The property consists of a two-story, 8-room farmhouse on a 5.25-acre apricot orchard. With only one gable, the home is called Grey Gable. (The original farmhouse is still there – It comprises the eastern third of the current South Hall building, facing Grand Avenue.)

Alee Barbee Sanford moves to Ojai from Connecticut to join the Krotona Theosophical colony. Sanford, an heiress, dreams of building a cultural center and residence for working teachers.

Eventually, she settles on Grey Gable as the site for her project.

Sanford purchases the property and, in 1946, begins renovations. She expands the old farmhouse, which adds two more gables to the front of the building. She renames the property Grey Gables.

She also begins construction of a new, three-story North Hall. It features many new gables and Ojai’s first elevator.

Construction is complete. In addition to North and South halls, Sanford has added a six-room structure, Sycamore Lodge.  She designs the buildings in a charming European style with multiple gables. Other features include a music room, dining hall, library, lounge, performance hall, terraces, and lanais. She intends to provide her teachers with plentiful cultural amenities and free them from daily chores such as cooking and cleaning. The property is also a community center, hosting meetings, cultural events, and fundraisers. It hosts the offices of the new Ojai Music Festival, and the festival’s first Patrons Concert is held there. But, although Sanford’s apartments and services are free to teachers, many of them feel that life at Grey Gables is too constricting, and they move out.

Sanford loses money and sells off Sycamore Lodge to pay debts. It becomes an independent motor lodge with a swimming pool under separate ownership.

Grey Gables is placed into foreclosure and put on the market. The property is discovered one day by Dr. Ethel Percy Andrus, founder of the National Retired Teachers Association (NRTA). She is searching for a place to create her vision of an innovative, experimental retirement community for NRTA members. She wants to do for retired teachers what Sanford had dreamed of doing for working teachers. Dr. Andrus intends to create a model for a new kind of retirement—living with independence, dignity, and purpose.

Dr. Andrus purchases Grey Gables after Sycamore Lodge (and its new swimming pool) is reattached to the property. Santa Barbara architect William Wade begins creating a master plan for the Grey Gables property that calls for remodeling the North and South Halls and constructing several modern cottages on the north and west sides of the property.

Dr. Andrus convinces Leonard Davis, an insurance broker from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to create a health insurance policy for her Grey Gables residents and other NRTA members. This was a historic moment: At the time, no one thought health insurance for older adults was financially possible. Dr. Andrus felt that, with proper medical care, retirees could live a whole new chapter of life. Her groundbreaking health insurance will pave the way for Medicare nine years later.

Dr. Andrus founds the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) to make NRTA-style health insurance available to all retirees, not just teachers. AARP is run out of NRTA’s Ojai offices near Grey Gables.

AARP’s new flagship magazine, Modern Maturity, is edited and published by Grey Gables. It eventually becomes one of the largest-circulation publications in America. Also in 1959, The Acacias nursing home is built on the southwest corner of Montgomery Street and Grand Avenue, right across the street from Grey Gables. It’s one of the first true skilled-nursing homes based on gerontological research, offering not just palliative care but recovery. Later additions to The Acacias will double its size and add the Andrus Apartments (assisted living residences).

NRTA-AARP headquarters moves to Long Beach, although membership services and publications remain in Ojai for a few more years. Although often traveling and working out AARP’s Washington DC offices, Dr. Andrus maintains her official residence at Grey Gables.

The Andrus Apartments open, one of America’s first “assisted living” facilities.

Dr. Ethel Percy Andrus dies in Long Beach and is interred at Ivy Lawn Cemetery in Ventura. AARP membership reaches 1.2 million. (As of 2023, it totals 38 million.)

NRTA and AARP merge into one organization, with NRTA a department of AARP.

AARP divests itself from Grey Gables, which becomes an independent, non-profit retirement home with financial support from AARP. It is now open to all older people, not just retired teachers.

Grey Gables is sold to The Parsons Group Ltd., which changes its name to The Gables of Ojai. It is still going strong as of 2023.