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HomeMy WebLinkAbout7/24/2023 Item 6b, Papp Wilbanks, Megan Sent:Wednesday, July 19, 2023 8:55 AM To:Colunga-Lopez, Andrea Subject:7/24/23 CHC Agenda Correspondence - Item 6b (1202 Mill St.) Attachments:in re 1202 Mill delisting application.pdf Please archive and distribute for the CHC meeting next week. Be sure to Cc the Planner, Walter Oetzell. Thanks! From: Leveille, Brian <bleveill@slocity.org> Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2023 8:31 AM To: Wilbanks, Megan <mwilbanks@slocity.org> Cc: Oetzell, Walter <woetzell@slocity.org> Subject: FW: 1202 Mill delisting application, item 6b Hi Megan, Agenda correspondence for the CHC is attached. Thanks Brian Leveille Senior Planner Community Development Long Range Planning 919 Palm Street, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401-3218 E bleveille@slocity.org T 805.781.7166 slocity.org Stay connected with the City by signing up for e-notifications From: James Papp < Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2023 4:15 AM To: Leveille, Brian <bleveill@slocity.org> Subject: 1202 Mill delisting application, item 6b This message is from an External Source. Use caution when deciding to open attachments, click links, or respond. Hi, Brian, 1 Please distribute the attached correspondence to the CHC. Thanks, James 2 Sauer-Adams Adobe - 964 Chorro Street - San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 19 July 2023 Cultural Heritage Committee City of San Luis Obispo Dear Members of the Committee: Regarding the application to remove from the Contributing List the J. R. and Louisa Torres Robasciotti House at 1202 Mill Street, I would like to clarify a point as a former CHC member. The staff evaluation suggests the Torres family was assessed in the Master List application for the neighboring Teresa Torres True House and found not to be historically significant. Families, however, are explicitly never considered historically significant under NRHP Criteria, only individuals. When the CHC evaluated the Teresa Torres True House for Master Listing, we concluded that Teresa True herself was not historically significant as a leader of her group or profession under the criteria. We did not evaluate other members of the Torres or Robasciotti families, as they were not directly associated with the Torres True House. We recommended the Torres True House be Master Listed for its embodiment of the American Queen Anne style. Julius Robert Robasciotti (a prominent businessman in San Luis Obispo from 1894 through the 1920s and developer of several houses by E. D. Bray in the Mill Street Historic District) and Louisa Robasciotti (who provided meteorological data to the San Luis Obispo Tribune in the 1890s) may or may not be historically significant, but neither the current delisting application nor past work has evaluated the question. The Robasciottis are documented to have lived in the house at 1202 Mill from its construction in 1893 to at least 1922 (“Local News Notes,” San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram, 20 Mar. 1922, p. 4), long enough to have established association. Members of the Gibson family also occupied the house for at least three decades, and their historical significance has also not been evaluated. The house itself is documented to have been built by J. R. Robasciotti in 1893 (San Luis Obispo Tribune, 20 Apr. 1893, p. 3) and thus is one of the four oldest houses in the Mill Street Historic District, at an intersection where three of those four—the Master List Virginia Latimer House (858 Toro) and Contributing List Richard Leland House (855 Toro) and Robasciotti House—occupy three corners and are all documented to the early 1890s. The Robasciotti House would thus qualify for the Master List based on age under San Luis Obispo’s Historic Preservation Ordinance (14.01.020.33). The near-right-angled gables, gable-top decoration, compound arrangement of wings and gables, and dominating front canted bay confirm that the original evaluation of its embodying the American Queen Anne style is accurate and another justification for its listing under the Historic Preservation Ordinance and NRHP Criteria. The neighboring Torres True House, also American Queen Anne, was built on the same property J. R. Robasciotti bought from Bernard Sinsheimer for his own house in January 1893. A 1907 panoramic photograph from Terrace Hill and the 1905 Sanborn Map document that the Robasciotti House retains its early front-and-side-gabled cruciform design with dominant front façade bay window. Above left: the Contributing List Robasciotti House (left rear), Master List Torres True House (right rear), and Master List Latimer House (foreground), early 1907. Above right: the Robasciotti House represented in the 1905 Sanborn Map. The Robasciotti House also retains its integrity of location, setting (confirmed by the recent Master Listings of the Torres True and Latimer Houses), and thus feeling, as well as— should any of the Robasciottis or Gibsons be found to be historically significant— association. Its current metal siding covers original materials and workmanship, but the siding is reversible, much like the mid-century stucco that has been removed from downtown’s late- nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century brick buildings, many of which were listed when the stucco was still in place. The other alterations of steps, railings, and some fenestration that the application suggests have undermined its integrity are relatively minor and were evaluated at the time of its original listing not to have undermined the Robasciotti House’s ability to communicate its significance of age and architectural embodiment. Finally, I would note that “substandard construction” is not a historically relevant criterion (except to the extent that nearly every listed building in San Luis Obispo is substandard by modern criteria of construction) and percentages of materials to be preserved are a limitation for new alteration to a listed building, not a retroactive standard for past listing. An application to de-list and thus remove protections is tantamount to an application to demolish. Should the J. R. and Louisa Torres Robasciotti House—one of the Mill Street Historic District’s oldest documented buildings, at a historically key intersection, and closely associated with a neighboring Queen Anne building on the Master List—be removed from the Contributing List, it should be done on the basis of documentary evidence and analysis rather than vague and unsupported assertions. Yours sincerely, James Papp, PhD Architectural Historian