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A curiosity on the block Photo by Jim Craven The historic Chessmore-Andrews House at Crater Lake and Minnesota avenues in Medford, which is now for sale, has long generated interest among local residents curious about the "Swansonian Institute" lettering above the front porch. Auction will sell 103-year-old home at gateway to historic area By BILL VARBLE If you go What : Estate auction When : 9 a.m. Saturday; preview at 7 a.m Where : 35 Crater Lake Ave., Medford A Saturday morning auction at the home of a convicted child molester is the latest chapter in the history of an old house at Crater Lake and Minnesota avenues in Medford. The house's last owner, Michael Verl Swanson, committed suicide Aug. 11 by hanging himself from a rafter on the porch. In February of last year, Medford police charged Swanson with two counts of third-degree sex abuse and one count of second-degree sodomy. The charges stemmed from incidents involving a boy of 12. In October 1998, Swanson was sentenced to 90 days in jail, 64 hours of community service and 10 years probation. He was ordered to pay for counseling for the boys and to have no contact with minors or consume intoxicants. The house's paint is peeling now, and the front porch is shrouded in a tangle of vines. Aralia, yucca, bracken, heavenly bamboo, rhododendrons, camellias and holly fight for space behind four skinny fan palms and a pond. A small plaque says the house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A sign above the porch proclaims the place the home of the "Swansonian Institute." Over the years the old house, the rampant vegetation, the unusual sign and some metal patio furniture on the roof prompted a number of questions about the house to the Mail Tribune. One Medford resident wrote, "I sense a mystery!" One man described Swanson as "a hermit." A reporter once went out to talk to the house's owner. A man who said he was Swanson answered the front door but refused to talk about the mysterious sign other than to say he had put the letters on the house some years earlier. Listed for $139,950, the house is advertised as having great potential and needing restoration. Originally known as the Chessmore-Andrews House, the place was built in 1896 and sits now at the entrance to the historic Geneva-Minnesota district. The original owners, the Chessmores, made some money in orchards and real estate, and the house may have been designed by W. Benet, Medford's first architect, according to historic preservation expert George Kramer. The house was bought some years later by a family named Andrews, traveling performers from Minnesota. Ed Andrews had appeared in Gilbert and Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore." The family developed Minnesota Street, which runs along the house's north side. The Andrewses moved in society circles in Medford until they tired of small-town life and pulled up stakes in the 1920s. A classified ad for the auction lists old radios, wind-up record players, clawfoot bathtubs, a humpback trunk, cargo trunks, a pump organ, a church pew, old cuckoo clocks, china, old wicker, old sleds, silver trays and other items. Swanson was born in Idaho and worked for many years at a discount store and later at a garden pond supply store. An obituary said he enjoyed gardening and collecting antiques. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA