Every house has a biography, but most aren’t interesting enough to relate. That is to say, most homes are not the Albion Schoolhouse.
The building at 3930 Albion Little River Road in Albion (Mendocino County) started out as a three-room schoolhouse for adorable wine country munchkins in 1924.
It kept on catering to kids until its eventual sale as a private home in 1995.
The buyer in that case was Bill Bottrell, a Grammy-winning record producer and songwriter noted for his work with George Harrison, Tom Petty, and Sheryl Crow.
Bottrell turned the building into a real home, but opted to keep most of the original layout.
As you can see from the archive photos, he didn’t even change that much about the facade except to put in bigger windows. The “Albion Schoolhouse” lettering remains out front to this day.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Schoolhouse then became “legendary” for its parties with Bottrell and the recording industry jet set. (There aren’t any specifics about what went on there, but you can probably fill in the blanks.)
And then in 2014 it sold again, this time not to swinging LA musicians but to Sydney Mintz, a San Francisco Rabbi, and Justine Shapiro, a documentarian.
The pair turned it into a summer home, sometimes for themselves or sometimes as an short-term rental for those looking to get away from it all for a weekend in the North Bay.
In short, we finally found the one house in all of the Bay Area that really, truly has seen it all. If these walls could talk, they would say everything.
Behind the still-quaint schoolhouse facade lies a rustic three bedroom, three bathroom (two full bathrooms and two half baths) home that Shapiro and Mintz have now listed for $1.49 million.
The only big question for potential buyers is what they’ll add to the Albion Schoolhouse legacy, already redolent with the vibes of generations of Albion schoolchildren, 20 years of show business parties, and now a brief stint as a wine country getaway.
What’s next? Our guess: circus performers. Call it a gut feeling.