By Kyle Frazier, Imagine Marin, brokered by Compass · October 16, 2026
Quick Answer
The Novato History Museum is leaving the 1850 Postmaster’s House at 815 DeLong Avenue for the Scott House at 917 Sherman Avenue, next to City Hall on the Civic Green. The Novato Historical Guild raised the full $3.2 million renovation cost from more than 140 donors, the City of Novato took construction bids in September 2026, and the Guild’s target opening is summer 2027. Until then, the museum keeps its free Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday hours, noon to 4 p.m.
In 1972, Fabian Bobo bought the lot at South Novato Boulevard and Yukon Way where the old house stood and offered it to the City on one condition: haul it away, because he planned to build a 28-unit apartment building on the site. A December 1971 newspaper item, reprinted in the Guild’s Fall 2026 Historian, called it “the oldest house in the City of Novato, probably built in the 1840s.” The City and the Guild date it to about 1850. Novato’s first postmaster, Henry F. Jones, lived there with his family from 1856. The City moved the house to 815 DeLong Avenue, volunteers renovated it, and in June 1976 it opened as the Novato History Museum. The Guild formed that November.
Fifty years later the museum is getting ready for a second move, this time a few blocks across Redwood Boulevard to the Scott House on the Civic Green. The City of Novato took construction bids in September 2026. Importantly, the Guild’s own fall calendar shows why the move matters: most of what the museum does in public already happens somewhere other than the museum.
A house that can’t hold a crowd
The DeLong Avenue museum is free. It is open Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. and closed on holidays, according to the City of Novato’s museum page. The City owns the buildings and the collections. Guild volunteers staff the museum and keep it open.
The building is also the museum’s main limit. It is a two-story 1850 cottage with no elevator or ramps, limited parking, and steep, narrow stairs. The Scott House will give the museum roughly three times the space, which means artifacts that have spent years in boxes can finally come out.
October’s calendar mostly happens off DeLong
The Guild’s fall schedule has four dated public events between now and January. Only the regular open hours take place inside the museum.
Date | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
Wed, Thu, Sat, noon–4 p.m. | Museum open hours, free | 815 DeLong Avenue |
Saturday, October 17, 10 a.m.–2 p.m. | Family History Day | Civic Green, 901 Sherman Avenue |
Thursday, October 22, 7–8:30 p.m. | Novato Speaker Series with Rosie Casals | Bill and Adele Jonas Center, 1800 Ignacio Boulevard, Building 19 |
Saturday, December 12, 10 a.m.–noon | Guild General Membership Meeting | Novato City Hall, 901 Sherman Avenue |
Thursday, January 28, 2027, 7–8:30 p.m. | Novato Speaker Series with Patrick Martin | Bill and Adele Jonas Center, 1800 Ignacio Boulevard, Building 19 |
Family History Day is the Guild’s annual look at the families who built Novato, with help for researching your own. It takes place on the Civic Green, the same block as the museum’s future home. October 17 is a Saturday, so the DeLong Avenue museum opens at noon while Family History Day is still running. You can do both in one downtown morning. The Guild keeps the current schedule on its events page.
The Rosie Casals talk is on a Thursday, which is also an open day at DeLong. The Novato Speaker Series is presented with the Rotary Clubs of Ignacio, Novato and Novato Sunrise, and it takes place across town at the Jonas Center on the College of Marin’s Indian Valley campus. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Single tickets are $30 for adults and $15 for students.
Lectures need a hall and family events need a lawn, so the Guild has been holding them wherever it can. The Guild has said it wants the Scott House to become a gathering place for lectures, performances and other events, not only a place to look at artifacts.
The Scott House was a post office, then a family’s home
The Scott House sits next to the City’s administrative buildings. In fact, it has been part of civic Novato before: it served as the town’s third post office, and A.D. Scott was Novato’s third postmaster. So the museum is moving from the first post office to the third.
After that it was a family home, and the Guild’s Fall 2026 Historian includes an oral history from those years. Bernice Busher Van Ammelrooy, who grew up in Novato, recalled that Jessie Scott sold the house to her mother for $5,000. Her mother rented the upstairs to Catherine Hulme, a teacher, and Ella Miller, a childhood friend. Every Sunday the family walked to services at the Presbyterian Church at the corner of Sherman and DeLong. Bernice’s daughter Nita remembered taking her nickel allowance to the five-and-dime on Grant Avenue for jelly beans, and a neighbor, Mr. Morrison, a retired banker, who served the girls Coke on the front porch.
That front porch is in the plans. The project calls for a rebuilt front porch, stairs and railings in keeping with the historic character of the building.
How the money came together
The financing took about three years, and most of the money came from the Guild, not the City.
- 2023. The City Council took up an exclusive negotiating agreement with the Guild and approved a structural assessment of the Scott House. The Guild paid for the assessment; the City contributed staff time.
- April 2025. The assessment, a 600-page report, put the renovation at $3.2 million, and the Guild started raising it.
- September 2025. The Guild announced a $1 million bequest from the late Charmaine Burdell, a descendant of Novato pioneers James Black and Joseph Sweetser.
- December 2025. The Guild reached its $3.2 million goal, with more than 140 donors, most of them individuals and families.
- February 10, 2026. The Novato City Council unanimously approved a capital improvement project for the Scott House and an amended agreement with the Guild. The City agreed to manage the project, waive permit fees, cover administrative costs, put money from its Brick Fund toward construction, and set aside future capital funds for long-term maintenance. The Guild contributed the first design money alongside the City’s Brick Fund share. With city administration included, Patch reported the total project at about $3.4 million. The same day, the Marin County Board of Supervisors approved a $100,000 matching grant to the Guild’s campaign.
- February 2026. The City and the Guild signed the final agreement. It gives the Guild the right to operate the museum at the Scott House for 50 years.
In exchange for those 50 years, the Guild agreed to cover the full renovation cost of a building the City owns.
What the renovation adds
The project scope addresses the same problems that limit the DeLong house:
- a limited-use/limited-application elevator, with its own hoistway and pit
- accessible entrances, routes, restrooms and site paths
- new heating, ventilation, plumbing and electrical systems, plus fire sprinklers
- repair of the building’s historic features and finishes, and protection of the historic materials that stay
- removal of remaining lead-based paint
According to the Guild’s Summer 2026 update, a building permit is the only approval still needed. Every other approval, including environmental review, has been met.
One item in the archive shows what a larger exhibit space could hold: the original 1866 federal land patent for Rancho de Novato, the U.S. government’s final confirmation of the Mexican-era grant that covers most of today’s city.
Where the schedule stands this October
The Guild’s Summer 2026 newsletter set bidding and construction to begin in summer 2026, with a grand opening in summer 2027. The City solicited construction bids in September. As of mid-October, neither the City nor the Guild has announced a contract award or a construction start date. The summer 2027 opening was set before bids came in, so it is a target, not a confirmed date.
Neither the City nor the Guild has announced plans for the DeLong Avenue house after the collection moves. For now, the Postmaster’s House keeps its regular hours. The next Wednesday, Thursday or Saturday afternoon is still a chance to see the collection in the house that has held it since 1976.
I’m Kyle Frazier with Imagine Marin, brokered by Compass. I live in Novato and have sold homes here for more than 20 years, and I follow the city’s civic projects as they move from council votes to construction. If you’d like to talk about how the changes around the Civic Green fit into your own plans in Novato, you can reach me at [email protected] or 415-350-9440.
