House and Gardens at 1000 F St. The first section was installed on July 11, and President Chuck Petty reports the work should be completed by October. According to research done by Petty, the fence’s story goes back to Denmark, where Buhne was born in 1822.
At 16, he went to sea. Twelve years later, on April 14, 1850, Second Mate Buhne piloted the Laura Virginia schooner across the treacherous Humboldt bar. It was the first Euro-American ship to enter the bay.
Buhne stayed — and prospered, first as a bar pilot, then as a rancher and merchant. By 1884, he began plans to build a substantial commercial Italianate structure at Second and G streets that would be known as the Buhne Block. It still stands today.
During this decade, Buhne had his own mansion constructed on E Street between Seventh and Eighth. The result was a 13,392-square-feet masterpiece with rooms that had 14-foot-high ceilings and woodwork made from imported Circassian walnut. Outside, was the impressive fence.
Ornamental iron fences were brought to America from England during the colonial era, and they guarded only the finest houses, churches and public buildings. The earliest American versions were wrought iron, and they had a delicate, lightweight quality. By the mid-1800s, heftier cast-iron fences were being mass produced in foundries where molten metal was poured into molds patterned with plant or geometric shapes.
“The Buhne fence is actually a combination of wrought-iron and cast-iron pieces,” Petty said. “It is a very modular system with the cast-iron pieces bolted together over the wrought-iron framework. The posts that hold up the gates are entirely cast-iron.
” In 1884, this fence traveled via train from a foundry in the east to Eureka, and it stood in front of the mansion until it was demolished in 1955. It was then brought to a house near Sequoia Park, where it stood for the next 40 years. In 1998, it was bought to highlight a grand Victorian near Ferndale.
A few years later, it came back to Eureka when it was sold to the owner of an 1880s Italianate house. He sold it to the Eureka Heritage Society in 2017. Following years of fundraising, the Eureka Heritage Society has been able to have the fence professionally repaired, sandblasted and painted.
It is now as impressive as it was 140 years ago, but there is one big difference, Petty said. It was designed as a beautiful blockade. Now it is an invitation to anyone wishing to walk through the Eureka Heritage Society gardens, which are open to the public daily from dawn to dusk.
“The fence is more of an art piece now, a piece of our history,” he said, adding that it is also the latest of many efforts the 51-year-old nonprofit organization has accomplished. Over the decades, the Eureka Heritage Society goal has remained the same: to provide leadership, education and advocacy to preserve and enhance the city’s irreplaceable historic structures and neighborhoods. For more information, visit www.
eurekaheritage.com ..
