Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutHIST-0701-2019 (858 Toro) - Latimer House Master List Application 1 Master List Application Virginia Levering Latimer House 858 Toro Street Contents Summary Conclusion of Eligibility under Master List Criteria 2 Timeline 2 Subdivision of the Property and Construction of the Latimer House 3 Period of Significance 4 The Latimer Family in California 4 Italianate Architecture in America 6 Eligibility under Master List Criteria: Architectural Significance 8 Embodiment of Italianate Architecture 8 Integrity 11 Coda: The Social Nature of the Latimer House 15 The Latimer House in Souvenir of San Luis Obispo, San Luis Obispo Fire Department, 1904 2 Summary Conclusion of Eligibility under Master List Criteria The Virginia Levering Latimer House at 858 Toro Street in the Mill Street Historic District was added to the Contributing List of Historic Resources in 1983. Its late Italianate architecture, however, has a high degree of stylistic unity and elaboration, and it retains remarkable integrity in all seven aspects of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association (Historic Preservation Ordinance 14.01.070). Hence it is eligible for San Luis Obispo’s Master List of Historic Resources as “one of the most unique and important historic resources and properties in terms of … architectural … significance” (Historic Preservation Program Guidelines 5.5.33). Italianate architecture has few but notable surviving examples in San Luis Obispo, whose Master List Italianate resources include the Hays-Latimer Adobe, whose wood outer structure was in place by 1865; the circa 1875 Dana-Parsons House; the reconstructed façade of the circa 1875 Sauer Bakery; the 1878 Jack House and Jack Wash House; and the pre-1886 Manderscheid House. The Virginia Latimer House rivals and in many respects surpasses these in its embodiment of the American Italianate style. Contributing List Italianate resources tend to be those with significant loss of integrity (e.g., 651 Buchon, whose porch has been partially enclosed; 1415 Nipomo, which has had railings added to its ground floor entry porch and a balcony to the porch’s roof; and 1208 Palm, whose street façade bay window and porch have been largely removed). The Virginia Levering Latimer House’s prominent corner location was the site of San Luis Obispo’s second Protestant church—the “Glover Chapel” of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South—dedicated in October 1873, a few days before St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church. The Latimer House that replaced it has served as a prominent architectural symbol of middle-class aspiration and reward in this world for over 130 years and is a long overdue addition to the city’s Master List of Historic Resources. Submitted on behalf of owners Eric and Jacqueline Blair by James Papp, Historicities LLC, Historian and Architectural Historian, Secretary of the Interior Professional Qualification Standards Timeline 1873 Oct. 5 The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, originally meeting in the old adobe courthouse, dedicates a new church, days before the dedication of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, at the southeast corner of Toro and Mill Streets 1878 Virginia Levering Latimer’s eldest son, B. G. Latimer, Jr., moves to San Luis Obispo to train as a pharmacist under A. R. Booth 1886 June Virginia Levering Latimer, whose husband has a ranch in Campbell, Santa Clara County, is widowed 1887 Apr. 14 John Wesley Allen, pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in San Luis Obispo, deeds lot 1, block 38 to E. H. Crawford for $2,500 1887 Sep. 2 E. H. and Mary Crawford deed the western half of lot 1, block 38 to B. G. Latimer for $2,500 3 1888 Sep. 18 The Tribune prints notice of B. G. Latimer deeding “part of lot 1 b 38” to V. S. Latimer (sic) 1891 The footprint of the house at 858 Toro Street, almost entirely in its current form, appears on the San Luis Obispo Sanborn map, which previously did not include this section of town 1904 A photograph of the residence of Mrs. V. L. Latimer appears in Souvenir of San Luis Obispo 1907 Virginia Levering Latimer dies at 858 Toro Street, where she was living with her daughter Eva Garrison, her son-in-law Dr. D. M. Garrison, and her grandson Earle Garrison 1913 Feb. 7 The Telegram announces the Garrison property at the corner of Mill and Toro has been sold that morning to L. C. Bell, who intends to build two modern cottages on the Toro frontage 1925 Mar. 30 Permits for the houses at 862 and 872 Toro Street, estimated to cost $2,500 each, are issued to L. C. Bell Subdivision of the Property and Construction of the House Detail of E. S. Glover’s 1877 Bird’s Eye View of San Luis Obispo, showing the building of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, built 1873, at the southeast corner of Toro and Mill, with the Courthouse School on the next block. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South was a slavery-tolerating breakaway faction of Methodism, created in 1844 in a dispute with the national church over a slave-owning Georgia bishop. The Reverend M. W. Glover founded a branch in San Luis Obispo in November 1872 with services at the old adobe courthouse, but by October 1873 the congregation had built a church north of the new courthouse “on the elevated land of that neighborhood.”1 1. Myron Angel, History of San Luis Obispo County, California (Oakland: Thompson and West, 1883), p. 283; E. S. Glover, Bird’s Eye View of San Luis Obispo, Cal. (San Francisco, Bancroft, 1877). 4 E. S. Glover’s 1877 engraving Bird’s Eye View of San Luis Obispo, Cal. shows the church at the southeast corner of Mill and Toro Streets. (It is keyed with a 9 in the engraving, hovering directly if indistinctly to the right in the accompanying detail). San Luis Obispo’s Tribune referred to the Glover Chapel—as the church building, after its founder, was known—through 1884; from 1888 the Tribune referred to the MEC,S church on Marsh Street. In April 1887, the Rev. John Wesley Allen, pastor of the church, deeded E. H. Crawford—who, with his wife Mary, was a substantial investor in county properties—lot 1 of block 38 in the City of San Luis Obispo, the location of the Glover Chapel. The price was $2,500, according to the deed transfer. It is unclear whether the chapel had been demolished, was to be demolished by the Crawfords, or was moved to a new location. Lot 1 comprised one sixth of the block at the southeast corner of Mill and Toro Streets: a third of the block’s Mill Street frontage and half of its Toro Street frontage. Eventually Lot 1 would be divided into 858, 862, and 872 Toro Street and 1217 Mill Street. Four and a half months after the Crawfords bought the property, they deeded the west half of the lot to B.G. Latimer for $2,500. A year later, in September 1888, B. G. Latimer deeded that half to his mother Virginia for $10, which may have been a symbolic sum intended to obscure the amount of the transaction. Given that the Crawfords’ price for half of lot 1 was the same as what they paid for the whole lot twenty weeks earlier, it seems likely that they improved it with the late Italianate cottage whose footprint shows up in the 1891 Sanborn map, whose photograph is in the 1904 Souvenir of San Luis Obispo, and that stands at the same corner today. It is possible, however, that B. G. Latimer built the house for his mother or that she built it for herself. Virginia Latimer was certainly the first person documented to own the house and live there, which she did for a substantial period of time, having acquired the property in 1888 and died in the house, according to the San Luis Obispo Telegram, in 1907. Thus it is appropriate to refer to 858 Toro Street as the Virginia Levering Latimer House. By the 1900 US Census her daughter Eva, son-in-law Dr. D. M. Garrison, and grandson Earle were also living there. The Garrisons sold the house in 1913. Period of Significance The period of significance of the Latimer House reasonably extends from its construction circa 1887 through the end of the immediate family’s occupancy in 1913. This includes the 1891 and 1905 Sanborn maps that document the addition of the lean-to at the northeast, no-street façade and the 1904 Souvenir photograph that documents the house’s early and presumably original street-facing architecture. The Latimer Family in California Though the Virginia Levering Latimer House is significant for its architecture rather than association with an historic person or event, it is revealing of early California history to see how the house came to be built where it did. Virginia Levering Latimer was born in Virginia in 1826 and died in San Luis Obispo in 1907. According to Maryland records, Virginia Levering married Benjamin Griffith Latimer in Baltimore in December 1850. In 1860 the US Census shows them in San Francisco with four children and a white female servant, with their eldest child, 9, having been born in 5 Maryland and their next eldest, 7, in California. Advertisements in the Baltimore American and Commercial Daily Advertiser as early as September 1850 show B. G. Latimer partnered with Gabriel Winter in San Francisco as commission merchants. The California State Census of 1852 shows him living in San Francisco. Their eldest child, B. G. Latimer, Jr., claimed to have come west at the age of two with father, mother, and two female slaves, these last a gift from Virginia Levering’s anti-slavery father, who wanted them to gain their freedom in California.2 By the time of the 1870 census, the family was living in rural Santa Clara, where B. G. Latimer acquired a ranch. Latimer Avenue in Campbell, now a suburb of Santa Clara and San Jose, is named after the family. B. G. Latimer died, as reported by a San Jose newspaper, in 1886 and was buried nearby.3 In the meantime, in 1878, B. G. Latimer, Jr. had moved to San Luis Obispo to clerk under the pharmacist A. R. Booth (ibid.), who had recently purchased the Eagle Drug Store here. Booth was born in Michigan, according to the census, and there was an A. R. Booth prospecting at Loon Creek, Idaho, in 1871 and an A. R. Booth who was co-owner of a drug store in Silver City, Idaho in 1875.4 He was buried in Santa Clara County, which suggests he had connection there that led to his meeting with B. G. Latimer, Jr. By 1881 Latimer was a partner in Booth and Latimer, taking over as sole proprietor in 1900, when Booth relocated to Paso Robles. Until 1902 Booth owned a house, dating before 1886, on a large lot at the corner of Toro and Palm (lot 4, block 38). In 1887, a year after B. G. Latimer’s mother Virginia was widowed, Latimer purchased the lot at Toro and Mill Streets adjacent to his partner’s property. A year later he deeded it to his mother.5 Benjamin and Virginia Latimer’s fifth and youngest child, Eva, married San Luis Obispo dentist Dr. Daniel M. Garrison in 1893. By the time of the 1900 census, Virginia Latimer, the Garrisons, and their son Earle were all living at 858 Toro Street. In 1903, B. G. Latimer, Jr. and his wife Helen purchased the adobe at 642 Monterey Street, now known as the Hays- Latimer Adobe. The Garrisons were still living at 858 Toro when Virginia died in 1907. In 1913 they sold the property of L. C. Bell, proprietor of the St. James Hotel on Monterey Street. The historic permit database of Cal Poly Special Collections and Archives shows that L. C. and Julia Bell filed permits for these in March 1925, with contractor H. B. Rogers, and Telegram reports and advertisements show them occupied shortly thereafter. 2. Evelyn Hansen, “Once They Sold Drugs,” San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram, 9 Oct. 1935, pp. 1, 8. 3. “Deaths,” San Jose Evening News, 16 June 1886. 4. Announcement, Idaho Statesman, 23 Sep. 1871; advertisement for South Mountain Drug Store, Owyhee Daily Avalanche, 17 Apr.–30 Sep. 1875. 5. “Deeds,” San Luis Obispo Morning Tribune, 18 Sep. 1888. 6 Italianate Architecture in America The Virginia Latimer house embodies the Italianate style, which was intended in its various forms to evoke the Italian Renaissance and Baroque. Introduced by architect John Nash in England in 1802 in the country villa Cronkhill,6 the Italianate style was elaborated in major English country houses of the 1830s and 1840s, prominently including Queen Victoria’s Osborne House (1845–51) on the Isle of Wight, designed by Prince Albert. Alexander Jackson Davis popularized Italianate architecture in the United States through his designs, including additions to Blandwood at Greenboro, North Carolina, in 1844, thought to be the earliest Italianate structure in the United States, though the Metropolitan Museum of Art has Davis’s 1836 design for an Italianate villa for James Smillie at Rondout, New York7 that was never completed.8 The style had an airiness and shadiness suited to Alexander Jackson Davis’s unexecuted 1836 design for an Italianate villa at Rondout, Metropolitan Museum of Art many American climates, an informality and irregularity suited to American life, and a bit of historicist pomposity suited to our national sense of self-importance. As Davis’s younger partner Andrew Jackson Downing pointed out in 1850, 6. Historic England, Cronkhill, Details: historicengland.org.uk. Accessed 19 June 2019. 7. Amelia Peck, ed., Alexander Jackson Davis, American Architect, 1803—1892 (New York: Rizzoli, 1992), color plate 11. 8. John Thorn, “Alexander Jackson Davis, Picturesque American,” [Hudson River]: hudsonriverbracked.blogspot.com. Accessed 19 June 2019. 7 Originally adapted to the manifestation of social life in a climate almost the counterpart of that of the middle and southern portions of our country—at least so far as relates to eight months of the year—it is made to conform exactly to our tastes and habits with, perhaps, less alteration than any other style. Its broad roofs, ample verandas, and arcades are especially agreeable in our summers of dazzling sunshine, and […] it has much to render it a favorite in the middle and western sections of our Union.9 In addition, the “style is one that expresses not wholly the spirit of country life nor of town life but something between both and that is a mingling of both” (286). In other words, it was appropriate for our expanding suburbs, like the northeastern elevation of San Luis Obispo. Finally, because of its asymmetry, “it permits additions, wings, etc., with the greatest facility and always with increasing effect,” a practical feature for Americans with growing families and growing wealth. The style moved from country houses and suburban villas to urban townhouses and commercial and public buildings. Though Italianate architecture reached its height in the United States in the 1850s through 1870s, it had an “enduring hold” and was “still fashionable in rural communities” through the 1880s.10 Indeed, San Luis Obispo’s 1902 Fitzgerald House at Chorro and Buchon Streets is essentially Italianate in its proportions, architectural conventions like its flat-roofed front porch and square and semi-hexagonal bays, decorative elements like its nonfunctional balustrade and neo-baroque corbels, and asymmetry. Downing wrote in 1850 that “the leading features of this style are familiar to most of our readers.” Roofs rather flat, and projecting upon brackets or cantilevers; windows of various forms, but with massive dressings, frequently running into the round arch when the opening is an important one […]; arcades supported on arches or verandas with simple columns (ibid.) To add to Downing’s list, the characteristics of Italianate architecture include • low hip roofs, though broad gables are often also present • occasional classical pediments • decorative roof balustrades or “widow’s walks” • wide eaves incorporating a cornice supported by curved and sculptural corbels issuing from a frieze • in wood, horizontal siding, usually shiplap • horizontal wall banding, molding panels, and quoining or corner boards 9. Andrew Jackson Downing, The Architecture of Country Houses (New York: Dover,1969), p. 285. 10. Kenneth Naversen, West Coast Victorians: A Nineteenth-Century Legacy (Wilsonville: Beautiful America, 1987), p. 96, 106. 8 • asymmetric facades • flat-roofed verandas with columns integrating bases, capitals, and sometimes corbels, frequently square with chamfered corners, and without intervening balustrades • tall windows, often paired, usually crowned, with rectangular but often Romanesque arched and occasionally segmentally arched tops • bay windows, more commonly semi-octagonal or semi-hexagonal but also occasionally square • window cornices and other elaborated surrounds • occasionally an asymmetrically placed tower Eligibility under Master List Criteria: Architectural Significance The Virginia Levering Latimer House is eligible for the Master List of Historic Resources for its architectural significance, based on its embodiment of Italianate architecture and its unusual integrity (Historic Preservation Ordinance 14.01.070 A & C). Embodiment of Italianate Architecture The roof of the Latimer house is characteristically hipped, and its 1904 photograph shows a roof balustrade that references the Italian baroque (now replaced by a parapet). A pediment sets off the square bay window that provides archetypal asymmetry to both street façades. The bay is also relieved by molding panels. The eaves incorporate cornices and have a full complement of Italianate corbels on all four sides of the house issuing from a blank frieze implied by molding at the base. The front porch is supported by square columns with chamfered corners that are characteristic of American wood Italianate. The chief windows on the street facades are tall, some paired, with crowns and large surrounds elaborated by molding silhouettes. A characteristically Italianate horizontal rectangular window tops the front door. The horizontal shiplap siding is also characteristic of the style. Square bays were to become standard with Eastlake and Stick architecture, and the rectangular screening below the veranda roof and knobs in the molding panels are also influenced by the rising Stick and Eastlake styles. As late Italianate, the Latimer House has a more economical or streamlined feeling than the Master List Dana-Parsons and Jack Houses, an effect largely produced by the relatively shallow cornices, blank frieze, and rectangular screening. Corbels: Latimer House Dana Parsons House Jack House 9 Latimer House Toro Street façade and Dana-Parsons House Nipomo Street façade Jack House cornice and frieze 10 Square bay window with pediment, cornice, corbels, blank frieze, and molding panels, Latimer House Knobs on molding panels suggest Eastlake influence Square bay window with cornice, dentils, frieze, pilasters, and molding panels, Jack House. The Dana-Parsons House lacks bay windows. 11 Tall double window on Toro Street façade with cornice, bead, molding silhouettes cut at top and bottom of frame verticals, and corbels supporting the sill, Latimer House Tall single window with cornice, molding silhouettes, and vertical frame extensions functioning as corbels below the sill. The Dana-Parsons house has wide but plain window surrounds. Integrity The Virginia Latimer House retains integrity of • Location, which is original • Design Comparison with the 1904 photograph shows that its street facades have changed little from their original design, with the exception of the replacement of the roof balustrade with a solid parapet; loss of column capitals and bases (probably during a period when the veranda was enclosed, visible in a 1964 photograph by Jean Martin11); installation of modern sash windows (though their original surrounds have been retained); and the 11. Jean Martin with Pauline Bray Martin, “E. D. Bray: Architect and Builder of the Central Coast,” La Vista, 2015, p. 90. 12 conversion and extension of an open porch into a closed lean-to on the non-street, northeast façade, largely completed by 1905, within the period of significance. Photographic documentation would allow the roof balustrade and column capitals and bases to be reconstructed to Secretary of the Interior standards. The Virginia Latimer House 1904 and 2019 13 Latimer House: 1891 Sanborn 1905 Sanborn; note expansion of lean-to to the right 1926 Sanborn, with full expansion of lean-to (note widening of Mill Street) • Setting The Virginia Latimer House was intended as a suburban house and built among suburban houses at the crest of Fremont Heights. Today it continues to be surrounded by one- and two-story suburban houses, many dating from its period of significance. The 1891 Sanborn map shows the Latimer House, soon after it was built, surrounded by suburban houses on its southwest, southeast, and northeast sides, though there is little development across Mill Street to the northwest. The only nearby houses still extant from that map are the Graves (Righetti) House at 1314 Palm Street; 1165 Mill Street, directly across Toro Street from the Latimer House; and the Booth House, 1208 Palm Street, then its downhill neighbor. By the time of the 1905 Sanborn map, the immediately adjoining blocks held the still extant Shipsey House (1266 Mill), Smith House (1306 Mill), Anderson House (1318 Mill), Page House (1344 Mill), Graves House, and Gregg House (1118 Palm). The house facing the Latimer House directly across Mill Street in the 1905 map—1202 Mill Street—is still extant, as is the Theresa Torres True House next door to 1202. Down the hill to the southwest, however, two Pueblo Revival houses by E. D. Bray were built in 1925 next to the Latimer House in its subdivided lot. 14 1891 Sanborn map showing the Latimer House at the southeast corner of Mill and Toro Streets and surrounding development. 1165 Mill Street at the southwest corner of the intersection is still extant, as is Latimer House’s southeast neighbor, 1208 Palm Street. 1905 Sanborn map showing the Latimer House at lower right, with 1202 Mill Street and the Theresa Torres True House at upper left • Materials The majority of the exterior retains original siding, window surrounds, columns, corbels, latticework, and other architectural features. • Workmanship The workmanship of both structure and decorative features is original. The chamfering and carving of the columns appears to be original, though they have lost their bases and capitals. • Feeling The feeling of the house, whose exterior is almost entirely unaltered on its corner lot among many of its original neighbors with views to the hills, remains the same. • Association The association with the original occupant of the house, Virginia Latimer, is clear in its current form, given its close resemblance to “The Residence of Mrs. V. L. Latimer” in the Souvenir of San Luis Obispo of 1904. 15 The Social Nature of the Latimer House The house at 858 Toro Street was built by a well-off widow who had two grown children in town and others more distant. It was able to accommodate houseguests (as social notes in the newspapers suggest), extended family (with the three Garrisons moving in), and social entertainments. By the time of its construction, its Italianate architecture was going out of style, but it was still current enough to be reproduced consistently in its structural and decorative elements; it was appropriate for the Mediterranean climate of the Central Coast; and it expressed a solid respectability in all directions on its corner lot in a prosperous, elevated neighborhood. San Luis Obispo did not display extremes of wealth; and even the Italianate Jack House was merely an eight-room suburban villa without servants’ quarters, despite its owners controlling a bank and being land developers and among the largest owners of ranchland in the state. In 1887 the banking, merchant, and vineyardist Goldtrees built a one-story cottage on Garden Street comparable to Mrs. Latimer’s, though in more current Eastlake style. Soon after the Garrisons left, 858 Toro Street was to become the home of Charles E. Willebrandt, the principal of the Courthouse School on the next block, who made extra income from tutoring at home. In the 1920s 858 Toro housed a music teacher who gave private lessons and offered room and board for schoolteachers. In the early Depression, there were dinners for paying guests, and in 1933 the house was briefly transformed by a nurse into a residence for “ageds, chronics, or invalids.” In the 1940s and ’50s, James O’Mahoney, a Southern Pacific officer, lived there with his family. In short, its compact but well lit, well shaded, and commodious design, as well as its respectable appearance, suited it enduringly for the bourgeois life of a small town. The Teens Telegram, 18 Nov. 1915 Telegram, 10 Sep. 1919 The Twenties Telegram, 28 Feb. 1924 Telegram, 30 Aug. 1928 The Thirties Telegram, 24 Nov. 1931 Telegram, 8 Sep. 1933