The historic mansion at 2911 Russell St. in Berkeley — for decades the home of the Judah L. Magnes Museum — will soon be up for sale.
Realtors estimate the house will be on the market by the middle of April at a listing price of approximately $3 million.
“Once sold, that money will be used to renovate our new facility on Allston Way,” said Alla Efimova, chief curator and executive director of the Magnes Museum. Staffers expect that the Russell Street sale (along with the 2009 sale of a building on Harold Way) and other capital campaign pledges should cover the cost of the renovation.
The new building will be owned by the Magnes’ legacy organization, the Magnes Museum Foundation. About 10,000 works of art and artifacts will be on display once the renovation is completed in spring 2011.
“The Magnes … will be a unit operated by U.C. Berkeley, and fundraising will be done jointly by the foundation and U.C. Berkeley,” Efimova said.
Magnes will lease the building to U.C. Berkeley for one dollar per year for 60 years. What happens thereafter is not yet known.
The art and artifacts displayed in the Allston Way location will be managed by U.C. Berkeley. All rare books and the archives of the Magnes’ Western Jewish History Center will become a part of the university’s Bancroft Library.
While the collection will become part of U.C. Berkeley, key Magnes employees most likely will be employed by the university to oversee parts of the collection, said Frances Dinkelspiel, president of the Magnes.
“We’re not just going to give this to U.C. We have to handle to collection, manage it, take care of it — that’s the grand plan,” she said.
At 18,000 square feet, the new facility will be more than twice the size of the Russell Street location, finally allowing the Magnes to offer sizeable public programs and display a much larger proportion of its collection.
“I’m excited that the Magnes will finally … be accessible and have visibility, a public presence, which has been the challenge the museum has tried to solve for the last 15 years,” Effimova said. “Our other challenge was to ensure a sustainable operating model,” and joining forces with U.C. Berkeley has solved both issues, she said.
The Magnes is finalizing a number of agreements with the university. By June, all of the museum’s collections and archives will be moved out of the English Manor-style home on Russell Street.
The four-story, 8,500-square-foot structure stands on half an acre in the Elmwood-Claremont district of Berkeley. It was built in 1908 for Jeremiah Burke, a tax attorney for the Southern Pacific Railroad, and his wife, Elizabeth.
John McLaren, who designed San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, is believed to have landscaped the grounds, which feature palms, redwoods, fruit trees, camellias, rhododendrons, ferns and roses.
The Burke family sold it in 1921 to the Quinan family, who sold it to the museum in 1966.
The Magnes converted it from a single-family home to a museum-friendly facility. Gallery space replaced the kitchen. The basement was outfitted with a special cooling system that kept rare books safe from moisture and humidity. An addition was built to connect the carriage house to the main residence.
Realtors Georgia Cornell and Nancy Rothman of Pacific Union International Real Estate are trying to restore the interior of the home — taking down museum walls and panels that blocked windows — so potential buyers “will be able to see how they can live in this property again,” Rothman said.
“We think that the buyer of this property is someone who will convert it back to a single-family residence with a guest house,” she added.