HomeMy WebLinkAboutItem 4a revise - Staff Agenda Correspondence correcting Attachment ACity of San Luis Obispo, Council Memorandum
City of San Luis Obispo
Cultural Heritage Committee
Staff Agenda Correspondence
DATE: October 21, 2022
TO: Chair and Committee Members
FROM: Brian Leveille, Senior Planner
SUBJECT: Item #4a – 1720 Morro Street (HIST-0495-2022) Request to remove
property from the Inventory of Historic Resources.
Please note that a document was incorrectly attached to the staff report for this item as
Attachment A, and posted to the City’s website, but that it has been replaced by the
correct document.
Attachment A to the staff report is the evaluation entitled “Historic Resource Evaluation
& Application to Remove from Contributing List” prepared by James Papp, PhD. This
document has been posted to the City’s website with the staff report for this item.
Please contact Walter Oetzell, Assistant Planner at 805-781-7593 (or by email:
woetzell@slocity.org) if you should have any questions about this correction.
1
1720 Morro Street
Historic Resource Evaluation & Application to Remove from the Contributing List
Summary Conclusion
1720 Morro Street, added to the Contributing List in 1987, was, when built, an example of 1 of
2 closely related subtypes represented by 28 Contributing List Colonial Revival bungalows in
the Old Town Historic District. Their character-defining features are (1) a hip roof whose ridge
runs perpendicular to the street, giving a pyramidal appearance from the front, and (2) an
asymmetric façade with a porch on one side and windowed bay on the other, with (3) a
pediment (closed gable) above porch or bay.
In 27 of those 28 listed bungalows, the roof is in its original form, in 23 cases bare and in 4
cases with a small dormer in the form of an attic vent or light. In 27 of those 28 bungalows, the
bay is in its original form, with its original window or windows. In 22 of those 28 bungalows, the
porch is in its original form, unenclosed, and in a further 4, the primarily glass enclosure
continues to communicate that it is a porch rather than an integrated part of the house.
In this high average of integrity for the two subtypes, 1720 Morro Street is the singular
exception:
• Oversized, pedimented front- and south-facing dormers have been added to its roof, forming
a habitable half story but altering the façade and profile of the character-defining pyramidal
roof
• The original window of the character-defining bay was replaced by a huge stained glass
window with a structural canopy above. The stained glass window has been returned to the
previous owner, but lack of documentation of the original window renders reconstruction to
Secretary of the Interior Standards impossible.
2
• In 2017, the character-defining porch was enclosed with a wall and window, so it is no longer
apparent it ever was a porch
• In addition to the loss or major alteration of all three character-defining features of the street
façade, the rear and side façades have been altered by various eras of expedient pushouts,
enclosures, and added and removed fenestration, such that, among the chronological clutter,
only two windows in the entire house—both on the south façade, separated by a stained glass
window that was added and later removed—appear to be original.
In short, loss of 4 of the 7 Aspects of Integrity—design, workmanship, and materials of the
street façade and all secondary façades, and the resultant feeling into which these three
aspects of integrity aggregate—has been so global and severe that 1720 Morro’s exterior no
longer communicates the streamlined and open nature of its original Colonial Revival
architecture or its consistency with the other 27 examples of the subtype in the district. It is
not eligible for historic resource listing, as it does not “exhibit a high level of historic integrity”
(14.01.070 Evaluation Criteria for Historic Resource Listing, San Luis Obispo Historic
Preservation Ordinance) and has not “maintained enough of its historic character or
appearance to be recognizable as a historic resource and to convey the reason(s) for its
significance” (14.01.070.C.1). It should be removed from the Contributing List in order to
preserve the integrity of that list.
Fortunately, at least 22, at most 26, of the other 27 Contributing List examples of this subtype
of Colonial Revival architecture in the Old Town Historic District do retain the high level of
historic integrity to communicate their significance and remain eligible for the list.
Submitted by James Papp, PhD, historian and architectural historian, SOI Professional Qualification
Standards, on behalf of Niels and Bimmer Udsen, Max Udsen and Malina Wiebe
3
Contents
Summary Conclusion 1
Chronology of 1720 Morro Street 4
Historic Context 6
Contributing List Asymmetric Pedimented Colonial Revival Bungalows in the
Old Town Historic District 9
Absence of Association with Historic Events or Persons 12
Period of Significance 12
Documentation of 1720 Morro Street, 1905–present 13
Loss of Integrity for 1720 Morro to Communicate Its Significance 20
Conclusion 22
4
Chronology of 1720 Morro Street
1903–1908 The William J. Morris family is documented living at 1720 Morro Street.1
1906 A photograph from Terrace Hill records the roof of 1720 Morro with roof
cresting above the pediment gable but without dormers, consistent with
contemporary Colonial Revival bungalows with pyramidal roofs and pedimented
bays or pedimented porches in the immediate area.
1917 Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kinney move to 1720 Morro from British Columbia.2
1918 Mr. and Mrs. A. F. Mangless are living at 1720 Morro.3
1925–1927 Mr. and Mrs. Harry Eker are living at 1720 Morro.4
1933 Mr. and Mrs. F. D. Silva move to 1720 Morro.5
1936 Eric Luttropp is living at 1720 Morro.6
1941 Corp. Rolly C. Platte is living at 1720 Morro.7
1942 Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Fischer are living at 1720 Morro.8
1949 The street-facing dormer window appears clearly in an aerial photograph.
1954 Mr. and Mrs. Marvin C. Adams are living at 1720 Morro.9
1956 Mr. and Mrs Jack Hubbs are living at 1720 Morro.10
1968 Edward Stanley Salas owns and is living at 1720 Morro and adds a section of back
porch.11
1969 Earl Wayne Stanley, a college student arrested for possession for sale of
marijuana, is living at 1720 Morro.12
1975 W. L. Davidson owns 1720 Morro and receives a permit for a bedroom addition
(1720 Morro Address File).
1. “Personal Mention,” San Luis Obispo Tribune, 28 Mar. 1903, p. 4; “Births, Deaths, Marriages: MARTIN,” Daily
Telegram, 20 June 1908, p. 1.
2. “Chooses This City,” Daily Telegram, 14 Feb. 1917, p. 5.
3. “Local News Notes: To Valley,” Daily Telegram, 27 Aug. 1918, p. 5.
4. Daily Telegram: “Jewell Eker Dies at Fillmore,” 27 July 1925, p. 4; “Sunday School Fetes Teacher,” 3 Sep. 1927, p.
3. “To Valley,” Daily Telegram, 27 Aug. 1918, p. 5.
5. “About Town,” San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram, 1 May 1933, p. 2.
6. “Around the Town,” San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram, 27 Aug. 1936, p. 8.
7. “Obispan Released from Army Duty,” San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune, 14 Nov. 1941, p. 5.
8. San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune: “Churches: Zion English Lutheran, 25 Apr. 1942, p. 3; “Honor Fischers on
Golden Anniversary,” 26 Oct. 1943, p. 2.
9. “SLO County Men in Service,” San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune, 24 June 1954, p. 4.
10. “18 Babies Make Their Debuts, Only Seven of Them Are Boys,” San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune, 19 June 1956,
p. 4.
11. “Christmas Party Ends with Crash,” San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune, 20 Dec. 1968, p. 2; 1720 Morro Address
File, Community Development Department.
12. “Marijuana Suspects Arrested,” Arroyo Grande Valley Herald-Recorder, 29 May 1969, . p. 13.
5
1982 1720 Morro is recorded by Chuck Crotser in the Historic Resources Survey,
including both dormers and the stained glass window and canopy on the bay
(ibid.).
1983 The Old Town Historic District is created.
1986 1720 Morro Street is assessed by R. Wall (ibid.)
1987 Added to the Contributing List.13
2017 Construction of the front porch enclosure is recorded in a Google Map street
view.
13. 1720 Morro, Historic Preservation Program Guidelines.
6
Historic Context
The Colonial Revival style in architecture began during the interest and excitement around the
first American centennial. The legendary genesis was an 1877 sketching expedition of Colonial
architecture in Marblehead, Salem, and Newburyport, MA and Portsmouth, NH by William
Bigelow, Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White, but Harper’s in 1875 had already
published illustrated articles on Colonial towns, whose old buildings were part of the attraction
of the new oceanside resorts.14 In January 1875, the journal New York Sketchbook of Architecture,
in the first mechanical reproduction of a photograph of an American building, had published a
view (below) of the shingled rear addition to Bishop Berkeley’s clapboard house, White Hall,
part of a series of photographs of Colonial Newport, RI buildings that McKim had
commissioned from William James Stillman in 1874.
Shortly after the 1877 sketching party, the firm of McKim, Mead, and Bigelow became McKim,
Mead, and White. It would dominate experimentation in Colonial Revival architecture, both in
the Shingle style and clapboard variant, the latter of which Virginia and Lee McAlester, in their
Field Guide to American Houses, call “asymmetrical form with superimposed Colonial details” but
I will refer to as Streamline Colonial, a term that captures its consistent modernizing aesthetic,
including in examples that are quite often symmetric.
McKim, Mead, and White catered to the plutocratic class of New York and New England, but
by the 1890s, the patriotic style was being adapted by architects and builders for the nation’s
developing suburbs. High-Peaked Colonial Revival was a 1½-story San Francisco Bay Area
variant, tucked into narrow suburban lots, of which the best San Luis example is the LeRoy
Smith House at the corner of Johnson and Mill, designed by Watsonville- and later Palo Alto–
based architect William H. Weeks, who also designed the high school, Carnegie Library, first
two buildings at Cal Poly, and Crocker and Marshall Houses.
14. Vincent J. Scully, Jr., The Shingle Style and the Stick Style, revised edition [New Haven: Yale University Press,
1971], p. 30, note 36.
7
Smith, who would later become director of Cal Poly, had money of his own. Others needed
more modest accommodation.
One-story Colonial Revival bungalows would proliferate in Fremont Heights (later the Mill
Street Historic District) and particularly in the Vineyard, La Vina, and surrounding tracts that
would in 1983 be designated the Old Town Historic District.
McKim, Mead, and White’s Appleton (1883–1884) and Taylor Houses (1885–1886), both
asymmetric (to accommodate service wings) and streamlined (the Taylor House’s wraparound terrace
invisible because balustraded only at left and covered periodically). Most significant for the birth of
Streamline Colonial: both used clapboard instead of shingle siding.
These one-story Streamline Colonial bungalows were built in San Luis Obispo in a half dozen
common subtypes, with a few outlying subtypes of one or two examples. Some are clearly
8
Colonial clones from plans or pattern books, but others seem to be on-the-spot adaptations of
a common vocabulary of expected features. The previously mentioned 27 Old Town Historic
District Colonial Revival bungalows similar to 1720 Morro are only those of two closely-related
subtypes on the Contributing List, with more examples on the Master List. The heyday of
Streamline Colonial bungalows in San Luis was 1900–1913, which overlaps with the Prairie style
and California Bungalow (aka, American Craftsman). But the Colonial Revival bungalow projects
an East Coast rather than Midwest or West Coast aesthetic—except where it subsumed a
japoniste aesthetic in a subtype with irimoya roofs. The extent to which that sybtype exists
outside of San Luis Obispo will require more research.
Streamline Colonial, Prairie style, and the California Bungalow—which all spread throughout
the United States—were destined to be swept away immediately after World War I by Minimal
Traditional revival styles, whose characteristic (and often impractical) shallow eaves,
emphasized roofs, and limited windows appear to have been inspired by the work of English
architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. Modernism and Mid-Century Modernism would hearken back to
many of the precepts of the California Bungalow, Prairie, and Streamline Colonial in their
treatment of linearity, horizontality, and shadow.
Left: W. H. Weeks’ 1905–1906 Smith House. In
the Bay Area, High-Peaked Colonial had its
narrow end facing the street; here a corner lot
allows a broad street façade. Above: Colonial
portico and Japanese irimoya roof in the ca.
1906–1907 Strickland House, 1152 Buchon, one
of two surviving irimoya-roofed Streamline
Colonial bungalows built by contractor Charles
Strickland.
9
Contributing List Asymmetric Pedimented Colonial Revival Bungalows in the Old
Town Historic District
I. Asymmetric with pyramidal roof and pediment-topped porch
1. 641 Buchon
4. 985 Pismo
7. 1045 Islay
Original pyramidal dormer
10. 1512 Santa Rosa
2. 1132 Buchon
5. 663 Pismo|Chapek 1913
8. 572 Islay
Original pyramidal dormer
11. 1160 Buchon
3. 1137 Buchon
6. 657 Pismo|Chapek ca 1913
9. 1035 Islay
Later porch enclosure
12. 481 Islay
10
II. Asymmetric with pyramidal roof and pediment-topped window bay
13. 578 Buchon|Esplin 1910
16. 1190 Buchon
19. 1627 Santa Rosa
22. 1428 Morro|Storz 1908
Later porch enclosure
24. 1035 Leff
14. 1051 Buchon
17. 683 Pismo
20. 1606 Santa Rosa
23. 1543 Morro
Later porch enclosure
25. 1520 Morro
15. 1165 Buchon
18. 1005 Islay
21. 1504 Santa Rosa|1900
Later pedimented dormers
Altered bay fenestration
Later porch enclosure
26. 1720 Morro
11
Original pyramidal dormer
Later porch enclosure
27. 1624 Santa Rosa
Original pyramidal dormer
Later porch enclosure
28. 972 Church
12
Absence of Association with Historic Events or Persons
No historic event at 1720 Morro Street is recorded in the contemporary press.
The chronology of 1720 Morro shows that it was primarily used as a rental property before
1972 (the fifty-year cut-off before which historic association would normally be considered),
and no tenants occupied it for long enough to establish association. William J. Morris, the first
known and probable original owner-occupant of the house, was, during his residence, a
Southern Pacific engineer or boilermaker and did not have the leadership in his profession or
the community that a historic figure requires under National Register Criteria.
Period of Significance
Given the absence of historic association, the significance of the primary dwelling at 1720
Morro Street is presumptively its embodiment of Colonial Revival bungalow architecture and
thus the period of significance its date of construction, circa 1903.
13
Documentation of 1720 Morro Street, 1905–present
William J. Morris of Seattle, referred to as a new railroad engineer, subsequently boilermaker,
for the Southern Pacific arrived in San Luis in early 1903. By late 1903 the Wm. J. Morris his
residence was said to be on “southerly Morro Street.”15 In 1908 the residence of Mrs. W. J.
Morris was referred to as 1720 Morro, confirming the house as the same, i.e., on lot 5, block
176, in Cocke’s—later Graham’s—Addition.16
In a 1906 panoramic photograph of San Luis Obispo from Terrace Hill, 1720 Morro is visible
beyond the Graham House and old Tribune Building (1789 and Santa Barbara Avenue), with
the stable building of 1730 Morro to the south, south of that the Jones House facing Church
Street (972), and nothing to the north.17 The 1905 Sanborn Map confirms the placement.
Above: 1720 Morro’s roof appears behind trees at center rear of this 1906 detail from Terrace Hill.
Center front are the 1885 Lozelle and Katie Graham House and the Tribune-Republic Building, moved
to the site in 1905. The 1885 William and Lydia Graham House is at right. At left is the 1903 James
and Alice Herron Jones House, with the stable at 1730 Morro behind it. 1720’s roof (below right)
shows ridge cresting on its front gable but no dormers on the hip roof.
15. San Luis Obispo Tribune: “Personal Mention,” 28 Mar. 1903, p. 4; “Native Missourian Dies,” 24 Nov. 1903, p. 4.
16. “Births, Deaths, Marriages: MARTIN,” Daily Telegram, 20 June 1908, p. 1.
17. “San Luis Obispo, panoramic view from Terrace Hill, 1907,” 168-1-b-01-35-01, San Luis Obispo County
Regional Photograph Collection, Cal Poly Special Collections and Archives.
At left: 1905 Sanborn Map, with a faint outline where the
Tribune-Republic Building will go, between the two Graham
Houses at bottom right. 1720 Morro is the left topmost
building. 1730 has a non-dwelling, possibly an open shed, and
stable. The Jones House is at bottom left, the Chicago Hotel,
now The Establishment, at top right.
14
Above: 1926–1956 Sanborn Map, block 176 and
Triangle Park, backlit to show alterations. 1720
Morro appears as it did on the 1905 map, with
an asymmetric porch in front and full-width porch
in back. Top right: 3 May 1965 aerial photo of
block 176. Second from top right: 1720 from the
1 Jan. 1949 aerial photo, with a shadow showing
the presence of the front dormer. Second from
bottom right: 1720 from the 1965 aerial photo.
Bottom right: Current Google Satellite view
showing the front, south, and rear dormers.
Below: 1720 from the 1926–1956 Sanborn Map.
15
Above: 1720 Morro at the time of the 1982 Historic Resources Survey, when it was recorded with
great detail and accuracy by Chuck Crotser, who did not make judgments on what was and was not
original. The original window or windows on the bay had already been replaced with stained glass, the
canopy above the window added, and the two dormers added, at different times, to the roof. Thirty-five
years later, the porch would be enclosed and the mullioned porch window, noted by Crotser, would be
destroyed or obscured from view, with one and a half of the elephant leg columns disappearing and the
remainder being fluted on their street side. Below: the 2017 Google Map street view shows construction
in progress on the enclosure of the front porch to the right, with a modern window added.
16
Above: enclosed front porch, revealing no clue as to the original function. Below left: likely original door
with later glazing. Below right: Later falsely historicist French door leading to deck, north façade.
17
Above: later pushout, in part possibly dating before 1965, with modern bay window, north façade.
Below: The north façade pediment gable, with original diamond and scalloped wall shingle, altered by
the insertion of a later window to make the attic habitable. The chimney is also a later addition.
18
Above: the rear of the house, with a Postmodern dormer looming over a full-width ground-floor addition
that is probably an enclosure of the original porch, extended on both sides, on the right before 1965
and the left in 1968, the latter according to one of the few extant permits connected to the house in
the city’s address file. Enclosure to the right may have included a 1936 permitted bathroom (City of
San Luis Obispo Historic Building Permit Collection, Cal Poly Special Collections and Archives). Below:
South façade, showing the house’s only two surviving original windows, plus the boarding up of an
added but subsequently removed stained glass window between.
19
Street view of the street and south façades shows how the two added dormers and enclosure of the
porch have completely changed the profile and fabric of the house for the public. The half-columns on
either side of the front door and the window and shiplap at lower center are the only original design,
materials, or workmanship visible.
1720 Morro was first described by Chuck Crotser in the 1982 Historic Resources Survey,
where he was scrupulous in detail but did not speculate on the age or originality of the various
elements of the house. In 1986 a one-page report signed by R. Wall noted that the stained glass
window and canopy on the bay were not original but “add to the beauty of this home” and
opined, incorrectly, that “their addition does not constitute an irreversible change to the
façade” (1720 Morro Address File, Community Development Department). The loss of the
original windows and the lack of documentation to reconstruct them to Secretary of the
Interior Standards do constitute an irreversible change.
The report inaccurately accepted the dormers as original with stick elements. It emphasized the
transitional significance of the ten-over-one porch window and the elephant leg columns, which
have both subsequently been lost. The “beauty and unusual features” that the report concluded
would “assure its position as an important part of the Old Town Historic District” were either
not original or transitory.
The property was added to the Contributing List in 1987.
20
Loss of Integrity for 1720 Morro to Communicate Its Significance
1720 Morro Street is in the same location as when it was built. The suburban setting is
adequately consistent: The house was the first on the 1700 block of Morro, and apart from the
Jones House at 972 Church Street, the buildings that flank and face it all postdate 1720 Morro’s
construction. But the area had been subdivided for suburban development, and a number of
pre-existing buildings on block 176, facing Santa Barbara Avenue (The Establishment [Chicago
Hotel], the Tribune-Republic Building, the two Graham Houses, and the Jones House) still
survive. Association is not relevant here, as no link between the property and a historic
person or event can be found.
Street façade: only the shingle-faced pediment above the bay, the small amount of remaining shiplap on
the bay, and the flanking door columns and door (apart from its glass) are original; the rest is falsely
historicist alteration and addition
The loss of integrity is found in design, materials, workmanship, and the feeling that is the
aggregate of these qualities and setting.
The changes include, on the street façade:
• addition of an oversize front-facing dormer by 1949 and south-facing pedimented dormer
between 1965 and 1982
• enclosure of the front porch in 2017, so that it no longer communicates having been a
porch, loss of one and a half porch columns, and addition of falsely historicist fluting on
the one and a half columns remaining
21
• replacement of the fenestration in the pedimented bay with a large stained glass window,
which itself was removed in 2022, with no documentation to allow reconstruction to
Secretary of the Interior Standards
• structural canopy over the bay’s windows
• non-period glass in the original door
on the north façade:
• pushout with modern bay window, attached to the enclosure of the back porch
• falsely historicist French door leading to a late-twentieth-century deck
• insertion of an ahistoric sash window into the pediment
on the south façade:
• installation of a stained glass window (now removed and the space boarded up) between
the only two original windows of the house
• installation of the previously mentioned oversize south-facing dormer
on the rear façade:
• apparent enclosure and extension of the full-width back porch with variable wall and
windows, topped by a monumental Postmodern dormer
It is possible—with expert knowledge of the Colonial Revival bungalow subtype that 1720
Morro originally embodied, along with early photographic documentation—to imagine what the
house looked like in its period of significance. But it no longer communicates what it looked like
to the ordinary observer on the street, for whom historic preservation is intended. The false
historicism of its dormers, French and bay windows, fluted columns, and modern shiplap siding
violate Secretary of the Interior Standards for Rehabilitation and may mislead both amateur and
expert. It certainly misled those who placed the house on the Contributing List in 1987.
22
Conclusion
1720 Morro having been redesigned for interior accommodation, the exterior effect is
cluttered and jarring, the opposite of the streamlining that made clapboard Colonial Revival
bungalows historically significant. There is no façade, least of all the street façade, that
predominately communicates the original design, materials, workmanship, or feeling of the
house. The house’s lack of integrity to communicate its significance makes it ineligible for listing
under the city’s Historic Preservation Ordinance, which requires a historic resource to “exhibit
a high level of historic integrity” and to have “maintained enough of its historic character or
appearance to be recognizable as a historic resource and to convey the reason(s) for its
significance.” There is insufficient documentation for reconstruction to Secretary of the Interior
Standards, even if the city had the power to require such reconstruction. Removal from the
Contributing List is the only reasonable solution.
Fortunately, the vast majority of the 28 examples of the two subtypes of asymmetric,
pedimented Colonial Revival bungalows on the Contributing List in the Old Town Historic
District exhibit a high level of integrity. The removal of 1720 Morro Street from the
Contributing List will give the list as a whole more validity.