Photo: compass.com
In 1997, artist and preservationist Karen Groebli walked into a boarded-up, condemned Victorian mansion in San Diego’s Bankers Hill neighborhood and saw potential where others saw only ruin. She bought the 1888 Broderick–Kenny House for $188,500 and spent the next eight years meticulously restoring it, filling the home with more than 30 chandeliers, a hidden speakeasy, and kitchen columns salvaged from the set of James Cameron’s Titanic, according to reporting by Hoodline and local real estate coverage. Now listed for $4.5 million, the house blends historic landmark status with cinematic flair and modern luxury, standing as one of the most unusual entries in San Diego’s current historic home market. The Broderick–Kenny House at 2133 2nd Ave. was built during San Diego’s late-19th-century real estate boom and once housed the city’s first music school. Despite the damage, she felt an immediate connection, shaped in part by childhood visits to a modest Victorian her great-grandfather built by hand in Northern California in 1903.
As she later told Homes.com, the plaster was hanging from the walls, original gas lines dangled from the ceiling, broken windows littered the floors and the interior was filled with trash. “It was just an immediate attraction,” she said. “I basically would haunt all the local salvage and antique stores,” she said, as per the report. “The minute I saw those four columns, I just imagined them in the kitchen, and they turned out really cool,” she said. Because the columns had been underwater with the set, they required extensive restoration and “tons of sanding,” but they now stand as a centrepiece of the kitchen. “That’s what makes it so special,” Dunlap said.
It even featured one of the city’s earliest residential water-pressure elevators, which Groebli later restored and reimagined using an antique cab and scissor gates. “We needed each other. Over eight years, she lived and breathed the restoration, hand-sourcing era-specific furniture and decor with a clear plan for each room. “I had a notebook where I kept a reference of everything. If I bought a chandelier, I’d note that it was going in bedroom two, and then I’d know I still needed one for bedroom four. That method led to some of the home’s most talked-about features. Four decorative columns in the kitchen were salvaged from the set of Titanic, where they were built as exact replicas of the ocean liner’s actual first-class dining room columns. Groebli learned about them through her car mechanic, whose wife was an extra in the film and knew someone selling set pieces. Victorians are relatively rare in San Diego, with only about two selling in a typical year, and even fewer in urban neighborhoods like Bankers Hill.
