HomeMy WebLinkAboutItem 6f - Request to Add Property at 1110 Buchon Street to the Master List of Historic Resources Item 6f
Department: Community Development
Cost Center: 4006
For Agenda of: 10/21/2025
Placement: Consent
Estimated Time: N/A
FROM: Timmi Tway, Community Development Director
Prepared By: Eva Wynn, Planning Technician
SUBJECT: REQUEST TO ADD PROPERTY AT 1110 BUCHON STREET TO THE
MASTER LIST OF HISTORIC RESOURCES (HIST-0504-2025).
RECOMMENDATION
Adopt a draft resolution entitled “A Resolution By The City Council Of The City Of San
Luis Obispo, California, Adding The Property Located At 1110 Buchon Street To The
Master List Of Historic Resources As The Hans Nissen And Lena Peterson Hansen
House,” as recommended by the Cultural Heritage Committee.
POLICY CONTEXT
The recommended action on this item is supported by historical preservation policies set
out in Section 3.0 of the Conservation and Open Space Element of the City’s General
Plan, and with procedures and standards for listing of historic resources set out in the
City’s Historic Preservation Ordinance Sections 14.01.060 & 14.01.070.
DISCUSSION
Background
Fitzgerald Kelly (owner), represented by James Papp, has requested that the property at
1110 Buchon Street be designated as a Master List Resource in the City’s Inventory of
Historic Resources, as The Hansen House. The applicant has provided an evaluation of
the property and its eligibility for Master listing (Historical Evaluation, Attachment B),
prepared by James Papp, PhD, Historian and Architectural Historian.
To meet the Eligibility Criteria of a Listed Historic Resource, a building must exhibit a high
level of historic or architectural integrity, be at least 50 years old, and meet one or more
of the eligibility criteria described in §14.01.070 of the Historic Preservation Ordinance.
Those resources that maintain their original or attained historic and architectural character
and contribute either by themselves or in conjunction with other structures to the unique
or historic character of a neighborhood, district, or to the City as a whole may be
designated as a “Contributing List Resource” (§14.01.050).
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Item 6f
The most unique and important resources and properties in terms of age, architectural or
historical significance, rarity, or association with important persons or events in the City’s
past may be designated as “Master List Resources.” The applicant’s Historic Evaluation
prepared by James Papp, PhD (Attachment B) provides a description of the architectural
significance of the house and degree of integrity (beginning on pg. 64), in support of the
requested designation as a Master List Resource. The evaluation is summarized in the
Evaluation of Eligibility section of this report.
The property is located on the northern side of Buchon Street, approximately 50 feet east
of Santa Rosa St in the Dallidet Addition Tract of the Old Town Historic District. The
District was created to encompass one of the oldest residential neighborhoods and most
of the development occurred around the turn of the 20 th century. The high concentration
of 100-year-old or older residences establishes the District’s predominant architectural
and visual character. The District has many examples of High Victorian architecture,
including several variations, such as Queen Anne, Italianate, Stick and Gothic Revival
influences, along with more modest structures with simpler styles including Neo-classic
Row House, Folk Victorian, and Craftsman Bungalow. Most of the houses in this district
were designed and constructed by the homes’ first occupants or by local builders and
were influenced by architectural pattern books of the time period (Historic Preservation
Program Guidelines § 5.2.1).
The residence at 1110 Buchon was built in 1921 in the California Bungalow style and the
property is currently on the City’s Inventory of Historic Resources as a Contributing List
Resource (added in 1987 by City Council Resolution No. 6157).
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Item 6f
Evaluation of Eligibility
As described in Municipal Code §14.01.070, a resou rce eligible for designation shall
exhibit a high level of integrity, be at least fifty years old, and satisfy at least one additional
criterion for Architectural or Historic significance. The property at 1010 Buchon St is over
fifty years old and satisfies evaluation criteria for Architectural Style and Integrity, as
described below.
Architectural Criteria
The Hansen House Historic Evaluation (Attachment B) asserts the residence qualifies for
Master Listing for its architectural significance and rarity due to its embodiment of the
California Bungalow’s full-width front-gable and asymmetric porch subtype. According to
the evaluation, the Hansen House is the best-preserved example of the Southern
California sub-type and is particularly unique for the design’s absence of Swiss and
Japanese influences.
It is simple in its structure and plain and angular in its elements, much like Greene
and Greene’s pioneering “California House” from 1904 and the first press
illustration of a California Bungalow so des ignated, and as the type would be
recognized, in the 1905 Los Angeles Herald (both below). Like these, the Hansen
house has an intentional absence of overt Swiss [details] like the ogee knee brace
or Japanese ones like the kaza-ana terminus. It is substantial and artfully designed
but minimalist in its aesthetics. (Attachment B, pg. 64)
Character defining features of the property, noted in Attachment B, include low pitched
front and side gables, a dominant horizontal plain frieze, clapboard and rectangular
shingle siding, five knee braces with square ends and plain shafts, an integrated
asymmetrical porch, and triplet windows flush mounted to the wall.
Historic Criteria
The significance of the Hansen House is provided for in its architectural style and integrity,
rather than its association with notable historical events or persons (Atta chment B, pg.
68).
Integrity Criteria
The Historic Evaluation discusses the integrity of the resource in terms of setting, design,
workmanship, materials, feeling, and association. Based on a comparison of the 1926
Sanborn Map and Google Satellite images, the Hansen House and garage retain their
original locations and configurations at 1110 Buchon Street. The lack of significant
alterations to the residence footprint and historic characteristics indicate a high degree of
integrity. Minor modifications have been made to the residence since it was designated
as a Contributing Resource on the City’s Inventory. The Historic Evaluation asserts the
clapboard and shingle siding materials, window frames, door frames, bargeboards, beam
ends, knee braces, and rafter tails all appear to be original. The front and rear doors are
not original; the front door was replaced by previous owners with a diamond -pane door
that was common among older homes in the City (Attachment B, pg. 72).
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Item 6f
Conclusion
The information in the Historical Evaluation prepared for this application, documenting the
architectural character and integrity of the house and the historical context surrounding
the property’s period of significance, provides a basis for the Council to find that the
dwelling satisfies Evaluation Criteria for Architectural Style and Design and Integrity
described in Section 14.01.070 of the City’s Historic Preservation Ordinance (SLOMC Ch.
14.01) to a degree that qualifies the property for designation as a Master List Historic
Resource. A Master List Resource is the City’s highest designation for historic resources
and provides for long term preservation of the resource. Resources on the Master List
benefit from eligibility to enter a Mills Act contract with the City which provi des economic
incentives for restoration and preservation of historic buildings.
Previous Council or Advisory Body Action
On August 25, 2025, the Cultural Heritage Committee considered this request and
recommended that the City Council designate the property as a Master List Resource in
the City’s Inventory of Historic Resources. The recommendation is based on the findings
that the property is significant because of its architectural style and design, it exhibits a
high degree of historic and architectural integrity, and is more than 50 years old. The
dwelling on the site conveys a purity of style and embodies a uniquely preserved example
of the California Bungalow style, for which it is among the City’s most unique and
important Historic Resources.
Public Engagement
Public notice of this hearing has been provided to owners and occupants of property near
the subject site, and published in a widely circulated local newspaper, and hearing
agendas for this meeting have been posted at City Hall, consistent with adopted
notification procedures. Public notice was also previously provided for the Cultural
Heritage Committee meeting of August 25, 2025.
ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW
This project is categorically exempt from the provisions of the California Environmental
Quality Act (CEQA). Inclusion of the subject properties on the City’s Inventory of Historic
Resources does not have the potential for causing a significant effect on the environment
and so is covered by the general rule described in Section 15061 (b) (3) of the CEQA
Guidelines.
FISCAL IMPACT
Budgeted: No Budget Year: 2025-26
Funding Identified: No
Fiscal Analysis:
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Item 6f
Funding
Sources
Total Budget
Available
Current
Funding
Request
Remaining
Balance
Annual
Ongoing
Cost
General Fund $0 $ $ $
State
Federal
Fees
Other:
Total $ $0 $ $0
Adding properties to the Master List of Historic Resources will have no fiscal impacts.
Historic designation of property itself has no bearing on City fiscal resources. As a Master
List Resource, however, each property would be eligible for historic preservation
incentives under the Mills Act through property tax credits. Any subsequent reque st to
enter into a Mills Act Contract with the City would be considered under separate
application. A separate fiscal analysis would be reviewed by the City Council should any
properties be proposed for participation in the Mills Act Program.
ALTERNATIVES
1. Decline to designate the property as a Master List Resource in the Inventory of
Historic Resources. This decision would be based on finding that the Property is not
considered to be sufficiently unique or important, or found to satisfy Evaluation Criteria
for listing to a degree warranting such designation. The Property would remain in the
Inventory as a Contributing List Resource.
2. Continue consideration of the request for additional information or discussion.
This alternative would allow the City Council to request additional information to aid in
determining whether the property should be added to the Master List.
ATTACHMENTS
A - Draft Resolution adding 1110 Buchon Street to the Master List of Historic Resources
B - Historic Resource Evaluation, 1110 Buchon (James Papp, PhD)
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R ______
RESOLUTION NO. _____ (2025 SERIES)
A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SAN LUIS
OBISPO, CALIFORNIA, ADDING THE PROPERTY LOCATED AT 1110
BUCHON STREET TO THE MASTER LIST OF HISTORIC RESOURCES
AS THE HANS NISSEN AND LENA PETERSON HANSEN HOUSE
WHEREAS, the applicant, Fitzgerald Kelly, filed an application on June 27, 2025,
for review of the inclusion of the property at 1110 Buchon Street on the City’s Master List
of Historic Resources; and
WHEREAS, the Cultural Heritage Committee of the City of San Luis Obispo
conducted a public hearing in the Council Hearing Room of City Hall, 990 Palm Street,
San Luis Obispo, California on August 25, 2025 and recommended that the City Council
add the property at 1110 Buchon Street to the Master List of Historic Resources; and
WHEREAS, the City Council of the City of San Luis Obispo reviewed the
application at a public meeting on October 21, 2025 for the purpose of considering the
request to add the property to the Inventory of Historic Resources; and
WHEREAS, notices of said public meetings were made at the time and in the
manner required by law; and
WHEREAS, the City Council has duly considered all evidence, including the record
of the Cultural Heritage Committee hearing and recommendation, testimony of the
applicant and interested parties, and the evaluation and recommendation presented by
staff.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the Council of the City of San Luis
Obispo as follows:
SECTION 1. Findings. Based upon all the evidence, the City Council makes the
following findings:
a) The subject property is eligible for inclusion in the City’ s Inventory of Historic
Resources as a Master List Resource because the property satisfies at least
one of the evaluation criteria for historic resource listing described in 14.01.070
of the City’s Historic Preservation Ordinance (HPO), exhibits a high degree of
integrity, and is more than 50 years old.
b) The subject property satisfies Architectural Criteria for Style and Design
(14.01.070 (A)) and Criteria for Integrity (14.01.070 (C)) to a degree that
qualifies it for designation as a Master List Resource. The dwelling on the site
conveys a purity of style and embodies a uniquely preserved example of the
California Bungalow style, featuring a full-width front-gable and asymmetric
porch. The building occupies its original site and retains a largely unaltered
exterior, with its characteristic design and materials.
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Resolution No. _____ (2025 Series) Page 2
R ______
SECTION 2. Environmental Determination. The project is categorically exempt
from the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Inclusion of the
subject property on the City’s Inventory of Historic Resources does not have the potential
for causing a significant effect on the environment, and so is covered by the general rule
described in 15061 (b) (3) of the CEQA Guidelines.
SECTION 3. Action. The City Council of the City of San Luis Obispo does hereby
include the property located at 1110 Buchon Street in the Master List of Historic
Resources as “The Hans Nissen and Lena Peterson Hansen House.”
Upon motion of Council Member ___________, seconded by Council Member
___________, and on the following roll call vote:
AYES:
NOES:
ABSENT:
The foregoing resolution was adopted this 21st day of October 2025.
___________________________
Mayor Erica A. Stewart
ATTEST:
______________________
Teresa Purrington
City Clerk
APPROVED AS TO FORM:
______________________
J. Christine Dietrick
City Attorney
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and affixed the official seal of the
City of San Luis Obispo, California, on ______________________.
___________________________
Teresa Purrington
City Clerk
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1
Master List Application
Hans Nissen and Lena Peterson Hansen House
1110 Buchon Street
I. Summary Conclusion
The house built by Hans and Lena Hansen at 1110 Buchon Street in 1921 is a California
Bungalow, the Golden State’s iconic contribution to suburban architecture, which spread
throughout North America, Australia, and New Zealand in the early twentieth century. Its
genesis in California has been obscured by its inexplicable rebranding in the 1980s and
1990s as the “Craftsman Bungalow,” a term almost never used contemporaneously.
Bungalows—created in their eponymous location of Bengal for European traders in the
seventeenth century—migrated to America through California in the early 1870s. At the
turn of the century, architects Bernard Maybeck in Berkeley, Frank Delos Wolfe and
Charles McKenzie in San Jose, and Charles and Henry Greene in Pasadena adapted the
• asymmetric footprints of Colonial Bungalows
• rustic features and broad, low profile of the Swiss chalet
• indoor-outdoor spaces appropriate to California’s mild climate; and
• cost- and labor-saving advantages of single-story, open-plan living.
into an architectural expression of the California lifestyle soon to be exported to suburbs as
far-flung as Montreal, Miami, and Wallaroo.
When the Old Town Historic District was conceived as Conservation District #1 in San Luis
Obispo’s 1979 Historical and Architectural Conservation Element , the California Bungalow
—with regional pride—was the sole architectural style referenced in the district’s
definition.
Attachment B - Historic Resource Evaluation, 1110 Buchon
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2
Subsequently—perhaps from
a misconception of historic
districts that the older, taller,
and more elaborate, the
better—the Historic
Preservation Program
Guidelines redefined the Old
Town District’s “predominate
architectural features” as
“two- and rarely three-story
houses” and “High Victorian
architecture,” despite the fact
that of the more than 300
Master and Contributing List
houses in the district
1908 postcard: California Bungalow Inn of Dallas, Texas
• 95 percent are 1- and 1½-story bungalows and cottages
• 92 percent were built in the twentieth century as the new rather than old town
Fully 41 percent of the listed buildings are Colonial Bungalows and California Bungalows:
the core of its resources. Yet perhaps because of the district’s misdescription as old, tall,
and “High Victorian” (never a technically accepted term), relatively few of its Colonial
Bungalows and almost none of its California Bungalows have been Master Listed.
To support the city’s move to update the Historic Resources Survey, this report analyzes
the Old Town Historic District biases as the historiographic context of the Hansen House .
The Hansen House is the California Bungalow subtype characterized by a full-width street-
facing chalet gable and asymmetric integrated porch—the California Bungalow’s Southern
California ur-form as developed by Charles and Henry Greene in Pasadena. It articulates a
minimalist decorative aesthetic appropriate to its simple form . It also has an extraordinary
degree of integrity to communicate this significance, a rare listed building with no
horizontal or vertical additions and located within a unique block-long collection of 21
listed bungalows, including 13 Colonial Bungalows and 7 California Bungalows.
The Hansen House’s subtype is not represented elsewhere in San Luis Obispo’s Master List
except by the Anholm House, whose profoundly flawed integrity of design, workmanship,
and materials—as a result of both substantial loss and substantial expansion—negates its
ability to communicate its significance.
The Hans and Lena Hansen House qualifies for the Master List’s standard of “the most
unique and important historic properties and resources in terms of […] architectural […]
significance [or] rarity,” and its combination of significance and integrity make it a key Old
Town Historic District resource for the city’s highest designation of preservation.
Submitted 24 June 2025 on behalf of Fitzgerald Kelly by
James Papp, PhD | Historian and Architectural Historian, City and County of San Luis Obispo
964 Chorro Street, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
805-470 -0983 | papp.architectural.history@gmail.com
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3
Contents
I. Summary Conclusion 1
II. Chronology 4
III. Historical Context: Immigrants in San Luis Obispo County 10
Danish Immigration to the Central Coast 10
The Dallidet Addition 11
IV. Architectural Historical Context: The California Bungalow 15
Bungalow origins 15
The California Bungalow 18
Dissemination of the California Bungalow 24
Terminology: California Bungalow versus Craftsman Bungalow 25
V. Historiographic Context: Creation and Revision of the Old Town Historic District 30
Possible origin of the Master/Contributing dichotomy 31
The Old Town Historic District’s origin 35
The district’s misnaming 35
The Historic Preservation Program Guidelines’ arbitrary revision of the district’s
period of significance 38
The Guidelines’ misdescription of the district’s “Architectural Character” 38
The Guidelines’ misdescription of “Predominant architectural features” 45
Old Town Historic District architectural types 46
VI. The Hansen House in the Universe of San Luis Obispo Listed California Bungalows 47
Master List California Bungalows throughout San Luis Obispo 47
Original Master List in the Old Town Historic District: Vollmer, Patton,
Nuss, Crossett, City Kindergarten, Adriance Court
Original list outside of a historic district: Faulkner, Parsons
Added by application of owners 1996 –2012: Dunlap, Burch, Anholm,
Kelly, Dart, and Lyman
Contributing List California Bungalows in the Old Town Historic District 60
VII. Significance of the Hansen House 64
VIII. Period of Significance 68
IX. Integrity 69
X. Conclusion 74
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4
II. Chronology of the Hansen House, 1110 Buchon
Hansen Era: 1921–1937
1846 Hans Nissen Hansen, an ethnic Dane, is born in the Duchy of Schleswig.
1856 Lena Peterson (or Petersen) is born in California of ethnic Danish parents
from the Duchy of Schleswig, not long after the settlement of the First
Schleswig War (1848–1851) in 1852.
1866 Austria’s loss in the Austro -Prussian War puts the Duchy of Schleswig under
the control of Prussia, which promises but never administers a plebiscite.
1867/1868 Hans Hansen immigrates to the United States soon after the Duchy of
Schleswig has come under the control of Prussia. (The 1867 date is given by
his San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram obituary [“Hans Hansen Passes Away,” 25
Jan. 1930, p. 1], the 1868 date in the 1910 and 19 20 US Census.)
1877 Hans Hansen is naturalized as a citizen of the United States (US Census,
1920, San Luis Obispo City, Supervisor’s District 7, Enumeration District 50,
sheet 4A).
1877 Lena Peterson marries Hans Nissen Hansen in Monterey County (Monterey
County marriage records).
1880 The Hansens arrive in San Luis Obispo County and begin ranching in the
Santa Margarita area, according to Hans’s obituary (“Hans Hansen Passes
Away”), or in 1889, according to Lena’s obituary (“Aged Woman Dies
Monday,” Telegram, 7 July 1926, p. 5). According to their son Nelson’s
obituary, he was born in San Luis Obispo County in 1882 (“SLO Native Called
by Death,” Telegram, 22 Jan. 1945, p. 1). Likely the Hansens moved to San
Luis Obispo County in 1880, removed to Chualar in Monterey County in the
late 1880s, and returned in the early 1890s.
1882 Nelson Nissen Hansen is born to Lena Hansen.
1889 John Hansen is born to Lena Hansen at Chualar, southeast of Salinas,
Monterey County (“Born,” Salinas Daily Journal, 4 Nov. 1889, p. 3).
1891 Aug. 30 The San Luis Obispo Tribune notes Hans Hansen of Chualar staying at the
Laughery House (“Hotel Arrivals,” p. 4).
1910 Hans and Lena Hansen and their 27 - and 23-year-old sons Nelson and John
and 21-year-old daughter Carrie (Caroline) are living on their own dairy
farm, owned free of mortgage, on the Chorro Road in the Morro Township
(US Census, 1910, Morro Township, Supervisor’s District 5, Enumeration
District 35, sheet 5A).
1913/1914 Hans and Lena Hansen move from their Chorro Valley ranch to San Luis in
1913, according to Hans’ obituary (“Hans Hansen Passes Away”) or 1914,
according to Lena’s obituary (“Aged Woman Dies Monday”).
1920 Hans and Lena Hansen and daughter Caroline (a music teacher) are renting
at 1190 Buchon Street (US Census 1920).
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1921 Sep. 12 Hansen Nissen Hansen applies for a permit for a 28’ by 42’ five-room frame
and plaster house, part lots 3 and 4, block 201 (1110 Buchon Street),
estimated cost $2,500 (San Luis Obispo Building Permits Collection, Special
Collections and Archives, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo).
1926 July 5 Lena Hansen dies aged 69 (“Aged Woman Dies Monday”).
1930 Jan. 25 Hans Hansen dies aged 83. The funeral service is held at 1110 Buchon,
where Hans has been living with his daughter Carrie.
1930 Apr. 8 Carrie Hansen, 35, no occupation, is listed as the owner of 1110 Buchon,
worth $5,000, with 23-year-old Mabel G. Anderson, bank bookkeeper, as a
roomer (US Census, 1930, San Luis Obispo City, Enumeration District 40 -27,
sheet 11A).
Apr. 9 Nelson Hansen is farming on a rented ranch on Morro Road (US Census,
1930, Morro Township, Supervisor’s District 13, Enumeration District 40 -
10, sheet 21B).
From April 30 to May 23 in the Telegram, two rooms and a bath and
“desirable rooms for ladies” are offered for rent at 1110 Buchon.
1935 Nov. 18 Vernon Newton, a patient at San Luis Sanitarium, is living at 1110 Buchon
(Personal Paragraphs, Telegram, p. 4).
1937 Carrie Hansen, unmarried, deeds 1110 Buchon to Rena Nichols, widow
(Public Records, Telegram, 21 Jan. 1937, p. 6).
Nichols Era: 1937–1950s
1891 Mar 26 Rena Katherine McCann is born in California to Irish parents (US Census,
1910, part Assembly District 31, San Francisco, Supervisor’s District 4,
Enumeration District sheet 30, sheet 4A; Social Security Numerical
Identification Files).
1887 Newton James Nichols is born in California to California-born parents (US
Census, 1910, Gilroy Township, Supervisor’s District 5, Enumeration District
sheet 74, sheet 24A; California Death Index, 1905–1939)
1910 Rena McCann is working as a domestic and living with 13 other lodgers and
a family of 5 at 284 Missouri Street in Potrero Hill, San Francisco (US
Census, 1910).
Newton J. Nichols, a locomotive fireman, is living in a lodging house in Gilroy
(US Census, 1910).
1911 May 7 Newton James Nichols and Rena Katherine McCann are married in San
Francisco, of which they are both described as residents (marriage license
No. L-4207).
1912 Oct. 14 Their daughter Evelyn Catherine Nichols is born.
1914 July 25 Their daughter Laura Nichols is born in San Luis Obispo (Social Security
Numerical Identification Files).
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1918 Sep. 11 Newton Nichols’ draft card identifies him as an SP locomotive fireman living
with his wife at 1533 Osos (a Colonial Bungalow a block from 1110 Buchon
and still extant).
1929 Franklin E. “Frank” Abbott is “in charge” of the Poly orchestra in a grand
march (“Many Present at Party When Five Churches Unite in Social,”
Telegram, 19 Oct. 1929, p. 3).
1930 Feb. 24 Newton Nichols is the engineer for a special train of three Pullmans and
dining, club, and baggage cars departing Los Angeles at 11:50 pm and with
former President and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge, Mr. and Mrs. Louis B. Mayer,
William Randolph Hearst, and entourage for a visit to Hearst Castle. At 6:45
am on the 25th, the train sidetracks at Hathway Avenue. Despite the banner
headline “San Luis Obispo Greets Ex -President Coolidge,” the visit is kept
secret till after the party departs by automobiles fo r Hearst Castle
(Telegram, 25 Feb. 1930, p. 1).
Apr. 12 Frank Abbott, 21, is living with his mother, a theater organist, and younger
brother, an oil company fireman, in Avila, with no occupation (US Census,
1930, Arroyo Grande Township, Enumeration Dirstrict 40 -2, sheet 12A).
May 2 Laura Nichols and Frank Abbott play together in the San Luis Obispo High
School Orchestra (“Edna Center in Big Meet,” Telegram, 2 May 1930, p. 2).
1931 Frank Abbott is working with the surveyors on highway construction
between San Simeon and Carmel (Pismo Times: Avila News Items, Notes, and
Comments, 27 Feb., p. 7; Lela Davis, Avila News, 8 May, p. 3).
1932 Oct. 19 Stanley Abbott is born. Frank and Laura Abbott are living at her parents ’
house at 1533 Osos (About Town, Telegram, 21 Oct. 1932, p. 8).
1933–1935 Reference is made to “Frank Abbott and his orchestra” (Telegram: “Dinner
and Program Enjoyed by CDA,” 24 June, 1933, p. 7; “Dancing Party Given
Honoring Popular Couple,” 18 feb. 1935, p. 3).
1936 Oct. 6 Southern Pacific engineer Newton James Nichols dies at age 50 at the SP’s
San Francisco hospital after being taken ill in his cab at San Jose, leaving
Rena Nichols a widow. According to the Telegram, Newton Nichols has been
with the SP for over 30 years and resident in San Luis for 26 (“Friends
Mourn Death of SP Veteran,” 6 Oct. 1936, p. 2).
Oct. 31 Decree of divorce of Laura Abbott is announced (Personal Paragraphs,
Telegram, p. 6).
Dec. 2 Frank Abbott dies three days after striking his head on a beam above the
piano he is employed to play at a café on the San Pedro waterfront,
according to a lawsuit filed by his mother on behalf of herself and his son
(“Frank Abbott Passes Away in S outhland,” Telegram, 9 Dec. 1936, p. 3; “Café
Operators Here Sued in Piano Player’s Death,” News-Pilot, 2 Dec. 1937, p. 7).
1937 In January Rena Nichols buys 1110 Buchon from Carrie Hansen; in March
she is assigned the whole estate of Newton Nichols, covering lot 8, block 170
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in the Dallidet Addition, that is, the house at 1533 Osos (Public Records:
Miscellaneous, Telegram, 12 Mar. 1937, p. 2).
1938–1954 Mrs. Rena Nichols is documented living at 1110 Buchon (1938 City
Directory; Telegram: “‘Save a Life’ Knives Added in Drive Here,” 11 Jan.
1943, p. 8; “Marriage Licenses,” 21 July 1954, p. 2).
1938–1955 Mrs. Laura Nichols Abbott, Rena Nichols’ daughter, is documented living at
1110 Buchon (1938 City Directory; Telegram: “Committee Nets $3,200 in
Drive,” 17 Mar. 1941, p. 1; “Miss Kirchner Makes Nuptial Vows with Stanley
Abbott,” 7 July 1955, p. 6).
1940 1110 Buchon houses Rena Nichols, head, a widow, age 50; daughter Evelyn,
single, 27, secretary, oil company; daughter Laura Abbott, widow, 25,
secretary, insurance adjustor; and Laura’s son Stanley, 7 (US Census, 1940,
Caifornia, San Luis Obispo City, Enumeration District 40 -26, sheet 7B).
1940–1941 Marie Bell Abbott, Frank Abbott’s mother, who has been working for several
years as the WPA recreational director for the Avila district, goes missing in
early 1940, wanted on an arson charge by the San Luis Obispo County
sheriff and Los Angeles officers (“Mystery Shrouds Disappearance of Avila
Woman,” Telegram-Tribune, 19 Feb. 1941, p. 6). The body of a 5’7”, 250 -
pound woman that washed ashore near Santa Monica on 31 January 1941 is
identified as Marie Abbott by Helen Roberts of National City, wh o claims to
be a friend. Police receive a telegram from Forrest Abbott, Marie’s surviving
son, in Bridgeport, CT, who says that a friend of his has viewed the body and
that it is not his mother. Helen Roberts is found in a Los Angeles
psychopathic ward, and Marie Abbott is put back on the wanted list.
1950 1110 Buchon houses Laura N. Abbott, 35, head, a private secretary in oil
production; son Stanley W. Abbott, 17; and mother Rena Nichols, 58 (US
Census, 1950, California, San Luis Obispo City, Enumeration District 40 -62,
sheet 15).
1955 Marie Bell Abbott dies in Oceano without having been mentioned in the
press since her disappearance and supposed death and misidentification
(“Mrs. Marie Abbott of Oceano Passes,” Arroyo Grande Valley Herald-
Recorder, 14 Oct. 1955, p. 7).
1957 Mr. and Mrs. Everett N. Hunter (the former a student) are living at 1110
Buchon, and neither Rena Nichols nor Laura nor Stanley Abbott is listed in
the county (1957 City Directory, “Thirty-Four Babies Arrive in County; Stork
Is Tired,” Telegram, 18 Sep. 1957, p. 6).
1981 July 19 Rena Nichols Wallace dies and is buried in Goleta Cemetery.
1998 May 24 Laura Nichols Abbott dies and is buried in Goleta Cemetery.
Maxwell Era: 1958–2014
1921 Nov. 18 Otis Mark Maxwell is born in Morton, Mississippi, forty miles east of Jackson.
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1930 Apr. 19 Otis Mark Maxwell (then known as Mark H. Maxwell) is living with his father
(an unemployed house carpenter), mother, and four brothers in Meehan,
Mississippi, near the Alabama border (US Census, 1930, Mississippi,
Lauderdale County, Beat 4, Enumeration District 38-25, sheet 11A).
1942 Feb. 15 Twenty-year-old Otis Maxwell of Morro Bay, 6’2”, red-haired, gray-eyed, and
employed at Camp San Luis, registers for the draft (Registration Card,
Selective Service). He appears to be living with his older brother John C.
Maxwell, Jr. In 1940 John C. Maxwell had been assistant manager of the
grocery store at the Morro Bay CCC camp (US Census. 1940, Morro Bay
Township, Enumeration District 40 -12, sheet 16B).
Sep. Otis Maxwell enlists in the US Navy as an apprentice seaman (“Naval
Enlistments Reach Record Total in County,” Telegram-Tribune, 2 Oct. 1942,
p. 1).
1946 Navy veteran Otis Maxwell has returned to Camp San Luis as one of its six
hundred civilian employees (“Veterans Tell Why They Like SLO,” Telegram,
17 Apr. 1946, pp. 1 and 10).
Otis Maxwell, working as construction labor in building houses and roads, is
one of three lodgers at 530 Buchon (US Census, 1950, Enumeration District
40-50, sheet 2).
1958–1977 Otis Maxwell, foreman at Madonna Construction, and Julia M. Maxwell are
living at 1110 Buchon (City Directories).
1963 Otis and Julia Maxwell apply for a permit to lengthen two windows at 1110
Buchon (“Permit for Duplex Tops San Luis Obispo List,” Telegram-Tribune,
23 Mar. 1963, p. 5).
Otis Maxwell directs the men’s chorus for a surprise fête of almost three
hundred employees for Alex Madonna (“Surprise Fête Honors Boss,”
Telegram-Tribune, 21 Oct. 1963, p. 4).
1967 Otis Maxwell, as owner-contractor, receives a permit for brick veneer, $100
(“Building Permits,” Telegram-Tribune, 12 May 1967, p. 5)
1979–1981 Otis Maxwell, retired, and Julia Maxwell are living at 1110 Buchon (City
Directories).
1981 Julia Maxwell dies in San Luis Obispo (“Card of Thanks” [advertisement],
Telegram-Tribune, 14 Feb. 1981, p. 5).
1984 June 21 Otis Maxwell marries LaVerne Boktin in Reno, Nevada (Nevada Marriage
Index, 1956–2005)
1983–1989 Otis and LaVerne George Boktin Maxwell, both retired, are living at 1110
Buchon (City Directories).
2010 Oct. 8 LaVerne Maxwell dies aged 90 (“LaVerne Boktin Maxwell,” Tribune, 13 Oct.
2010, p. B2).
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9
2014 May 5 Otis Maxwell dies aged 92 in San Luis Obispo (GenealogyBank Obituaries,
Births, and Marriages, United States, 1980-2014, familysearch.org, accessed
9 Oct. 2024).
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10
III. Historic Context: Immigrants in San Luis Obispo County
The difficulty with following Hans Nissen Hansen’s activities is that he was not the only
Hans Hansen—or even the only Hans N. Hansen, or even the only Hans Hansen or Hans
Hanson born in 1846—in San Luis Obispo County.
What were so many Danes doing here? They left Northern Schleswig (now Southern
Jutland) because of two wars from 1848 to 1864 and subsequent Prussian oppression. But
though Hans Hansen and his wife Lena Peterson Hansen were in California because of
historical forces, there is nothing to suggest that Hans or Lena were historically significant
figures themselves, such as leaders of their profession. They were dairy farmers who stuck
to their business in Santa Margarita, Chualar , and the Chorro Valley till they retired to the
City of San Luis Obispo in 1913 or 1914 . In 1921 they built the house at 1110 Buchon that
is the subject of this application for its embodiment of the California Bungalow.
Unlike fellow Danish Schleswigers Chris and George Anholm, the Hansens did not have a
farm close enough to San Luis to turn into a suburban bungalow tract . They were
prosperous enough, however, to build a single suburban bungalow.
Danish immigration to the Central Coast Hans Nissen Hansen, an ethnic Dane who
immigrated to the United States from Germany in his early twenties, appears to have been
born in 1846 in Northern Schleswig in the disputed Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein.
The British prime minister Lord Palmerston famously observed of the “Schleswig -Holstein
question” that vexed Europe in the mid-nineteenth century that only three people had ever
understood it: “the Prince Consort, who is dead; a German professor, who went mad; and
myself, who have forgotten all about it.”
The dispute arose from the two traditionally conjoined duchies belonging to the Danish
royal branch of the Oldenburg dynasty and located between Denmark and Germany.
Schleswig remained outside the Holy Roman Empire and was partially Danish speaking;
Holstein remained inside and was largely German speaking. In the mid-nineteenth century,
with Frederick VII of Denmark having no issue, the duchies’ future owner was in doubt,
against the background of rising nationalism, popular revolutions, and the maneuvering of
imperial powers.
An uprising by German-speaking Schleswigers and Holsteiners in 1848 —started by a
German-oriented claimant to the duchies from the Schleswig -Holstein-Sonderburg-
Augustenburg branch of the Oldenburgs—sparked the First Schleswig War, which
continued until 1851 and drew in troops from both the Kingdom of Denmark on one side
and the Prussian and Hanoverian kingdoms and Saxon duchies of the German
Confederation on the other. It also attracted the interfere nce of the Russian tsar and
concluded with a peace conference in London. Schleswig and Holstein remained the
possession of the Danish crown but with a semi-autonomous status.
A Danish attempt to integrate Schleswig, the death of Frederick VII in 1863, and the
question of whether the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein should go to Prince Christian of
Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, who had inherited the Danish throne, or
Frederick, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, a Prussian puppet,
resulted in the German Confederation’s invasion of Holstein and a subsequent incursion by
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11
Prussia and Austria into Schleswig in 1864. Schleswig -Holstein came under joint Prussian
and Austrian administration until Austria lost the Austro -Prussian War of 1866, when
Prussia became the sole authority.
A promised plebiscite for the region was indefinitely postponed. Rights for ethnic Danes to
live in Denmark without ceding land in Schleswig were rescinded. With neither Danish nor
Prussian citizenship available, and Prussian persecution, expulsion, and mi litary service in
force, many Schleswig Danes left for America. A number of them—including Hans Nissen
Hansen and the Anholm brothers—ended up in San Luis Obispo County to build its growing
dairy industry.
In the 1860s and ’70s, dairy was replacing the Central Coast’s drought -battered ranching
industry. Cattle, raised for tallow and hides during the Spanish and Mexican eras and meat
during the California Gold Rush and after, traditionally wandered for most of the year in the
wildernesses of local ranchos and public land. When the rains failed, which happened
repeatedly in the 1860s, cattle were wiped out. In contrast, dairy herds were kept close to
food and water for twice-daily milkings.
Lena Peterson Hansen’s parents, from her 1856 California birthdate, likely came to the
state during or soon after the First Schleswig War. Hans Nissen Hansen immigrated to
California soon after the Second Schleswig War.
Schleswig was finally granted its plebiscite in 1920 after Germany’s defeat in World War I.
The result was that Northern Schleswig became South Jutland and part of Denmark —hence
the change from “Ger-Danish” for the birth nationality of Hans Hansen and his wife’s
parents in the 1910 US Census to “Danish” in the 1920 census. Some S chleswigers,
suddenly South Jutlanders, returned permanently from San Luis Obispo County to
Denmark, some for a visit only, now that there was no risk of Prussian arrest for once
having evaded military service. The Hansens, however, appear to have stayed put in San
Luis until their deaths, and there is no record they ever visited the old country.
The Dallidet Addition The Hansen House is part of the Dallidet Addition, another
product of immigrants, this time from France and Mexican-administered New Mexico.
Pierre Hypolite Dallidet, Sr.—generally referred to as Hypolite in his lifetime—built up his
fortune through possible success in the California gold fields, where he went after French
military service in Tahiti; a certainly advantageous marriage into a land grant family in San
Luis Obispo; subsequent viticulture in town; and real estate investment in town and the
surrounding countryside (his earliest recorded deed in the county is agricultural land at
the far end of the Chorro Valley).
Dallidet was born in 1823 at Paizay-le-Tort near Melle, about fifty miles from the west
coast of France, an area whose primary industry in the nineteenth century was
winegrowing. His father was a carpenter , as well as a farmer. Dallidet joined the French
army at 20; at 23, he was sent to Polynesia, where he served as a carpenter until 27.
He arrived in San Francisco from Tahiti in 1851 at the height of the California Gold Rush
and spent the next two years prospecting at Hangtown (now Placerville), where he either
“made a clean-up” and came south “looking for a good vineyard location” (“Monday Club’s
Pageant of Nations,” Morning Tribune, 31 Mar. 1934, p. 4, presumably sourced from
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12
Monday Club member Rosa Dallidet) or became “disgusted” and set off for Mexico (Cecilia
Jensen, “Pioneer Charm Lingers in Old Dallidet Adobe,” Telegram-Tribune, 6 Nov. 1947, p. 1,
with his youngest son Paul Dallidet as its explicit source).
In either case, he came to San Luis Obispo in
1853—shortly after a cholera epidemic had
driven and wiped out the town’s hundreds of
Chumash and other Indian inhabitants but
largely spared the few Californios, Yankees,
and Europeans (Samuel Pollard, “1852: How
San Luis Obispo Had the Cholera and Buried
the Victims,” Tribune, 31 Aug. 1892, p. 2). It
was also the year San Luis made the front
page banner of the nascent New York Times
for recapturing an escaping accused bandit
and immediately hanging him from a joist in
the mission (“Exciting Scene in San Luis
Obispo—Another Outlaw Hung,” 29 Nov.
1853, p. 1). Three associates—suspected of
murder near San Miguel but convicted of
horse-stealing in San Luis by a Los Angeles
vigilante trial—were hanged on Avila Beach
when they arrived by mail steamer; a fifth
was shot dead in pursuit (“From San Luis
Obispo: Great Excitement—The Execution,”
Alta California, 16 Oct. 1853).
Hypolite Dallidet, Sr. in his later years
Two years later, Hypolite Dallidet wed the seventeen-year-old (according to their mission
marriage record) Asencion Zalazar. They had eight children over the next sixteen years, till
Asencion died of complications of the last birth.
He appears to have been the “vandalic
Frenchman” accused of cutting down 50 -foot
olive trees that were shading his vines in the
old Mission Vineyard in the late 1850s
(“Letter from San Luis Obispo,” Daily Alta
California, 22 Aug. 1868).
He obtained the land for his own vineyard and suburban housing tract from the family of
his wife, the Zalazars, who received it in turn from Asencion’s mother, Dolores Marques,
whose father Miguel received the land grant in 1845, shortly before the Bear Flag
Rebellion. In 1859 or 1860, according to family recollection, Dallidet built his own adobe
just east of what would become Pacific and Santa Rosa, near the Zalazar Adobe, which was
razed in 1956, just as the Dallidet Adobe was being saved (Louisiana Clay ton Dart, “Dallidet
Adobe Is Laden with History,” Telegram-Tribune, 13 June 1959, p. 3).
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13
The Dallidet vineyard (unsubdivided) and Dallidet Addition at lower left in C. W. Henderson’s
1894 Sketch Map of the City of San Luis Obispo, Cal. The vineyard is bounded by Marsh Street
at northwest, Santa Rosa and Toro Streets running northwest to southeast, and Leff at
southeast. Buchon street transects it. The lot of the future Hansen House would be on the
north side of Buchon just to the east of Santa Rosa. The ell to the southwest was sold off as lots
of the Dallidet Addition as early as 1877 (“Real Estate Transactions,” San Luis Obispo Tribune,
22 Dec. 1877, p. 8).
Page 77 of 415
14
Dallidet’s eldest son, Pierre Hypolite, Jr., threatened the family’s fortune in the 1890s
through unsuccessful real estate speculation . On 18 March 1897, while leaving the Dallidet
Adobe after a family quarrel, Hypolite, Jr. was shot twice in the back from the veranda by
one of his younger brothers, John (“A Dreadful Crime Committed,” Tribune, 19 Mar. 1897, p.
3). John was acquitted, surprisingly, on a plea of self-defense but almost immediately
emigrated to Mexico.
With some lots already sold off, in the early twentieth century the remainder of the
vineyard was subdivided and marketed nostalgically as La Vina Tract (never printed with a
tilde, as in Viña), but the family did not profit, as by then Hypolite Dallidet, Sr. had lost
control of the land to the Commercial Bank, which sold it to a syndicate led by Mark Elberg,
a director of the Union National Bank (“La Vina Homestead Tract Sold,” Tribune, 7 Jan.
1905, p. 4). Hypolite, Sr. died in 1909 at the age of eighty-five (“Births, Deaths, and
Marriages,” Telegram, 17 May 1909, p. 8), and the Dallidet family continued to occupy the
Dallidet Adobe and Garden till youngest son Paul Dallidet’s death in 1958, the ninety-eighth
or ninety-ninth year since the adobe’s construction . For the previous five years, however,
the property had been owned by the County Historical Society , which was supporting Paul
and paying the taxes with the goal of saving the adobe and garden .
Hans and Lena Hansen’s lot at 1110 Buchon was part of the Dallidet vineyard between
Santa Rosa and Toro Streets. Their house in 1921 became part of a block-long collection of
13 Colonial Bungalows built between 1901 and 1910 and 6 California Bungalows built
between 1910 and 1926, which —with 1 nondescript bungalow—were all Contributing
Listed in 1987.
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15
IV. Architectural Historical Context: The California Bungalow
Bungalow origins The word bungalow derives from “late-seventeenth-century Hindi
baṅglā, ‘belonging to Bengal,’ from a type of cottage built for early European settlers in
Bengal” (New Oxford American Dictionary). The Oxford English Dictionary records the first
English use in an India Office MS. of 1676. As a feature of Indian architecture, the bungalow
was introduced to American newspaper readers by the late eighteenth century (“From the
Asiatic Mirror, Calcutta, November 26, 1794,” Gazette of the United States, 25 Jan. 1796, p. 2)
and to California papers from the 1850s (“A Predicament!,” Nevada Journal, 27 Dec. 1851, p.
1), sometimes accompanied by an explanation of its low, light, and airy construction but
usually without. Japanese houses were also described as bungalows in American papers.
On 10 November 1875, the intriguing item at
right appeared in the Santa Barbara Daily
News with no further explanation
(“Brevities,” p. 4). Did it refer to the house
below (detail of a William Keith Joseph
painting) that the Rev. Joseph Worcester
built about then, overlooking San Francisco
Bay in Piedmont; that Jack London, who
rented it 1901–1902, called a “bungalow
with a capital B” (Leslie M. Freudenheim,
Building with Nature [Layton: Gibbs Smith,
2005], p. 132); and that is credited by
several sources as the ur-bungalow in
America? Its deep porch plays up the Indian,
bellcast roof the Japanese reference, while
its low profile is uncottagelike.
Alas, there is a more pedestrian explanation for the Daily News’ item: it was the first
sentence of a longer paragraph appearing in newspapers in the Midwest and South in
September 1875 that promoted the bungalow form as a “summer residence by the seaside.”
“[I]t is simple in shape, is usually not more than one story high, and is covered by a simple
low-pitched roof, which may be prolonged to form a veranda. With this protection the
inmates may pass most of their time in the open air, and thus have the fullest be nefit of
their sojourn by the sea. Bungalows can be worked and kept clean with a very small
amount of labor, as many contrivances to diminish servants’ work have been introduced”
(“Bungalows for Summer Houses,” Warrensburg Standard [Missouri], 2 Sep. 1875, p. 3).
Eight months earlier, however, a California promoter was advertising home lots in Alameda
County to potential investors in Nevada and Utah with this pitch: “Estimates show that
bungalow houses can be erected, containing parlor, two bedrooms, closets, kitchen, etc., at
a cost not to exceed $1,000 each” (“Double Your Capital and No Risk,” advertisement,
Eureka Daily Sentinel [Nevada], 30 Dec. 1874, p. 2). This ad appears to be the first example
in the American press of the bungalow concept adapted to America’s shores: defined not as
a simple, ideal, nature-embracing Asian dwelling but a cheap, easily maintained house on
its own suburban lot—an entry-level real estate investment in booming California.
Page 79 of 415
16
Digital newspaper databases counter our earlier, high-culture narratives focused on figures
like Joseph Worcester. In 1986 Clay Lancaster tried to find the ur–bungalow by reviewing
American Architect and Building News for the first house so designated. He found it in the
27 March 1880 issue, designed by architect William Gibbons Preston for Monument Beach,
Cape Cod (“The American Bungalow,” pp. 79 –106, in Dell Upton and John Michael Vlach,
Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture [Athens: University of
Georgia Press, 1986], p. 80 ). Built on sand (below), it echoes the 1875 paragraph on seaside
bungalows. Its wraparound veranda recalls Indian bungalows but also peripteral American
houses from the Greek Revival on; gables and brackets are Swiss/Bracketed. At 2½ stories,
it fell within Indian bungalow height but defied Clay Lancaster’s one-story purism.
Hence his second candidate, designed for a Burlingame, California hillside by A. Page
Brown and appearing in the 8 June 1895 issue (below left). At only 1½ stories, some
authorities designate this the ur-bungalow. Yet its architecture puzzles those same
authorities: “authentic Himalayan chalet” (Lancaster, p. 81); “a strange congeries of
Bengalese, Queen Anne, and Swiss chalet” (Robert Winter, American Bungalow Style [New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1996], p. 13). In fact, its masonry base with Romanesque
fenestration, knee braces, half-timbering, and hip roof surmounted by end gables
reproduced the then widely sketched, photographed, and published but distinctly
unbungaloid seventeenth-century addition to Stokesay Castle (below right).
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17
For at its introduction to America—by a dubious California developer—the bungalow
defined not high architectural style but the dream of a cheap detached dwelling on its own
lot: a downsizing of the 1784 Jefferson Grid, where the future president imagined America
divided in metric square miles, each owner separated from his neighbor’s impositions.
Hence the bungalow flourished outside the high-culture range of notable architects and
architectural magazines. By the late 1890s, the term bungalow was so ubiquitous that the
New York Sun could publish a satiric piece headlined “Billings Has Queered Himself:
Wouldn’t Call His Colonial House a Bungalow and Wouldn’t Have a Den” (Sun, 20 Mar.
1898, sec. 3, p. 7), reprinted in at least twenty-five other papers from Vermont to California
(the Dunsmuir News on the front page above the fold [11 June 1898]). A 4 March 1900
satirical column in the Sun, simultaneously printed in the Chicago Inter Ocean, referred to
“Mrs. Politely’s colonial bungalow,” built the previous summer in “Suburbanville” (but “her
servants all deserted her” when she moved from the city to the suburbs, and she stole a
neighbor’s cook, so it seems to have been imagined—like Billings’ Colonial, with its parlors,
dining room, and billiard room—as a commodious residence).
The “Colonial Bungalow” appears to be the first consistent association of the bungalow
form with a particular architectural style in America, reflecting the streamlining of our
national revival architecture for the suburbs. Newspaper.com database searches (executed
14–26 Oct. 2024) give us a rough statistical view of how the popular press represented
architectural styles in tandem with structural types. During the two decades 1881–1900,
when Eastlake, Queen Anne, and Colonial Revival dominated American domestic
architecture, the term cottage slightly dominates house in pairings with them in the press.
Mentions in California newspapers, 1881–1900 (newspapers.com, 21 Oct. 2024)
Eastlake cottage 1,709 house 1,465 mansion 14 villa 0 bungalow 0
Queen Anne cottage 465 house 385 mansion 24 villa 16 bungalow 0
Colonial cottage 2,816 house 1,893 mansion 157 villa 2 bungalow 0
“Colonial bungalow” shows 0 in California because the 1898 reprint in the Dunsmuir News,
as with 23 of the 28 newspapers, does not trigger the search engine for that term; the
number of hits nationally for “Colonial bungalow” is 5 for 1898 and 2 for 1900. There are
no hits nationally for “Eastlake bungalow” or “Queen Anne bungalow” 1881 –1900.
Looking at the next decade in 5-year increments (table on following page), “Eastlake
bungalow” continues to have no hits nationally, though “Queen Anne bungalow” is accepted
as a concept after 1905 (as it already had been in England as early as 1893 [“Pegwell Bay
will soon become a memory of the past and will be built over with Gothic villas and Queen
Anne bungalows” {“Margate Up To Date,” Daily Telegraph, 22 July 1893, p. 2}]). Hits for
“Colonial bungalow” increase by nearly a factor of 10 in 1901 –1905 and again 1906–1910.
(Because newspapers.com does not support exact match phrasal searches, of the 60 hits in
1901–1905, only 2 are of “Colonial bungalow” [both in Oregon], while the other 58 are of
widely published column on door drapery that, significantly, equates “the colonial or
bungalow style of architecture.”)
Page 81 of 415
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Newspapers.com database (newspapers.com, 18 Oct. 2024)
1881–1900 1901–1905 1906–1910
Italianate cottage, California & rest of US 0 0 0
Italianate bungalow, California & rest of US 0 0 0
Gothic cottage, California 2,770 357 21
Gothic cottage, rest of US 2,047 238 86
Gothic bungalow, California 0 0 1
Gothic bungalow, rest of US 0 0 1
Eastlake cottage, California 1,687 507 139
Eastlake cottage, rest of US 245 2 3
Eastlake bungalow 0 0 0
Queen Anne cottage, California 458 202 705
Queen Anne cottage, rest of US 12,086 3,016 3,827
Queen Anne bungalow, California 0 0 11
Queen Anne bungalow, rest of US 0 0 50
Colonial cottage, California 5,117 1,570 807
Colonial cottage, rest of US 5,117 3,202 4,020
Colonial bungalow, California 0 0 50
Colonial bungalow, rest of US 7 60 526
The California Bungalow This architectural type appeared by the early twentieth
century, reconfiguring the Swiss chalet for the Golden State’s suburbs. The chalet as an
architectural revival form is documented back to Samuel H. Brook’s 1839 Designs for
Cottage and Villa Architecture (London), closely followed by Andrew Jackson Downing’s
1842 Cottage Residences (New York). Reconfiguration for the California Bungalow included
• lowering the Swiss chalet’s 2½- to 3½-story height to 1, sometimes 1½ stories, rarely
higher, for sunny but often tiny California lots
• adding large and copious windows, including square bays and oriels, as well as indoor-
outdoor spaces in the form of porches and pergolas to take advantage of the climate
• minimizing fretwork, half-timbering, and other busy decoration that did not look
structural
• using muscular elements, including wide door and window frames and square posts
• varying exterior wall surfaces with wide clapboard, rectangular shingle, brick, and
fieldstone—often varying materials from level to level or among different elements
• opening up interior spaces , then paneling or wainscoting them, often with old-
fashioned built-in features such as bookcases, large fireplaces, and inglenooks
• infusing Japanese influence through lowered roof pitch and extended rafters, often with
kaza-ana terminations; curved elements like faux kooryoo rainbow beams; hari
crossbeams; elements of Shinto torii in columns, capitals, and beams; patterning of
surfaces; and organization of space
Hence, when William Randolph Hearst brought a pile of architecture books to Julia
Morgan’s office in April 1919 and asked her to design, at San Simeon, a “Jappo-Swisso
bungalow” (Suzanne B. Riess, ed., The Julia Morgan Architectural History Project, vol. 1, The
Page 82 of 415
19
Work of Walter Steilberg and Julia Morgan , “Reminiscences of Walter Steilberg,” p. 57), he
meant a California Bungalow infused with Greene and Greene’s Pasadena japonisme.
What he got was Hearst Castle, for, at the end of World War I, the California Bungalow was
displaced as the latest fashion by streamlined, eaveless European and colonial revival
styles influenced by English architect Sir Edwin Lutyens’ designs. Hearst Castle’s specific
Spanish Colonial Revivalism was introduced to California by New York architect Carleton
Winslow, Sr. for San Diego’s Panama-California Exposition of 1915–1917. But across
California, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the California Bungalow
would persist through the 1920s.
Top left, center, and right: folk
architecture at Ballenberg
Freilichtmuseum der Schweiz.
Counter-clockwise from left:
“Cottage in the Swiss Style,”
Samuel H. Brooks’s 1839
Designs for Cottage and Villa
Architecture (London);
“Cottage Villa in the
Bracketed Mode,” Andrew
Jackson Downing’s 1842
Cottage Residences (New
York); Alexander Jackson
Davis’s Swiss Cottage,
Barrytown, NY, 1867; and
designs xv and ix, Downing’s
1850 The Architecture of
Country Houses (New York).
Page 83 of 415
20
Curiously, one of the earliest uses
in a newspaper of the term
“California Bungalow” with
photographs is of a two-story
Colonial Revival in Memphis
(right), with Tuscan columns,
pediment-style front gable,
bellcast bay, diamond panes, and
shingle walls. The writer defines
as Californian “the low, sweeping
effects peculiar to warm climates,
with a broad veranda in front and
wide entrance door of hardwood.
The design is in the latest
California style, and the wide
window space on the first floor
gives a very open, cheerful
appearance. The window effect is
also carried out on the second
floor. The color of the body of the
building is a natural, dark olive
green, to which neutral color the
white trimmings of the window
casings offer a good contrast”
(“California Bungalow Built in
Memphis,” Commercial Appeal,
17 Jan. 1904, Art Section, 2).
But indications of the California Bungalow as
it was later defined begin to show up in
Charles and Henry Greene’s freestanding Dr.
W. H. Roberts Office (Pasadena, 1898) (left):
deep eaves, exposed rafter tails, a square
bay, square columns, and dado of
rectangular natural wood shingles. But as
the elevations on the next page make clear,
the controlling aesthetic was Tudor Revival,
with steep roof pitch, half-timbered walls,
and lychgate entry (Greene and Greene
Collection, Columbia University).
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21
Greene and Greene’s 1902 James Culbertson House in Pasadena, despite its japonesque Arts
and Crafts interior, also had Elizabethan gables and E (for Elizabeth) footprint, half
timbering (though against natural wood shingles, not stucco), diamond panes, and Tudor
arch. But the Culbertson House was their last essay in Tudor Revival (till the late 1920s);
the 1902 Light Hall for George H. Barker in Pasadena, their last essay in Colonial Revival.
Greene and Greene’s 1903 houses —such as the Mary Reeve Darling House in Claremont
(below)—are pure California Bungalow in the chalet ur-form: full-width, low-pitch gables;
deep eaves; low profiles; stained shingle or wide clapboard with fieldstone; and subtle
asymmetries. Are these half dozen the ur-und-echt California Bungalows? The Greenes
were not yet using the term “California Bungalow,” as far as we know, but circa 1904–1905,
they drew up a plan they titled “A California House” (next page, top) (Edward R. Bosley,
Greene and Greene [New York: Phaidon, 2000], pp. 69 –71).
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22
We know the region soon
followed the Greenes,
because the Los Angeles
Herald on 24 September
1905 (sec. iii, p. 3, at left)
published a perspective
drawing of a “California
Bungalow on Church
Street,” featuring “beam
ceilings, wide mantels, odd
shaped roof, and novelty
windows for light and
ventilation”: perhaps the
first image of a California
Bungalow identified as such
and in the form we
recognize today.
This Swiss chalet ur-form of the California Bungalow—with its full-width gable; integrated
asymmetric entry porch; rectangular side bay; wide-framed, similarly-sized triplet
windows; exposed beam ends; knee brackets; rafter tails; and wide clapboard —led to the
1921 Hansen House at the top of the following page.
Page 86 of 415
23
The Greenes’ Swiss inspiration may well
have come from Bernard Maybeck, who had
been experimenting with the chalet form in
the Bay Area since the late 1890s, though his
chalets tended to be towering hillside
structures for wealthy clients, e.g., the 1899
William P. Rieger House at right.
The San Jose partnership of Frank Delos
Wolfe and Charles McKenzie, however,
designed for suburban lots . In their 1907
Book of Designs, consisting mostly of Colonial
Revival and some Prairie School houses, they
included a few designs showing California
Bungalow characteristics in Prairie-esque
hip roof structures: the 1904 deep eaved,
square columned, porched, and pergola’d
Lion House (below left) and the Hyde House
(below right), with square columns, river
rock dado, and chalet entry gable displaying
beam ends, ca. 1900 .
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Dissemination of the California Bungalow By 1907 Henry L. Wilson had produced
The Bungalow Book, $1, for Ye Planry in Los Angeles, with “a short sketch of the evolution
of the bungalow from its primitive crudeness to its present state of artistic beauty and cozy
convenience,” followed by perspective drawings and floor plans. Working drawings could
be ordered for $10. Soon Wilson and Ye Planry parted ways, with Wilson producing
simpler and cheaper designs, Ye Planry more sophisticated and expensive ones .
Cover of a Henry L. Wilson catalogue, circa 1910s (Grolier Club). Note the spring
California poppies and orange blossoms and winter oranges and poinsettias, with snow on
the (San Gabriel?) mountains, evoking year-round indoor-outdoor California living.
Gustav Stickley’s New York–based journal The Craftsman published an article entitled “The
California Bungalow: A Style of Architecture Which Expresses the Individuality and
Freedom Characteristic of Our Western Coast” in its October 1907 issue (pp. 68–80),
though all the examples were monumental ones from the partnership of Myron Hunt and
Elmer Grey; one-and-a-half, two, or two-and-a-half stories; and bore little resemblance to
the simple, rustic, and asymmetric chalet-like designs of the Greenes and their more
faithful disciples.
Greene-style designs began to appear in The Craftsman in several articles in 1908 and
1909, one of which Stickley—who had been deeply impressed by Mission architecture in
his 1904 visit to California, even inventing a furniture style around it—referred to as
having “the lines of the old Mission house,” if not its materials (“A Small Bungalow Worth
Studying,” Aug. 1908, p. 535).
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Stickley had published some pieces on
bungalows before 1907, the first substantive
one being “How to Build a Bungalow” in
December 1903 (pp. 253–260). But the
article’s hip-roofed example with splay-
roofed verandas on three sides (below)
resembles the bungalows of British India
(1876 illustration at right)—apart from the
windmill and water tank added to
Americanize the Stickley version.
Above left: illustration from “How to Build a Bungalow,” The Craftsman, Dec. 1903, p. 254;
above right: illustration from “A Craftsman Bungalow,” The Craftsman, Mar. 1905, p. 737
Terminology: California versus Craftsman The term “Craftsman Bungalow” appears
to originate in reference specifically to the bungalows portrayed in The Craftsman rather
than in any direct relation to William Morris’s Arts and Crafts movement, though Stickley
was an explicit admirer of Morris. In suburban bungaloid Great Britain, the concept of a
bungalow and the Arts and Crafts movement appear mutually exclusive: “Craftsman
Bungalow” and “Arts and Crafts Bungalow” are used in the British press to refer to the
American phenomenon and only from the 2000s, whereas “California Bungalow” appears
in the British press a few times in the 1920s in the context of Hollywood films.
Australians, in contrast, were early adopters of a house form designed for a similar climate,
as seen from a full-page spread with photographs of ten California Bungalows , so
described, in the construction supplement of Sydney’s Local Government Journal of
Australasia in 1912 (20 May, p. 8). (See also Graeme Butler’s book The California Bungalow
in Australia [Melbourne: Lothian, 1992].) Sydney architect James Peddle promoted the
form on his return from America after World War I, and it has been recognized i n Urban
Conservation Areas under Australia’s National Trust (Belinda Gibbon, “American Beauty:
An Interior Designer’s Passion for the California Bungalow Led to Its Conservation Listing
with the National Trust,” Sydney Morning Herald, 10 Aug. 2000, Domain p. 8).
The term “Craftsman Bungalow” first appears in American newspapers in 1905 (Maryville,
Missouri Republican 2 Mar., p. 8; Jersey City News, 4 Mar., p. 2; Buffalo News, 5 Mar., p. 4; Salt
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Lake Tribune, 19 Mar., pt. 3, p. 8) in reference to an article in that month’s The Craftsman, “A
Craftsman Bungalow” (pp. 736–741). That article features a hip-roofed, L-shaped fieldstone
house with log columns supporting an interior veranda (illustration previous page), more
Adirondack than California in nature. In other words, a Craftsman Bungalow need not have
been a California Bungalow, but they both shared an aesthetic of open interiors ; simple,
muscular, angular, design; and rustic materials.
For the decades of the terms’ mutual existence, the California Bungalow is by far the
dominant term and concept: its aspirational, almost utopian nature conjured a distinct
lifestyle of beauty, simplicity, and multi-season integration with climate, landscape, and
vegetation, as seen in Henry L. Wilson’s illustration surrounded by poppies, orange
blossoms, oranges, poinsettias , and snow-capped peaks two pages previous.
US Press mentions of “California Bungalow”
in the newspapers.com electronic archives
(14 Oct. 2024)
1905–1909 4,217
1910-1914 17,188
1915–1919 20,296
1920–1924 47,120
1925–1929 24,602
1930–1934 7,941
US Press mentions of “Craftsman Bungalow”
in the newspapers.com electronic archives
(14 Oct. 2024)
1905–1909 128
1910-1914 1,008
1915–1919 805
1920–1924 264
1925–1929 117
1930–1934 18
By the late 1920s, press mentions of “California Bungalow” increasingly included resale ads
for previously built bungalows. The numbers were also influenced by a broadening
definition of the California Bungalow: 1929 advertisements for, or articles about, new
California Bungalows that give specific addresses in Havre, Montana; Evansville, Indiana;
and Hempstead, New York can be tracked down to show eaveless stucco and brick Spanish
and Tudor Revival houses of the Lutyensesque type (922 Third Ave, Havre, MT, “Lucke
Bungalow Is Very Unique,” Hill County Journal, 1 Aug. 1929, p. 2; 1913 and 1915 Keck Ave,
Evansville, IN, “The House That Jack Built,” advertisement, Evansville Courier and Journal,
31 Mar. 1929, sec. 2, p. 4; 35 Kensington Court, Hempstead, NY, “Hempstead,”
advertisement, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 13 Jan. 1929, p. 10D). Some other new bungalows
accompanied by addresses, however, still show a version of the deep-eaved, low-pitched,
wide-gabled wood model as developed by the Greenes.
To complicate the picture, searches for various terms like “Queen Anne Bungalow ,” where
the results produce traceable addresses, show, on Google Street View, what we would
recognize today as California Bungalows (“2-Story Queen Annes [sic] Bungalows, Kansas
City Star, 2 Sep. 1921, p. 25).
The term “Craftsman Bungalow” virtually disappeared from newspapers in the 1940s,
while “California Bungalow” had a resurgence to refer to the new suburban Ranch House
style in a reader-familiar way. Only in the 1990s did “Craftsman Bungalow” (9,022 hits in
newspapers.com) pull close to “California Bungalow” (10,830), surpassing it in the 2000s
(19,653 hits to 5,404), before interest in historic architecture—or the number of
newspapers—declined in the 2010s (5,357 uses of “Craftsman Bungalow” to 1,821 of
“California Bungalow”).
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The rise of the term “Craftsman Bungalow” unfortunately misled some historians into
thinking that craftsmanship had been integral to the form. The National Register Bulletin
How to Apply the National Register Criteria for Evaluation , describes how “a building that is
a classic expression of the design theories of the Craftsman Style, such as carefully detailed
handwork, is eligible” for the National Register of Historic Places (p. 20). In fact, there was
no such design theory. California Bungalows, ak a “Craftsman Bungalows,” were mass
produced from pattern books, in cottage courts, and by transient developers and are
characterized by their detached placement; low, shady aspects; indoor -outdoor design; and
plain, muscular features. In press descriptions, they were valued for their inexpensiveness
(no basements) and ease of maintenance without servants (open rooms and lack of
decoration), just like the ur-bungalows of the 1870s. Any “carefully detailed handwork”—
like kaza-ana terminations of bargeboards and rafter tails1—was likely mass-
manufactured, just like elaborate features of earlier Gothic and Eastlake houses.
Expansion and contraction The regions with the most prevalent press mentions of
the California Bungalow during
• 1905–1909 were California (18,45), Oregon and Washington (517), and Utah (379)
• 1910–1919 were California (6,844), Oregon and Washington (2,475), and the South
Central states of Oklahoma (4,250), Kansas (2,995), Missouri (2,733), and Texas
(2,267), with lesser centers of interest in New York State (1,094), Florida (1,072), and
the Midwest states of Indiana (1,322) and Ohio (1,033) (newspapers.com, 14 Oct. 2024)
During 1920–1929, as nationwide interest in the California Bungalow surge d, California
interest appeared to fall: in 1920–1929, there were more press mentions of the California
Bungalow in Oklahoma (10,897), New York (8,686), and Missouri (6,541) than in California
(5,886). “Real California Bungalow” was a frequently advertiser term in these other states.
1. The kaza-ana is a wind slot in a chigi, or crossed upward-pointing faux extension of the
bargeboard above the roof of a Shinto shrine. The third and terminal kaza-ana is open on a beveled
edge, forming a deep scoop or mouth. This became a popular motif in rafter tails, the lower
terminations of bargeboards, and even faux beam ends in California Bungalows.
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Sears kit homes, manufactured 1908–1940, featured California-ish bungalow kits by 1911
(the Niota, model no. 161) and had fully captured the aesthetic by 1913 (the Arlington,
model no. 145). Sears continued to sell California Bungalow kits into the late 1920s
(searsarchives.com/homes). As well, the Mount Diablo Building Corporation would come
to towns such as San Luis Obispo—where it filed 18 permit applications between
November 1921 and January 1922—with economical models ready to build. The $3,900
Charles John Kelly House at 1352 Pacific Street, Master Listed for Matt and Sara Ritter in
2010, is a Mount Diablo product.
From 1910 to 1912, Arthur and Alfred Heineman (who would build San Luis Obispo’s Motel
Inn in Mission Revival style in 1925) constructed the 23-unit Bowen Court (above, 1911),
the oldest extant bungalow court in Pasadena, of California Bungalows : with beam ends,
knee brackets, and intersecting gables, clad in rectangular stained wood shingles , secluded
in two facing lines through the interior of the block, across a pedestrian path and plantings .
In contrast, the Mount Diablo Building Corporation and Kelly Brothers’ 32-bungalow, 2-
block development in Marysville, CA in early 1920 —called “LA Bungalows” and “Los
Angeles Bungalows” in their press—had slightly varying 4-, 5-, and 6-room models
sheathed in stucco and pressed right against the sidewalk on their tiny lots (“Kelly Bros. To
Build 32 Bungalows on I, J, and Pine Streets,” Marysville Appeal, 29 Jan. 1920, p. 4). The
California Bungalow was becoming commoditized for cheapness and convenience, their
craftsmanship and interaction with nature expendable.
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At the high end, Charles and Henry Greene experimented with the California Bungalow in
increasingly complex forms (they referred to the three-story Gamble House [1908–1909,
above] as a California Bungalow) before transitioning to less rustic architecture in the
1910s. Yet Henry Greene returned to the California Bungalow ur-form as late as 1929 with
the adobe Tenalu in Porterville, CA (below, photographed by Julius Shulman).
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V. Historiographic Context: Creation and Revision of the Old Town Historic District
As San Luis Obispo looks to update its Historic Resources Survey, it’s worth examining how
we got to our present state and whether it accurately represents and preserves the fabric of
our past. Colonial Bungalows and California Bungalows are the two significant streams of
bungalow development in early-twentieth-century America. The Old Town Historic District
was created between 1983 and 1987 with 127 listed Colonial and California Bungalows: 41
percent of the 309 original listed resources, reflecting this significance. On the Contributing
List there were 56 Colonial Bungalows (22 percent of 256 resources) and 46 Contributing
List California Bungalows (18 percent): near parity. Yet on the more prestigious Master
List, there were 19 Colonial Bungalow resources (36 percent of 53 resources) compared to
only 6 California Bungalow resources (11 percent): a 3 to 1 ratio. How did that happen?
Above: Conservation Area #1, 1979 ; below, the Old Town
Historic District from Google Maps
No substantive reason,
such as lack of master
architects, high artistic
values, or stylistic
embodiment, appears as
to why the California
Bungalow—a regional
form of world significance
and the only specific
architectural style
mentioned in the district’s
inception as Conservation
District #1—was
underrepresented on the
district’s Master List.
Likely the effort to
valorize the Old Town
Historic District as a high-
built, “High Victorian,”
high-status district of the
imagination ultimately
skewed Master Listings
away from its significant
collection of California
Bungalows, as Colonial
Bungalows around “Nob
Hill” were bigger, grander,
and seen as “Victorian .”
San Luis Obispo’s Master and Contributing Listing versus national standards Our
landmarking apparatus was created in the 1980s with an anomaly: a distinction between
Contributing and Master resources, the latter defined as “the most unique and important
historic properties and resources in terms of […] architectural […] significance [or] rarity .”
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Under the National Park Service’s National Register system, used in turn by states and
normally by local jurisdictions, resources within historic districts are defined as
“Contributing” if they are (A) historically or architecturally significant within the district’s
period of significance and (B) have the integrity to communicate that significance. They are
“Non-Contributing” if they are not significant or no longer have the integrity to
communicate their significance. It is essentially a digital system, 1 or 0 , in or out.
The National Register of Historic Places is a national register of locally significant
resources; the California Register of Historical Resources , a state register of locally
significant resources. In contrast, if a resource has national or statewide significance—
significance to a broader society—it qualifies as a National or California State Landmark.
Some cities, like Pasadena and Santa Barbara, maintain a separate list for National and
State Landmark–qualified resources, but none of the dozens of California’s nationally
Certified Local Governments (certified for a historic preservation apparatus)—except for
San Luis—has a category for “the most unique and important” resources .
This dichotomy (1) makes “Contributing” resources, de jure and de facto (e.g., qualification
for Mills Act), less important, substituting analog judgments of good/better/best—the type
the National Register system was designed to avoid —for what should be digital: national
significance: yes/no; statewide significance: yes/no; local significance: yes/no; integrity to
communicate that significance: yes/no. (2) The “most unique” standard defies the NRHP
guideline of embodiment of periods, types, and methods of construction, which assumes
adherence to repeated and recognized historic patterns. And (3), substantive distinctions
of design or craft between Master and Contributing resources are often nonexistent.
Possible origin of the Master/Contributing dichotomy
The 1979 Historical and Architectural
Conservation Element, a product of Mayor
Ken Schwartz’s administration and
simultaneous national interest in historic
preservation and urban renewal in the
1970s, assessed the possible historic
resources of San Luis Obispo before the
volunteers of the Historic Resources Survey
were given a crack at them in 1982. The
Element’s Table 4 assesses 1,126 structures
in 4 proposed conservation areas: a
“Commercial Core” much larger than the
current Downtown Historic District;
Conservation Area #1, largely corresponding
to the current Old Town Historic District; an
abortive Conservation Area #2, between
Johnson and Pepper, Higuera and Pismo; and
Conservation Area #3, a smaller version of
the current Mill Street Historic District—
plus 688 structures outside those areas.
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The assessment was for “Building Condition” (Standard, Less Than Standard, or
Substandard) and “Architecture Significance” (Excellent or Good). The source cited for the
table is a 1974 Urban Renewal Authority Building Survey. The criteria are not included.
In Conservation District #1, 148 structures are listed of excellent architectural significance
and 120 of good architectural significance: 268 altogether. When the Old Town Historic
District was created out of largely the same area, it would have some 53 buildings on the
Master List and 256 on the Contributing List : 309 altogether.
In addition, however, the 1979 Element marks 33 buildings of “High Architectural Value,”
“High Architectural and Historical Value,” and “Moderate Architectural and Historical
Value” in Conservation Area #1 on “Map No. 6: Critical Structures.” Of these, 3 would be left
out of the Old Town Historic District (Erickson House/461 Islay, The Establishment, and
Railroad Square), while 1 (Anderson House/1438 Nipomo) would ultimately be
Contributing Listed.
The other 29 became part of the district’s initial 53-resource Master List, including (as seen
on the map, below) St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church (at Nipomo and Pismo) and the Myron
Angel House (at Buchon and Broad), coded with dark circle and light star for High
Architectural and Historical Value; the Brooks House, coded with light circle and dark star
for Moderate Architectural and Historical Value; and —coded with a dark star for High
Architectural Value—the Rogers, Nichols, and Dana-Parsons Houses along Nipomo;
Falkenstein, Vetterline, McKennon, Renetzky, Tucker, Kimball, and Erickson/687 Islay
Houses along Broad; the
Biddle, McManus,
Greenfield, and Snyder
Houses along Pismo; the
Bradbury Sanitarium and
Kaiser, Stanton,
Fitzgerald, Brew, Marshall,
Crocker, and Hourihan
Houses on Buchon; the
Bullard House on Morro;
and the Post and Allen
Houses and Hageman
Sanitarium at the corner
of Osos and Leff.
Curiously, though California Bungalow was the only specific style quoted in the description
of Conservation Area #1, no California Bungalows were included on this list, which
encompassed nineteenth-century Gothic Revival, Italianate, and Swiss/Bracketed, late-
nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Eastlake and Queen Anne, and early-twentieth-
century Colonial Revival buildings.
The original Master List for the Old Town Historic District would add , from the 1880s, 1
Italianate (Fitzpatrick); from the 1890s, 5 more Eastlakes (Lewin, Wright, Vollmer/497
Islay, Fleuger, and Miller); from the 1900s, 1 Prairie School (Clark -Norton); from the 1900s
and 1910s, 8 more Colonial Bungalows (Upham, Albert, Bak er, Dutton, Bradbury, Jackson,
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Sandercock/535 Islay, and Anderson/1345 Broad); from the 1910s and 1920s, 6 California
Bungalow resources (Vollmer/1116 Pismo, Patton, Nuss/Thorne, and Crossett Houses,
Kindergarten School, and multi-unit Adriance Court); and from the 1920s and 1930s, 1
Mission Revival (Sandercock/591 Islay), 1 Hacienda Revival (Avila), and 1 Spanish Colonial
Revival (Maier).
We don’t know the Element’s criteria, but the National Register’s criteria for
Design/Construction are that a resource
• embody distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction;
• represent the work of a master, and/or
• possess high artistic value
All three criteria focus on architecture. The National Register’s 1990 Bulletin on How to
Apply the National Register Criteria for Evaluation further explicates
• embodiment as including an architectural style’s characteristic decorative detailing
integrated with characteristic lines and massing
• representation of the work of a master as not including all a master’s work but only
those resources expressing a particular phase in development, aspect of work, or idea
or theme in the craft of a figure of recognized greatness, known craftsman of
consummate skill, or anonymous craftsman whose work is distinguishable by its
characteristic style and quality
• possession of high artistic value as so fully articulating a particular concept of design
that it expresses an aesthetic ideal, and more fully than other properties of its type
So how exactly did Conservation District #1 end up with its High Architectural Value list ,
and how did it become the core of the Old Town Historic District’s Master List?
• Was age—or perception of age—a consideration? Of the 29 resources that migrated
to the Master List, 4 date before 1886, 6 between 1886 and 1900, 18 from the 1900s,
and 1 from the 1910s. The evaluators of these buildings were unlikely to have had an
accurate sense of their ages, from poor access to documentation and an incomplete
understanding of what styles were represented and when they occurred in general
architectural history and the specific architectural history of San Luis Obispo (e.g.,
surviving California Bungalows turn up on the Central Coast about 5 years after their
naissance in Pasadena: the Contributing List 1020 Leff [19082, see p. 62] appears to be
the earliest documented). But, notably, not a single building of High Architectural Value
was identified after 1911 and outside Gothic Revival, Italianate, Swiss
Heimatstil/Bracketed, Eastlake, Queen Anne, and Colonial Bungalow architecture—
though Conservation Area #1 cited California Bungalows and had examples of them
before 1911, let alone 1929, the 50 -year cut-off for historic consideration in 1979.
• Was it the work of a master? Knowledge of architects was poor at this time, and
though, for instance, ur–San Luis architect Hilamon Spencer Laird’s Kimball and
Hourihan Houses were included, his Upham House was the only exclusion from the line
2. Cal Poly Special Collections’ San Luis Obispo Building Permits Collection.
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of 3 Queen Annes and 1 Colonial Bungalow on the south side of Buchon’s Chorro-
Garden block in the High Architectural Value list. (His last documented project and only
documented California Bungalow, at Santa Rosa and Palm, was drawn out of the Mill
Street Historic District and has never since been Master or even Contributing Listed.)
• Was it embodiment of a type or period of construction, i.e., architectural style? It
is not clear the evaluators knew what styles they were looking at; perhaps they did not
highlight the Upham House because they could not define it. Still, the altered Anderson
House/1438 Nipomo—ultimately put on the Contributing rather than Master List —has
no surviving decorative features to associate a style and has an octagonal bay that
suggests Colonial Revival and a flared square turret that is generally associated with
Swiss/Bracketed (though it is doubtful the evaluators knew this).
• Was it integrity? The Upham House’s porch has been partially enclosed with an
extension, but so have porches of a number of houses that made the Element’s list (e.g.,
1438 Nipomo and the Bullard House), or, alternatively, porches and extensions that
have been added much later (the Rogers House and Jessie Wright Maternity Home).
• Was it clustering? Most are clumped, particularly at Nob Hill around Buchon at Broad,
Garden, and Chorro, but some buildings there (like the Upham) were left out, and others
that were included as of High Architectural Value were distant singletons.
• Was it elaborateness of form and decorative detail? The Foursquare layout and
stolid simplicity of the Bradbury Sanitarium and Allen House seem far from the turrets
and horseshoe arches of the Queen Anne Erickson and Vetterline Houses.
• Was it size? On the Element’s High Architectural Value list, in addition to the towering
St. Stephens, 2 of the structures are 2½ stories, 11 are 2 stories (1 with a 3-story
tower), 11 are 1½ stories, and only 4 are 1 story, those 4 including the elaborately
decorated Nichols, Kimball, Dana-Parsons, and Marshall Houses —this in an area whose
overwhelming proportion of historic structures (i.e., over 50 years old in 1979) were 1-
story Italianate and Late Italianate and Eastlake cottages and Colonial Bungalows,
California Bungalows, and Lutyensesque eaveless European and Spanish Colonial
Revival bungalows.
Ultimately, a combination of size, elaborateness, and proximity to the old “Nob Hill”
neighborhood may have been seen as evidence of expenditure, which may have been seen
as evidence of High Architectural Value in the early days of trying to evaluate architecture
for the purposes of historic preservation. Initially considered to be a method of urban
renewal, historic preservation was quickly co -opted by the upper and upper middle classes,
and classes tend to preserve their own culture, history, and values. The history and
architecture of the less wealthy is generally seen as less valuable and more “modest”—as if
immodesty itself is a high architectural value.
Although the proportions differ, it is plausible that the Master/Contributing dichotomy —
which has bedeviled San Luis Obispo’s Historic Preservation Program with nationally
nonconforming, opaque, and subjective standards for almost half a century —was inherited
from a 1979 planning document that inherited it, in turn, from an early 1970s Urban
Renewal Authority rubric that ignored National Register Criteria that had been assembled
collaboratively by leading preservation scholars and practitioners from across the country.
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The Old Town Historic District ’s origin The 1979 Historical and Architectural
Conservation Element sketched out the physical boundaries of the Old Town Historic
District as Conservation District #1 on Map No. 7; its numerical boundaries in Table 4 as
148 “excellent” and 120 “good” structures in architectural significance; and its typological
and chronological boundaries as “single family residential uses between the late 1800s and
the 1930s,” specifying 2 descriptors: “California Bungalow” and “California Renaissance” (p.
53). Everything seemed ready to go.
Except this is not how San Luis Obispo’s Historic Preservation Program Guidelines would
ultimately name or describe the district. The city’s ultimate view of it—and the listing
decisions that comport with that view—would be of a neighborhood of nineteenth-century
mansions the city perhaps wished it had, or thought historic districts should have, rather
than the important collection of low-built twentieth-century bungalows it actually had and
might have celebrated, just as Pasadena landmark s and celebrates districts like Bungalow
Heaven or Sydney, Australia its Artarmon Urban Conservation Area of California
Bungalows. The dissonance between the Guidelines’ aspirational view of the Old Town
Historic District and the statistical data is striking, even shocking.
The district’s misnaming The oldest concentration of buildings in San Luis Obispo—
the actual Old Town—is around the 1792 Mission (including the 1801–1810 Sauer and
Sauer-Adams Adobes in the Chinatown Historic District); after that, West Monterey Street
and Dana Street (including the circa 1860 Hays-Latimer and Simmler [aka Butrón] Adobes
in the Downtown Historic District); and, after that, West Marsh/Higuera (the 1874
Norcross, 1876 Pollard, and 1878 Jack House, pre-1876 Jack Carriage House, and 1870s–
1880s Jack Garden—districtless, because the city fathers wanted to turn it into a center-
block heritage park for unwanted old structures flanked by freeway -close motel strips [as
per a conversation with late Mayor Ken Schwartz]).
The so-called Old Town Historic District comprises, in fact, the new town: the suburbs
springing up in the southerly Mission Vineyard, Murray & Church, Dallidet, and Loomis
additions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century .
The largely empty Old Town Historic District in 1877, looking south from Cerro San Luis, with
the Nipomo Street School where Emerson Park is now, at bottom righ t, and St. Stephen’s
across Nipomo Street to the immediate left
E. S. Glover’s 1877 Bird’s Eye View of San Luis Obispo, Cal. (detail above) shows mostly
empty blocks in the future Old Town Historic District, apart from the far western section
between Broad and Beach. From Glover’s view, the only survivor that can be definitively
identified is the Master List Gothic Revival St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church (1344 Nipomo,
1873), with likely the Master List Italianate 2-story Rogers House (1428 Nipomo),
Contributing List Italianate 1½-story at 1415 Nipomo, and Italianate cottage at 654 Buchon
(though each could be a similar building at the same location ; early buildings, often poorly
constructed, could be quickly replaced).
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The September 1886 Sanborn Map shows just a few blocks of the Old Town Historic
District, with few structures on them, almost none that survive today. Exceptions include
• sheet 7: Master List Rogers House (likely from Glover’s view), Master List Dana-Parsons
and Fitzpatrick Houses (644 and 670 Islay), Contributing List 654 and 662 Islay
between them, and the since-moved Contributing List 1516 Nipomo (all Italianate)
• sheet 6: St. Stephen’s (from Glover’s view) and 2 Contributing List Italianates: 654
Buchon (likely from Glover’s view) and 722 Buchon
• sheet 5: the Master List Snyder House (1406 Morro, Swiss/Bracketed) and Contributing
List 969 Pismo (Italianate )
Additionally, the Tribune, 13 Apr. 1883, documented completion of the Meredith House
(1421 Garden, originally Contributing, since 2022 Master Listed) (“Improvements,” p. 2).
So 1, likely 4, of the district’s surviving buildings were constructed by 1877 ; definitively 12
and probably 13 by 1886, with 5 on the original Master List, 8 on the Contributing List.
The 1890s added 23 more listed resources:
• 4 Italianates between 1877 and the 1891 Sanborn Map (Contributing List 530 Buchon,
454 Islay, 550 Islay [altered], and 1541 Osos)
• 3 Late Italianates between the 1888 and 1891 Sanborn Maps (Contributing List 651 and
673 Buchon and 571 Pismo)
• 2 Swiss/Bracketed buildings (Master List Myron Angel and Greenfield Houses, both
circa 1890)
• 1 Neobaroque by 1891 (1429 Nipomo)
• 12 Master List Eastlakes (4 built 1888–1891[Lewin, Jessie Wright, McKennon, and
Brooks], 6 documented to 1891–1899 [Vollmer/497 Islay, Biddle, Falkenstein, Nichols,
Fleuger, and Miller], and 1 probably 1897, possibly 1900 [McManus])
• 1 Queen Anne (Master List Erickson/687 Islay, 1895).3
This brings the documentable nineteenth-century buildings in the Old Town Historic
District to 36 out of 309 original Master and Contributing List buildings, or just 12 percent.
3. There is some age-aspirational dating: e.g., the city’s Master List website claims the “Neo-
Colonial” (Eastlake) Hageman Sanitarium was built circa 1895 for “machinist” (longtime Creston
farmer) J. C. Waterbury, but newspapers show Judson Rice (SP roadmaster, city board of trustees
member, and in 1903 representative of architects Wolfe and McKenzie in San Luis ) and his wife
took out a loan on the property in February 1902 (“Proceedings in County Offices,” Tribune, 16 Feb.
1902, p. 3), opened the building as the Buena Vista Restaurant in September (“New Restaurant and
Boarding House,” Tribune, 9 Sep. 1902, p. 4), put it up for sale in a marital split in December 1903,
sold “the building … built less than two years ago and … designed as a high class boarding house to
cater especially to railroad employees” in February 1904 to the Commercial Bank (“Converted into
Flats,” Tribune, 10 Feb. 1904, p. 4), which sold it to Judson Clifford Waterbury and his wife in March
(“To Establish Sanitarium,” Tribune, 16 Mar. 1904, p. 1), when it was named the Hageman
Sanitarium for the maiden name of Mrs. Waterbury, a trained nurse (“Hageman Sanitarium,”
Tribune, 8 Apr. 1904, p. 1). The website also attributes the 1902 Marshall House to the 1890s and
1904 Post House to 1898 (“Will Build,” Tribune, 20 July 1904, p. 4).
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A further 7 Late Italianate and 5 Eastlake houses on the Contributing List date between the
1891 and 1905 Sanborn Maps , so the nineteenth-century number may be marginally
higher, speculatively 14 percent, with 86 percent from the twentieth century : very much
the new town. But, of course, “Old Town” sounds more “historic.”
The original 53-resource Master List was weighted more toward the nineteenth century
than the more representative 309 -resource overall list. The Old Town Master List had 19
nineteenth-century resources and 34 twentieth-century resources, a 36 percent/64
percent split, versus the circa 14 percent/86 percent split in overall listings. The original
twentieth-century Master Listings were:
• 3 Eastlake (Hageman Sanitarium [19024], Kimball [19035], Tucker [after 19066])
• 1 Queen Anne (Vetterline [19027])
• 1 Late Italianate (Fitzgerald [19028])
• 1 Prairie School (Clark-Norton [19069])
• 17 Colonial Bungalows (Brew [by 1901], Crocker [1902], Marshall [1902], Upham
[1903], Post [1904], Albert [1904], Baker [1904–1905], Hourihan [1904–1905], Stanton
[1904–1905], Dutton [1906], Renetzky [1906], Kaiser [1908], Bullard [circa 1908–
1913], Bradbury [1910], Jackson [1910], Sandercock/535 Islay [1910–1911], and
Anderson/1345 Broad [1910]10),
• 2 multi-unit buildings in Colonial Bungalow form (Allen [190311] and the Bradbury
Sanitarium [191112])
• 6 California Bungalow resources (Vollmer [1912], Patton [1913], Nuss/Thorne [1913],
Crossett [1914], California Bungalow–form Kindergarten School [1917], and the 9-
cottage Adriance Court [1921]13), and
• 3 Lutyensesque revivals (Mission [Sandercock/591 Islay {1926}], Hacienda [Avila
{1929}], and Spanish Colonial [Maier {1933}]14)
4. See footnote previous page.
5. “Beautiful New Residence,” Tribune, 13 Feb. 1903, p. 1.
6. Absent from 1906 three-part photograph, Cal Poly Special Collections.
7. “The Spirit of Improvement,” Tribune, 16 July 1902, p. 4.
8. “A. F. Fitzgerald has contracted […],” Tribune, 12 July 1902, p. 4.
9. “Personal Mention,” 10 Oct. 1906. p. 4.
10. All Colonial Bungalow dates cited in James Papp, “Thomas and May Brecheen House, 1133
Pismo, Master List Application, 10 Mar. 2022, pp. 35 –40.
11. “Will Build,” Tribune, 20 July 1904, p. 4.
12. “Ocean to Ocean Party Will Reach Here Tomorrow,” Daily Telegraph, 7 Aug. 1911, p. 1.
13. San Luis Obispo Building Permits Collection.
14. Op. cit.
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The Historic Preservation Program Guidelines’ arbitrary revision of the district’s
period of significance The period of significance in the Conservation Element (late
nineteenth century to 1930s) would be pared to the arbitrary decades 1880 –1920 in the
Guidelines rather than allowed to develop organically from the district’s significant
resources, leading to the Guidelines’ convoluted explanations as to why the 1873 Gothic
Revival St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church and 1929 Hacienda Revival M. F. Avila House were
Master Listed in the district yet outside the period of significance and not “contributing”
(Guidelines, p. 36). Six of the 53 original Master List resources—over 10 percent (Gothic
Revival St. Stephen’s, Italianate Rogers House, California Bungalow Adriance Court, and the
3 Lutyensesque revivals)—fall outside the period of significance, despite the first 3 being of
styles de jure included in the district’s “Architectural Character,” the latter 3 de facto, given
the numerous Contributing Listings of 1920s and ’30s Lutyensesque revivals. Normal
practice is to record a district’s significant historic resources over 50 years old, develop
from those its character-defining architectural styles, and define the period of significance
accordingly. There’s no reason to round the period of significance to arbitrary zeroes or
refuse to include character-defining styles examples of which are listed as Contributing .
The Guidelines’ misdescription of the district’s “Architectural Character” The
district’s two architectural descriptors in the Conservation Element, “California
Renaissance” and “California Bungalow ,” would both be dropped from the Guidelines,
replaced with
the Old Town District has many examples of High Victorian architecture, a style
popular in California during that time period[, which] included several style
variations, such as Queen Anne, Italianate, Stick, and Gothic Revival … along the top
of the hill […] . Other, more modest structures with simpler styles abound in other
areas of the district, […] includ[ing] Neoclassic Row House, Folk Victorian, and
Craftsman Bungalow, with many homes borrowing architectural details from
several styles.
The Conservation Element’s descriptor “California Renaissance” was indeed problematic, a
term created by Harold Kirker for his 1960 book California’s Architectural Frontier: Style
and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century (based on his UC Berkeley doctoral dissertation)
and used almost nowhere else. Kirker employs it not to denominate a style but the 1850–
1870 era of booming construction and use of local materials and technology. But none of
the structures in the Old Town Historic District can be documented by 1870; indeed the
area, empty of structures, consists entirely of meadows and fields in Leon Trousset’s
architecturally detailed 1870 panoramic painting of San Luis in the Mission Museum.
That said, the revised description of the district for the Guidelines invites deconstruction.
• High Victorian This was a popularizing term during the 1970s through 1990s,
with hundreds of newspaper uses for any mid -to -late-nineteenth-century American
building that preservationists advocated for while trying to avoid technically accurate
description, with the advantage that—as with High Mass, high tea, and high crimes and
misdemeanors—it sounded more impressive than plain “Victorian” or US-appropriate
“mid-to-late-nineteenth-century.” Yet it lacks any precise meaning connected to the
American West.
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Nikolaus Pevsner appears to have invented the phrase in 1951 for High Victorian
Design: A Study of the Exhibits of 1851 (London: Architectural Press) and the earliest of
his 42-volume The Buildings of England series (1951–1974), using it to describe mid -
Victorian England’s confident aesthetic (which he despised [“bulgy,” “grim,” “gloom,”
“swollen corpulence,” “uncommonly revolting”]) rather than any of its dozens of
specific architectural revival styles (25 of them in Richard Brown’s 1841 Domestic
Architecture [London: Bernard Quaritch], which Pevsner cites 15).
American architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock borrowed the phrase in
1956, using “High Victorian Architecture” and “High Victorian Gothic” interchangeably
to refer to English Ruskinian polychrome, Continental-influenced (versus Puginian
monotone, English-influenced) Gothic Revival, “which flourished from the early fifties
to the late sixties” (“High Victorian Gothic,” Victorian Studies, Sep. 1957, pp. 47–71).16
The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture (2021) repeats Hitchcock’s definition but calls it
“unsatisfactory,” suggesting “Mid-Victorian” or “precise dates and description of styles.”
Whether defined by Pevsner, Hitchcock, or the Oxford Dictionary of Architecture, “High
Victorian Architecture” existed in England and was over before the beginning of the Old
Town Historic District, while the Victorian era itself took place in Britain and the British
Empire, worlds away from San Luis; was characterized by a vast number of different
architectural styles expressed in different materials; and ended halfway through the Old
Town Historic District’s stated period of significance.
• Queen Anne Promoted in first place by the Guidelines, Queen Anne is, with only 7
resources, is one of the rarest styles in the Old Town Historic District (but like
Victorian,” association with queens always seems posh). With origins in England in the
1860s through 1870s as a humanistic, counter-Gothic domestic reform architecture—
referencing Tudor through early-eighteenth-century buildings in red brick, hung tiles,
and occasional half-timbering—Queen Anne in California is characterized by Ionic
columns; botanical and sometimes drapery bas-relief in friezes and gables; round
turrets; horizontal modillions supporting eaves and jettying ; and sometimes faux half-
timbering. In the district, 5 of the Queen Annes are clustered at the top of valorized Nob
Hill on Buchon at Chorro and Garden (the Master List Crocker [1902], Marshall [1902],
Upham [1903], and Stanton [1904–1905] [all with Ionic columns and bas-relief, the
Upham with modillions and jettying and the Stanton with a round turret], plus the
Contributing List 770 Buchon [ca. 190117] [with modillions and jettying]). The other 2,
the Master List Erickson/687 Islay [189518] [ionic columns, bas-relief, and round
15. The full list, to show the specificity and richness of British architectural styles (leaving aside
American ones) is Cottage Ornée, Tudor–Henry VII, Tudor–Henry VIII, Elizabethan, Stuart,
Florentine, Flemish, Pompeian, Venetian, Swiss, French Chateau, Egyptian, Grecian, Roman, Anglo-
Grecian, Anglo-Italian, Persian, Chinese, Burmese, Oriental, Morisco-Spanish, Anglo-Norman,
Lancastrian, Plantagenet, and Palladian. Brown also includes furniture designs for the interior s.
16. St. Stephen’s, based on St. Michael’s Longstanton, Cambridgeshire —a design promulgated to the
British Empire and the United States by the Cambridge University–based Eccesiological Society in
the 1840s—is Puginian.
17. “Wanted—Girl for general housework” (advertisement), Tribune, 23 Apr. 1901, p. 4.
18. “Chas. Erickson is having his lot […],” Tribune, 13 Aug. 1895, p. 3.
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turret] and Vetterline [190219] [ionic columns, modillions, faux half-timbering, and
English Queen Anne–reference acorn-roofed turret]) are on Broad Street.
• Italianate In contrast, Italianate—older and more widespread in the Old West,
usually in the form of symmetric, full-width-porticoed, one-story cottages or
asymmetric porticoed houses, with deep eaves, often supported by corbels; low -angled
gable roofs or flat-topped hip roofs originally with balustrading (so -called widow’s
walks though really an Italian Baroque reference); and almost invariably chamfered
square columns—boasts 15 houses in the district: 3 Master List (the Rogers [likely by
1877 though heavily altered since] and Dana-Parsons and Fitzpatrick Houses [by
1886]) and 12 Contributing List (2 likely by 1877 [654 Buchon and 1415 Nipomo]; 5 by
1886 [722 Buchon, 654 and 662 Islay, 1516 Nipomo, and 969 Pismo {porch added after
2008}]; 4 by 1891 [530 Buchon, 454 and 550 Islay, and 1541 Osos ], and 1 of unknown
date moved to its current location 1905 –1926 [542 Islay]).
There are 13 more Late Italianate houses (using earlier Italianate forms but with
decorative variants): 1 Master List (Fitzgerald [1902], with round Tuscan columns ) and
12 Contributing List (3 by 1891 [651 and 673 Buchon]; 1 possibly by 1891 with porch
by 1905 [1436 Morro]; 6 by 1905 [575, 871, and 977 Buchon, 462 and 744 Islay, and
1526 Osos]; and 2 after 1905 [1135 Buchon and 1534 Chorro]).
• Stick “Stick” is a modern polemical renaming—by the architectural historian
Vincent Scully for his 1955 book The Shingle Style and the Stick Style, based on his Yale
dissertation—of what was known in America as Swiss or Bracketed (for the brackets in
its deep eaves), later as Heimatstil (homeland style) in German-speaking Europe. Scully
invented the name to draw attention to “the development in [American] wooden
domestic architecture between 1840 and 1876” ([New Haven: Yale] p. 2), including
asymmetry and external articulation of framing, though he never disclaimed that it was
part of the longer-lived Swiss Revival style. Scully includes no example of Eastlake
architecture in his book, but someone must have suggested that one example (the
Bassett House, New Haven [fig. 17]) was Eastlake (it isn’t), because in a n accompanying
footnote (note 90, p. lv) Scully denounces the notion that Eastlake was a recognized
architectural style in nineteenth-century America—where, in fact, Eastlake was much
written about, designed in, and hugely popular, particularly on the West Coast, having
developed out of English architect Charles Locke Eastlake’s “Early English” furniture
designs in his bestseller Hints on Household Taste.20
19. “Spirit of Improvement,” Tribune, 16 Jul. 1902, p. 4.
20. Scully dismisses the existence of Eastlake architecture as “watered -down Gothic revival
Sachlichkeit, derived from Pugin and Ruskin.” He adds, “Eastlake’s actual influence was mainly in
furniture design” and claims the term Eastlake architecture is “an epithet coined by the Eclectic
Apologists of the early twentieth century.” All of which is demonstrably false:
• Charles Locke Eastlake’s “Early English” furniture designs were intentionally stripped down,
handcraftable Romanesque compared to Pugin’s complex Gothic.
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Apparently as a result of Scully’s catchy neologism and footnote rant, the architectural
guides that emerged to serve the American preservation movement in the early
1980s—e.g., Mary Mix Foley’s The American House (New York: Harper, 1980), Carole
Rifkind’s A Field Guide to American Architecture (New York: Times Mirror, 1980), and
(most influentially) Virginia McAlester A Field Guide to American Houses (New York:
Knopf, 1984)—inserted the category “Stick” and banished the categories
Swiss/Bracketed and Eastlake, resulting in two of the most important American
architectural styles of the nineteenth century being ignored and an entirely imaginary
one being valorized, not only in San Francisco (where Eastlake is by far the dominant
surviving nineteenth-century architecture) and on the Central Coast but in the Old
Town Historic District.21 So completely and bizarrely did Scully’s footnote expunge
Eastlake from architectural historiography through acolytes like McAlester, that in
Charles Page and Associates’ 1976 Santa Cruz Historic Building Survey (Santa Cruz: City
• Hermann Muthesius’s concept of Sachlichkeit (objectivity or functionalism) in English domestic
design, which he introduced in Das englische Haus (Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1904, 1905),
postdates Eastlake by nearly forty years, rather than Eastlake watering it down
• Charles Locke Eastlake, a trained architect, designed furniture, but his furniture designs were
quickly translated to architecture, particularly in the American West, where the forms and
decorative elements of the one were easily adapted to the wood material and machined
spindles, posses, shingles, and trim of the other.
• Finally, the term Eastlake was used in an architectural context in the American press as early as
1875 (“the Renaissance, or more properly at the present day the Eastlake architecture” [“A
Great Modern Invention Is Building,” Scranton Morning Republican, 28 Oct. 1875, p. 3]) and was
in common architectural usage by the 1880s (e.g., in William T. Comstock’s Modern
Architectural Designs and Details [1881] and Samuel and Joseph Newsom’s Picturesque
California Houses [1888]).
21. In McAlester’s A Field Guide to American Houses, the “Stick” chapter’s 16 photos comprise 12
Swiss/Bracketed houses (pp. 258–260), 3 Eastlakes (p. 261), and 1 Queen Anne (260). (While the
“Queen Anne” chapter contains about two dozen photos of Eastlake houses, as she transfers spindle
columns and screens, a core characteristic of Eastlake furniture and houses, to a new category of
“Spindlework Queen Anne.”)
“Stick” became so popular (and poorly understood) a term that it was included in a 1973 episode of
The Streets of San Francisco, where old-school detective Karl Malden and college-educated detective
Michael Douglas and have the following conversation while looking at a house that’s a potential
crime scene:
“Looks kind of creepy.”
“Huh, Stick.”
“What?”
“The architecture’s called Stick. You can tell by those bay windows. See how they’re squared
off? Must be 1885 or ’90, maybe.”
“But you just put that down in the report. Observations like that are going to get you right to
the top of the department.”
In fact, the house used for the episode was the 1867 Italianate Adams House, 300 Pennsylvania
Avenue, with canted bays, but in a night shot with the film flipped left to right it was hard to tell.
(Square bays are indicative of Eastlake; Swiss/Bracketed tends to eschew bays .)
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of Santa Cruz, 1976), Eastlake cottages are frequently so identified, but in successor
firm Page & Turnbull’s 143-page 2013 Historic Context Statement and Survey Report:
City of Arroyo Grande, the word Eastlake goes unmentioned , despite the city having one
of the finest concentrations of Eastlake architecture south of Pacific Grove, including the
masterwork Pitkin-Conrow House.
In the Old Town Historic District, there are only 5 examples of what Scully would have
called Stick, i.e., Swiss/Bracketed houses, none of which have much of the articulated
framing he focused on in his dissertation . Swiss Revival is recognizable for steep
jerkinhead gables, vertical siding in gables, terminal -lobed bargeboards, and knee
brackets. The Snyder (by 1886) and Myron Angel and Greenfield Houses (circa 1890)—
originally Master Listed—are all 1½ or 2½ stories, half stories being common to the
style’s steep roofs. Of the 2 originally Contributing examples, 1421 Garden (1½- and 2-
story, since Master Listed as the Meredith House [1883], and the only one with eave
brackets) is the earliest documented, and 574 Islay (built or placed there between the
1905 and 1926 Sanborn Maps) is the latest and only 1-story example.
The district’s unacknowledged Eastlake buildings, a larger collection than in Arroyo
Grande, number 20. Eastlake, a purely American style based on the Englishman Charles
Eastlake’s “Early English” furniture designs, is the elaborately decorated architecture
that is often denoted “Victorian” or (by people who know “Victorian” isn’t an
architectural style but aren’t sure how to identify nineteenth -century American styles)
the fallback “Queen Anne.” Its characteristics include round arches to indicate its
Romanesque roots22; square bays; parapets, mansards, or open gables; generally
steeper gables than Italianate or Colonial Revival but less steep than Gothic; frequent
decorative gable shapes above doors and windows; corbels (making it sometimes
mistaken for Italianate); ascending and descending finials; spindles and spindle
screens; spindle columns; perforation; incising; dentils , dogtooth, volute, and egg
molding; sunbursts, bosses, and other almost obsessive geometric filling of surfaces (in
contrast to Queen Anne’s figurative bas relief); and borders of square stained panes
around clear windows.
The district’s Eastlakes include the Contributing List 1408 Broad, 770 Buchon, 1536
and 1544 Morro, 729 Pismo, and 1728 Santa Rosa (all between the 1891 and 1905
Sanborn Maps), as well as the Master List Lewin (1888–1891), Jessie Wright (1888 –
1891), McKennon (by 1891), Brooks (by 1891), Vollmer/497 Islay (1891 23),
Falkenstein (189424), Nichols (1446 Nipomo) (189925), Fleuger (189926), McManus
22. Horseshoe arches, in contrast, are borrowed from Islamic architecture and unwedded to
particular American styles, showing up in Queen Anne, Eastlake, and even Swiss.
23. “At the Recorder’s Office: P. B. Prefumo to Victoria Thompson,” Tribune, 26 Ap. 1891, p. 2.
24. “Two More New Dwelling Houses,” Tribune, 12 Aug. 1894, p. 3.
25. “Notes in This City: Dr. Eastman,” Tribune, 6 Aug. 1899, p. 4.
26. “Proceeding County Offices: Mortgages—E. Fleugler et ux,” Tribune, 24 Mar. 1899, p. 3.
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(probably l897, possibly 190027), Miller (189728), Hageman Sanitarium (1902), and
Kimball (190329). The Biddle House (1893) is Eastlake in form and decoration, apart
from possibly Queen Anne-inspired half-timber overlay and one jettied dormer [1893]),
as is the Tucker House (after 1906), apart from the Colonial Revival borrowing of two
open-pediment gables.
• Gothic Revival There is 1 Gothic Revival building in the Old Town Historic District,
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, outside the stated period of significance.30
• Neoclassic Row Houses A “row house” is a row of dwellings with common
sidewalls. The only ones near the Old Town Historic District are “The Brownstones”
(neither brownstone nor even brown nor even stone), built in the 2010s on the 1100
block of Marsh. It is unclear why the Community Development Department persistently
refers to bungalows as row houses.
There are no Neoclassic houses in San Luis as the term is commonly used by
architectural historians (or even, eccentrically, by Virginia McAlester to reference
World Columbian Exposition–influenced architecture), though Queen Anne and the
27. J. E. Lewis and wife and Madalina Osgood took a mortgage on the lot in 1897 (“Recorder’s Office,
Tribune, 8 Aug. 1897, p. 3), which normally signified building; the property passed from J. E. Lewis
and wife to E. I. McManus 26 June 1900 (“Recorder’s Office,” Tribune, 27 June 1900, p. 3). There is
so far no record of the actual building of the house.
28. “Recorder’s Office […] Alice C. Miller and Husband,” Tribune, 5 Jan. 1897, p. 2.
29. “Beautiful New Residence,” 13 Feb. 1903, p. 1.
30. There are 10 houses in the district that the city’s Master List Historic Properties website
incorrectly identifies as Gothic, with the contortive explanation that this is “reflective of [the]
tendency for architectural styles to reach SLO decades after peaking in larger metropolitan areas of
the US.” In fact—and an important point to make—no such tendency exists: architects and builders
who practiced in San Luis Obispo had access to the same books, journals, training, and travel as
architects and builders elsewhere and were on the cutting edge of architectural developments.
Gothic Revival for domestic architecture—a novelty in Alexander Jackson Davis’s 1837 Rural
Residences and a staple in Andrew Jackson Downing’s 1842 Cottage Residences and 1850 The
Architecture of Country Houses and Henry Cleaveland’s 1856 Village and Farm Cottages—was
outmoded in the 1870s by the introduction of Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, and Eastlake, which
dominated pattern books by the 1880s (e.g., William T. Comstock’s Modern Architectural Designs
and Details [1881] and American Cottages [1883] and Samuel and Joseph Newsom’s Picturesque
California Houses [1888]). San Luis Obispo’s only surviving Gothic Revival houses are the early
1860s Hays-Latimer Adobe and 1874 Norcross House.
Occam’s razor suggests that if you have to invent an unevidenced explanation of why the wrong era
of houses are Gothic Revival, they’re probably not Gothic Revival.
The misidentified Gothic Revival houses in the Old Town Historic District are the Rogers
(Italianate); Greenfield (Swiss/Bracketed [circa 1890]); Biddle (Eastlake with Queen Anne , circa
1893); Lewin and Jessie Wright (both Eastlake [1888 and 1891); McKennon and Brooks (both
Eastlake and both built by the 1891 Sanborn Map); Falkenstein (Eastlake, 1894 [“Two More New
Dwelling Houses, Tribune, 12 Aug. 1894, p. 3]); McManus (Eastlake, probably 1897); Brew, Upham,
and Hourihan (all three Colonial Revival and built by 1901, in 1903, and in 1904 –1905, respectively
[see Papp, Brecheen House Master List Application , 2022]); and Tucker (Eastlake-Colonial, after
1906).
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Colonial Bungalow (through Georgian architecture) are Neoclassical offshoots, and the
Colonial Bungalow is presumably what is being referred to here .
In the Old Town Historic District, the 19 original Master List Colonial Bungalow
resources are all from the twentieth century, as well as the 57 Contributing List Colonial
Bungalow resources whose dates can be established. Typical are a low -pitched hip roof
appearing pyramidal from the street, usually with an integrated asymmetric porch with
a closed gable as a pediment, sometimes open pediment, topping either it or the
adjoining enclosed structure, which is typically fronted by a canted bay window.
Alternatively, the hip roof may have a central hip dormer, dormer and closed gable, or
no dormer or gable. Porch columns are almost always Tuscan, though spindle columns
and other Eastlake references are very occasionally used (a holdover from Eastlake).
Rarer variants use gambrel roofs, Japanese irimoya roofs, and (for revival of Early
Colonial) open gables.
• Folk Victorian This term was apparently invented by Virginia McAlester—at least
it does not appear in newspapers before the appearance of A Field Guide to American
Houses in July 1984. It combines “folk” (the indigenous architecture of communities
based on purely local traditions and materials, outside of popular movements) with
“Victorian” (a term with no architectural relevance to the United States or useful
meaning even in the British Empire, where dozens of distinct and often opposed
architectural style flourished during Victoria’s rule, an era marked by the international
dissemination of styles through mass publishing, as well as the mass manufacture of
building materials). In short, “Folk Victorian” is a contradiction in terms. McAlester’s
photographic examples (pp. 312 –317) suggest her definition included whatever she
couldn’t define but what architects and builders of the period would have recognized
immediately as Italianate, Eastlake, Swiss, Colonial Revival, Greek Revival, and Gothic
Revival. No “folk” architecture exists in the Old Town Historic District, where
professional architects and builders designed and constructed with imported ideas and
lumber, siding, shingles, molding, doors, windows, columns, balusters, spindles, finials,
bosses, etc. The architectural styles, with few exceptions, are specific and definable.
• Craftsman Bungalow The historically predominant and meaningful term is
California Bungalow, as used in the Conservation Element.
• Homes borrowing architectural details from several styles There are no such
resources. Apart from the Tucker House with its two open pediments, Biddle House
with its half-timbering and one jettied dormer, and Crocker House with its octagonal
lantern (which references Mount Vernon and Colonial Revival), there is virtually no
borrowing between American architectural styles of even individual features in the Old
Town Historic District’s Master List resources. Bellcast and irimoya roofs and one torii
arch are used in the district’s Colonial Bungalows, but japonisme was a regular feature
of the Colonial Bungalow. There is some minor borrowing in Contributing resources,
but never elements of more than one other style. Attributions of vague, mixed,
confused, or nonexistent styles are frequent when the spatial and decorative vocabulary
of architectural styles are poorly understood or the existence of contemporaneously
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recognized styles is denied . Writers, architects, builders, and clients of the era were
incredibly specific.31
The Guidelines statement of “Architectural Character” relegates the twentieth century to
“other, more modest structures with simpler styles … in other areas of the district.” These
structures, in turn, were largely relegated to the Contributing List, as if modest size and
simple style are not character-defining features of important architectures of the early
twentieth century: the streamlined Colonial Bungalow and rustic California Bungalow.
Again, the Old Town Historic District is primarily a twentieth -century district, with some
86 percent of Master and Contributing List resources from the twentieth century .
The Guidelines’ misdescription of “Predominant architectural features” First in
the Guidelines’ list of predominant architectural features of the Old Town Historic District is
“Two- and rarely three-story houses,” although, of the 309 original Master and
Contributing List resources in the district, there are only 15 such houses, or 5 percent:
• one 3-story house (if you count the 3-story tower on the 2-story McManus House)
• two 2½-story houses (the Biddle and Angel)
• twelve 2-story houses (the Rogers, Falkenstein, Vetterline, Fitzgerald, Post, Stanton,
Tucker, Kaiser, Clark-Norton, Crossett Houses on the Master List, 1438 Nipomo and 729
Pismo on the Contributing List)
In contrast, there are 283 1- to 1½-story houses, or 92 percent, which would normally be
considered “predominant.”32
Yet 13 of the 15 extremely atypical resources of 2- to 3-story houses (86 percent) made the
district’s original Master List.
Even 1½-story houses are quite rare in the district: 28 out of original listed 309 resources .
Comparing 1-, 1½, and 2- to 3-story houses as a percentage of total listed resources and of
Master List resources clearly shows the Master List bias toward size.
Of 309 resources on the original Master and
Contributing Lists for the district
• 256 are 1-story houses (83 percent)
• 28 are 1½-story houses (9 percent)
• 15 are 2- to 3-story houses (5 percent)
31. The California architects Samuel and Joseph Newsom in their 1880s pattern books offered
explicitly Swiss, Eastlake, Queen Anne, Picturesque, French Renaissance, and Colonial styles
(Picturesque California Homes [San Francisco: Samuel and Joseph C. Newsom, 1884]; Picturesque
California Houses [1888]), while a San Francisco Examiner article on “Our Colonial Craze” during its
first two years in the Bay Area gave local examples of “Gambrel Roofed type,” “type of English Half-
Timbered” (now called Postmedieval), “Cambridge type,” etc., from prominent architects like San
Francisco’s Page Brown, Ernest Coxhead, Clinton Day, and the Rev. Joseph Worcester and Boston’s
Winslow and Wetherell (13 Sep. 1891, p. 13).
32. Eleven listed buildings are not houses: the Bradbury Sanitarium, the Hageman Sanitarium and
Allen House (built as railroad boarding establishments), 4 apartment buildings (974–980 and 1022
Islay, 1341 Osos, and 954–958 Pismo), 2 shops (1609 and 1638 Osos), St. Stephen’s Church, and the
Kindergarten School.
Of 53 resources originally on the Master
List for the Old Town Historic District,
• 17 are 1-story houses (32 percent)
• 19 are 1½-story houses (36 percent)
• 13 are 2- to 3-story houses (25 percent)
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The size-bias in listings is likely a product of the wealth-bias that was partially engrained
and partially grew in historic preservation. Wealthy people tend to be the ones who hire
prominent architects; historically significant people—defined as leaders of government,
industries, and professions —are more likely than not to be wealthy. But very few houses of
the Old Town Historic District were listed for historic association, and knowledge of the
architects was almost nonexistent, so grandeur substituted for more specific information.
The 53 resources originally designated for the Master List in the district were concentrated
among larger 1½- to 2½-story houses in the once-wealthy “Nob Hill” area around the
intersections of Buchon with Broad, Garden, and Chorro : an area that looked like what the
people in power over the process—leaders of government and professions —imagined a
historic district should look like.
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47
Old Town Historic District architectural types
Gothic Revival Steep roof,
pointed windows, board and
batten siding
Italianate Chamfered
square columns, low roof
pitch, deep eaves, canted bay,
arched door panels
Swiss/Bracketed
Jerkinhead gables, eave
brackets, lobed bargeboards
Eastlake Spindle columns,
square bays, sunbursts,
finials, small corbels, bosses,
stained perimeter panes,
open gables
Eastlake Romanesque
arches, sunbursts, bosses
Queen Anne Ionic columns,
round tower, leaf bas-relief
Colonial Bungalow Tuscan
columns, open pediment
gables, canted bay
Colonial Bungalow Tuscan
columns, hip roof with hip
dormer, canted bays with
diamond panes
Prairie School Square
column, flat roof, deep eaves
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48
V. The Hansen House in the Universe of San Luis Obispo Listed California Bungalows
Master List California Bungalows throughout San Luis Obispo The City of San Luis
Obispo currently has 14 California Bungalow properties on its Master List, built from 1912
to 1921. Of these, 8 were designated following the 1982 Historic Resources Survey: 6 (the
Vollmer, Patton, Nuss/Thorne, and Crossett Houses, City Kindergarten, and Adriance
Court) in the Old Town Historic District and 2 (the Faulkner and Parsons Houses) outside
of historic districts. Between 1996 and 2012, 6 additional California Bungalows were
designated by application from their owners: 1 in the Old Town Historic District, 1 in the
Mill Street Historic District, and 4 outside of historic districts.
The Master List standards of “the most unique and important historic properties and
resources in terms of […] architectural […] significance [or] rarity” are inconsistently
applied, if applied at all. The California Bungalows grew out of both an aesthetic ideal and
the desire for an affordable, easily maintained house, so pattern books —a genre that dates
back to the eighteenth century in America and were widely produced in the nineteenth
century, including in California—are much in evidence in their design, mass builders in
their later construction. A house seemingly unique or rare in one community might be
reproduced by the dozens in other communities. But even in our own community, these
Master List properties may not be particularly rare.
For example, the Vollmer House, from the original group of Master List properties in the
Old Town Historic District, is by the same architect and of virtually the same design as the
earlier but unlisted E. M. Payne House two blocks away. The Patton House, also from the
original group of Master Listings in the Old Town Historic District, is explicitly a Henry L.
Wilson pattern book house. The Dart House very likely is. The Kelly House is 1 of 18
bungalows built over 2 months for different clients in San Luis Obispo by a mass producer
and in a late form that does not embody the spatial or material characteristics of the
California Bungalow and that is already represented by the 9 cottages of Adriance Court.
There are 4 of the 14 Master List California Bungalow s of the same nested gable subtype
and 3 by the same builder, H. E. Lyman. Of later, owner -applied additions to the Master List,
3 properties neither unique, rare, nor important were owned by astute civic activists in city
preservation.
None of which is to say that these properties, most of which embody California Bungalow
architecture, should not be landmarked, only that San Luis Obispo’s de jure standards of
uniqueness and rarity have never de facto been applied. Which—given the Master List
standards’ departure from the nationwide practice of historic preservation , where the
accepted standards are embodiment of distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or
method of construction; representation of the work of a master; or possession of high
artistic value—is not a bad thing.
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49
Original Master List from the 1982 Historic Resources Survey
Old Town Historic District, in order of construction
Vollmer House (1912), 1116 Pismo, Old Town Historic District: listed architect Charles
McKenzie, listed contractor H. E. Lyman (Master List No. 94)
The 1912 Vollmer House (above left), designed by San Jose architect Charles McKenzie and
constructed by H. E. Lyman, embodies the side -gabled subtype of California Bungalows,
with an asymmetric front porch supported by square columns on a parapet, centered shed
dormer on the street façade, and rhythmic kaza-ana rafter tails as decorative features. It is
essentially a reverse version of McKenzie’s 1911 E. M. Payne House at 1254 Marsh (above
right), constructed by E. D. Bray, equally detailed, and on neither the Master nor
Contributing List nor in a historic district.
Frank Delos Wolfe and Charles McKenzie practiced together in San Jose as Wolfe and
McKenzie 1899–1910 and attempted to market their work in the 1907 Book of Designs
($2), containing plans for and photographs of 98 houses (republished by George Espinola
as Cottages, Flats, Buildings, and Bungalows: 102 Designs by Wolfe and McKenzie in 2004). In
1903 they opened a branch office in San Luis Obispo, the only location where they are
known to have done so, advertising in the Tribune almost daily (below left) between 4
March and 14 August 1903. Cal Poly’s collection of historic building permit applications
begins in 1906, so it is likely there are Wolfe and McKenzie houses in San Luis Obispo as yet
unidentified.
After their split, McKenzie designed at least seven houses in San Luis Obispo (next page),
according to building permit applications in the Cal Poly collection between 1911 and
1915. Three of them, including the Vollmer House, are Master Listed, and 4 of them —all
built by E. D. Bray, who studied with Wolfe and McKenzie in San Jose (Jean Martin, “E. D.
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50
Bray: Architect and Builder of the Central Coast,” La Vista, 2015) and who advertised in the
Tribune from 23 August to 26 October 1912 as McKenzie’s authorized agent (previous page
right)—are neither Master nor Contributing Listed and so remain unprotected, though all
currently exhibit excellent integrity.
Easton Mills House (1911)
Barneberg House (1914)
H. M. Payne House (1911)
Norton House (1915)
Defosset House (1912)
California Bungalow Address Date Contractor Listing District
Easton Mills House 1304 Pacific 1911 E. D. Bray None None
E. M. Payne House 1254 Marsh 1911 E. D. Bray None None
Defosset House 1397 Marsh 1912 E. D. Bray None None
Vollmer House 1116 Pismo 1912 Harry Lyman Master Old Town
Prairie School
Barneberg House 550 Dana 1914 James Maino Master Downtown
Norton House 1066 Palm 1915 E. D. Bray None None
Japonesque
H. M. Payne House 1144 Palm 1911 H. D. Payne Master Mill Street
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51
Patton House (1913), 1401 Nipomo, Old Town Historic District: listed architect H. L.
Wilson, listed contractor Leonard Thurlow (No. 76)
Henry L. Wilson published The Bungalow
Book described on page 24. The Patton
House appears to be either pattern No. 572
or a reverse of pattern No. 717, both from
the 1910 edition. In any event, it is a pattern
book house and thus not inherently unique
or significant, except insofar as Cal Poly’s
Building Permit Collection does not
explicitly list any other Wilson pattern book
bungalows, though local builders may have
been using his pattern book for their own
work without attribution, as architects were
rarely listed on the city’s permit
applications.
Nuss House (previously Thorne House)
(date assigned by city 1906, actually 1913),
1123 Pismo, Old Town Historic District: no
listed architect, listed contractor W. J. Smith
(No. 95)
Construction commenced in 1913 for local
postmaster William Thorne and his music
teacher wife Marguerite, later acting
postmaster,after her husband was
kidnapped by detectives or fled his debts.
Clarence Day, publisher of San Luis Obispo’s Daily Telegram, bought the property in 1916
and sold it in 1924, generally not considered long enough to establish historic association.
The house is an impressive example of a full -width front-facing gable subtype, but the
Streamline Moderne glazing of its porch, probably in the late 1930s or early 1940s,
compromises its façade’s ability to communicate its original significance of design,
craftsmanship, and materials.
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Crossett House (1914) , 896 Buchon, Old Town Historic District: listed architect and
contractor E. D. Bray (Master List No. 27)
In Cal Poly Special Collections’ (incomplete) San Luis Obispo Building Permits Collection
1906–1937, Bray is listed eight times as contractor for Charles McKenzie as architect
(1911–1915), eight times for himself as architect (1910 –1916) and for no other architects.
He both designed and built the Crossett House, according to the permit application, and it is
certainly a master example of the japonesque California Bungalow, with its low roof pitch,
extended eaves, and reference to the hari crossbeam in the entry porch. Unfortunately, like
the Nuss House, the Crossett House’s side porch has been enclosed with Streamline
Moderne fenestration, though the effect is not so global as on the former’s façade. A
substantial rear addition has been largely hyphenated away from the house.
City Kindergarten (1917), 1445 Santa Rosa, Old Town Historic District: listed architect
Orville Clark, listed contractor H. E. Lyman (No. 97)
The airy California Bungalow with outdoor
spaces was used for schools in the era of
tuberculosis, from the 1917 Simmler School
on the Carrizo Plain (next page left [James
Papp, San Luis Obispo County Architecture
[Charleston: Arcadia, 2023], p. 103]) to the
Fendalton Open-Air School in Christchurch,
New Zealand—where, as a boy, the author of
this report suffered rainy, icy, and snowy
winters in a structure designed for Southern
California summers (next page right [1928,
Christchurch City Libraries]).
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The City Kindergarten is essentially a side-gabled box with centered, front-gabled, push-out
entry porch rather than a porch integrated—as with the Simmler School—into the building.
The kindergarten’s fenestration and varied clapboard widths are elegant, but the building
references the California Bungalow’s decorative features without embodying its spatial
characteristics of asymmetry and substantial indoor -outdoor areas. The closest Henry L.
Wilson shows to it in The Bungalow Book is No. 711, a “Bungalow Real Estate Office.”
Adriance Court (1921), 1531 Santa Rosa, Old Town Historic District: no listed architect,
listed contractor W. J. Smith (No. 98)
The nine cottages of Adriance Court do not, in themselves, embody the California
Bungalow. Like the City Kindergarten, each references the decorative features of the style :
deep eaves with exposed rafter tails and a Shinto torii-based entry with a kasagi supported
by daiwa-topped hashira, which is to say a gate with beam supported by tapered square
columns (now often referred to by the misleading neologism “elephant leg”) with a simple
capital. But the design does not employ the California Bungalow’s spatial characteristics:
substantial and generally asymmetric indoor-outdoor spaces, rather being simple boxes in
a row. Without individual California Bungalow embodiment, as a group they do embody the
bungalow court, a distinctive and important Southern California architectural form.
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Outside of a historic district
Faulkner House (previously Eliza Shipman House) (1916), 1145 Marsh, not in a historic
district: no listed architect, listed contractor Harry Lyman] (No. 58)
The Faulkner House is one of a row of five contiguous cottages on the 1100 block of Ma rsh
Street—3 Late Italianate (pre-1906), 1 Colonial Revival (ca. 1907 –1910), and 1 California
Bungalow (1916)—that seem to have been Master Listed in 1982 because they survived as
a charming suburban group on a street threatened by urbanization.
The Faulkner House’s hip roof with
pyramidal street front is extremely rare but
not wholly unknown in California
Bungalows, which are almost always front-
or side-gabled, to reference their chalet
forebears. It has the classic pyramidal-roof-
and-asymmetric-front gable Colonial
Bungalow form (further indicated by the
shallow eaves), except with the pediment
front gable replaced by an open gable.
The gable’s Japonesque faux kooryoo or gorombo (rainbow beam), kaza-ana terminations to
4 faux crossbeams, 2 Swiss-inspired ogee knee brackets, and 3 hashira with daiwa (but also
astragal borrowed from an Ialianate square column) cram as many California Bungalow
features as possible into the small porch of what is spatially a Colonial Bungalow (including
3 columns; 2 is normal for California Bungalows ). The effect is transitional, allowed under
NRHP guidelines though hard to define as embodiment .
Lee R. Parsons House (1917), 1204 Nipomo: no listed architect, listed contractor Lee R.
Parsons (No. 75)
In 1917 Parsons, son of the county surveyor, was partner in the San Luis Planing Mill, had
converted it from steam to electricity four years earlier, and had just married a second wife,
returning from his honeymoon to finish building their house. On a corner site, it has a
sophisticated design with an asymmetric front-gabled porch facing Nipomo on a side-
gabled structure, with a side porch on Marsh whose gable is nested into the
aforementioned side gable. A faux kooryoo over the entrance, supported by stylized hijiki
or elbow brackets that are repeated in the side porch, plus window frames suggestive of a
torii or Shinto gate add Japanese flavor to a structure whose traditional rectangular form
has been broken up aesthetically more than functionally. Glazing on the fr ont of the side
porch and side of the front porch appears to be a later adaptation to March Street traffic.
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Added to the Master List by application of their owners, 1996–2012
Old Town Historic District
Martha Dunlap House (1916), 1511 Morro: no listed architect, listed contractor Harry
Lyman (No. 166; added to Master List in 1996)
Bordello owner Martha Dunlap, periodically charged with morals and liquor violations and
perjury (“early, prominent Central Coast businesswoman” in the parlance of the city’s
Master List website) applied for the building permit 3 Aug. 1916 and died 23 Apr. 1917 at
her house in Santa Maria, not long enough to establish historic association, even assuming
Dunlap was historically significant, i.e., a leader within her profession.33
The house is of the nested front gable subtype, and, with many “Jappo-Swisso” exterior
features (including ogee knee brackets, kooryoo, and kaza-ana) it embodies the California
Bungalow. The redwood-paneled, partially divided reception rooms with now more
exaggeratedly tapered hashira (still with astragals) are characteristic of Lyman’s work.
33. “Sheriff Stewart Heads Raid in Santa Maria Purity Crusade,” Morning Press, 30 Jan. 1910, p. 1;
“Santa Marian Hurt in Auto Accident,” Daily News and Independent, 24 Apr. 1917, p. 3
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56
Mill Street Historic District
The Burch House (1915), 1333 Mill, Mill Street Historic District: listed architect Theo. M.
Maino, listed contractor W. J. Smith (No. 176; added to Master List in 2010)
Of the three houses for which Theodore Maino is credited as architect in Cal Poly’s San Luis
Obispo Building Permits Collection , this one, built for drugstore proprietor W. E. Lawrence,
is the only one for which he was not also the contractor. It is of the nested front gable
subtype with an unusual—and unusually poorly integrated—wider second story in back
that was part of the house by the time the 1926 Sanborn Map came out but does not match
the permit application for a 1½-story 30’x34’ structure so was presumably added. The
pergola porch is absent from the 1926 Sanborn and may also be a later false -historicist
addition. It would be difficult to argue that it has particular architectural significance or
rarity and very difficult to argue that it has the integrity to commun icate its significance.
Outside of a historic district
Chris Anholm House (1919–1920), 375 Chorro, not in a historic district: architect and
contractor unknown (No. 171; added to Master List in 2009)
The Chris Anholm House, 2008
The Chris Anholm House, 2011
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57
Chris and George Anholm, ethnic Danish immigrants from Schleswig-Holstein, like Hans
Hansen, subdivided their farmland at the edge of San Luis Obispo , selling lots and offering
to build houses starting in 1928. “Building restrictions protect your investment,” they
heralded (“Anholm Tract” [advertisement], Telegram, 8 June 1928, p. 10): In other words,
Blacks and Asians were covenanted against buying, renting, or inhabiting the
neighborhood, except the latter as servants. After the US Supreme Court struck down the
enforcement of racial covenants in 1948 (Shelley v. Kraemer), local businessman and civic
leader Young Louis, Ah Louis’s eldest son, and school principal Billy Watson, Ah Louis’s
grandson, were able to buy Anholm Tract properties the following year , though Billy
Watson was forced to ask other householders if they objected .34
The Chris Anholm House is unusual, perhaps unique, for its Master List and Mills Act
applications being passed simultaneously in 2009. The earlier enclosure of the front porch
and changes to fenestration, plus later subtractions (the simple attic vent and kaza-ana
bargeboard terminations) and additions (speculative fenestration, new side addition and
entry porch to street façade, dormers, and two stories to the rear) would seem to have
rendered the house ineligible for Master Listing on the grounds of loss of integrity of
design, craftsmanship, and materials. It no longer embodies the simple, full-width gable
subtype of the California Bungalow, and its ability to communicate its architectural form or
association with Chris Anholm—whose notable contribution to San Luis Obispo’s history
was the further institutionalization of racism—is dubious.
Charles John Kelly House (1921), 1352 Pacific, not in a historic district: listed architect C.
C. Peppin, listed contractor Mount Diablo Building Corporation (No. 181; added to Master
List in 2010)
The Kelly House was one of 18 bungalows, not all California Bungalows, whose permits
were applied for 14 Nov. 1921–6 Jan. 1922, under “the Pedder Plan of Home Building ,”
advertised with a full page in the Telegram three weeks earlier, (26 Oct. 1921, p. 7).
A stucco bungalow with side gables and
central front gable pushout entry porch —
like the Adriance Court units and many of
the “LA Bungalows” in Mount Diablo’s 32 -
unit development in Marysville the previous
year—it has somewhat miniaturized triplet
knee brackets on the front and side gables
and kaza-ana bargeboards yet lacks
embodying muscularity, rustic materials,
and sophisticated indoor-outdoor space.
The NRHP Guidelines may be wrong that the “Craftsman Bungalow”—really the California
Bungalow—had anything essentially to do with craftsmanship, but i f this sort of mass-
produced dwelling with a few nominal decorative features qualifies for the Master List’s
rarity and uniqueness standard, it is hard to imagine what building would not.
34. Conversation with son Dr. Bill Watson
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58
Louisiana Clayton Dart House (1912), 1318 Pacific: no listed architect, listed contractor
W. J. Smith (No. 182; added to Master List in 2010)
The California Bungalow built for Mary Putnam and later owned by longtime County
Historical Society director Louisiana Clayton Dart (above left) is a subtype of side gables
and full-width front porch with front facing gabled dormer. Of the 112 models in Wi lson’s
1910 Bungalow Book, 43 of them have full-width front porches, though most of these
incorporate some asymmetry. The one that most closely resembles the Dart House i s No.
409 (above right), with a bellcast gable supported by knee brackets. Smith uses simpler
decorative elements without ogees in the brackets or kaza-ana in bargeboards and rafter
tails, and porch columns as miniature torii with kasagi, shimaki, and nuki beams. The
japonesque spirit of Wilson’s torii-like columns is evoked by Smith with hijiki or Japanese-
style brackets at the top of the hashira. Smith, like Wilson, uses asymmetries of porch
fenestration but puts his door in the middle.
Whether contractor Smith copied Wilson or another architect, the likely source for
variation was a pattern book, with manufactured architectural elements available to piec e
together. But this is a sophisticated design that embodies the California Bungalow and has
association to, in Dart, a historically significant local person.
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Harry Lyman House (1912), 868 Upham, not in a historic district: no listed architect,
listed contractor H. E. Lyman (No. 183; added to Master List in 2012)
Built by contractor Harry Lyman for his mother Laura Rugg Lyman, this house is of the
common subtype with nested front gables. Ogee knee brackets with nailhead terminations,
kaza-ana in bargeboard and rafter tails, two faux kooryoo on the façade, and a rectangular
oriel side window are testament to Lyman’s attention to the Swiss and Japanese details
whose strange marriage embody the California Bungalow. Later enclosure of the important
front porch is the only fly in the ointment of this Master Listing, the most recent of a
California Bungalow in San Luis Obispo.
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Contributing List California Bungalows in the Old Town Historic District
Often sophisticated but generally small, these were overlooked for Master Listing.
Nested front gable s subtype
1520 Beach (1925, James
Jepson, contractor)
752 Islay (1911, John Chapek,
contractor)
1071 Islay (1921, W. J. Smith,
contractor); later addition to
right side
1821 Morro (1919, R. S. Aston,
contractor
1124 Buchon (1916, H. E.
Lyman, contractor); later
porch enclosure
727 Islay
1120 Islay
1519 Nipomo (1924, John
Chapek, contractor)
1425 Garden; lobed
bargeboards recall
Swiss/Bracketed style
868 Islay
1829 Morro (1916, H. E.
Lyman, contractor); later
two-story back addition
1421 Osos; duplex with two
nesting gable entry porches
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977 Pismo
1152 Pismo (1922, G. L.
Furster, day labor)
1193 Pismo (1921, C. O. Dyer,
contractor); mirror image of
1185 Pismo
1050 Pismo (1927, W. D.
Stainbaugh, contractor)
1179 Pismo (1917, C. Scott,
contractor)
1423 Toro; later second-story
addition and stone cladding of
columns
1145 Pismo (1921, John
Chapek, contractor); later
enclosure of porch
1185 Pismo (1921, C. O. Dyer,
contractor); mirror image of
1193 Pismo
Front- and side-gable subtype Hip roof singleton
655 Islay (1920, Theodore
Maino, contractor); note torii
columns with odd lattice
958 Pismo (1915, John
Chapek, contractor); likely
porch enclosure
753 Islay (earlier Colonial
Revival bungalow, later
stuccoed with California
Bungalow style entry porch
attached)
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Side-gable subtypes
Full-width porch, front
gable dormer
1060 Pismo (1913, H. E.
Lyman, contractor); rare
absence of central columns
1604 Morro; later porch
enclosure
Asymmetric porch, front-
gabled dormer
1068 Pismo (1914, Ernest
McConnell [Los Angeles],
architect, John Chapek,
contractor)
1520 Santa Rosa (1929, W. J.
Smith)
Wraparound porch, shed
dormer
1845 Morro (1913, A[rthur?].
Barnard, architect and
contractor); rare wraparound
porch for California
Bungalow
Asymmetric porch, shed
dormer
1641 Osos (1910, B. F.
Stewart, contractor)
No porch, shed dormer
663 Islay (1921, C. R. Dana,
self-contractor); appears not
to have a later porch
enclosure
Asymmetric porch, no
dormer
1515 Santa Rosa
968 Leff (1927, H. C. Kinsman,
contractor)
Asymmetric push-out
porch, no dormer
1166 Pismo (1922, C. C.
Peppin, architect, Mount
Diablo Building Corp.,
contractor)
Center push-out entry
porch, no dormer
1527 Morro
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Full-width front-gable subtypes
Full-width porch
1182 Buchon (1910, Leonard
Thurlow, presumed self-
contractor)
676 Islay; second story
addition, fenestration
changes, etc.
1170 Buchon (maybe by 1911
with dormer and possibly
oriel additions circa 1927)
Asymmetric porch
1020 Leff (1908); atypical
canted window, lack of
decorative features
1336 Morro (maybe by 1911)
1731 Morro (maybe by 1913);
atypical, Colonialesque single
Tuscan column, side-facing
door
1536 Garden (before 1925)
Push-out entry porch or
canopy
1175 Buchon (1923, W. J.
Smith, contractor)
1615 Morro (maybe 1921);
later side addition
1511 Osos
1061 Islay; later second-story
addition
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64
VII. Significance of the Hansen House
As defined by San Luis Obispo’s Historic Preservation Program Guidelines, the Hansen
House is among “the most unique and important historic properties and resources in terms
of […] architectural […] significance [or] rarity” for its embodiment of the California
Bungalow’s full-width front-gable, asymmetric porch subtype, being the finest articulation
of this Southern California ur -form in the district and the best preserved example in the
city. It is simple in its structure and plain and angular in its elements, much like Greene and
Greene’s pioneering “California House” from 1904 and the first press illustration of a
California Bungalow so designated, and as the type would be recognized, in the 1905 Los
Angeles Herald (both below). Like these, the Hansen house has an intentional absence of
overt Swiss dewtails like the ogee knee brace or Japanese ones like the kaza-ana terminus.
It is substantial and artfully designed but minimalist in its aesthetics.
Above: Greene and Greene’s 1904 California
House; right: California Bungalow in the Los
Angeles Herald 24 Sep. 1905 (see pp. 21–22)
The 1921 Hans Nissen and Lena Peterson Hansen House, 1110 Buchon Street, San Luis Obispo
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A plain frieze divides the street façade horizontally, with wide clapboard below and
rectangular shingle siding above. Five knee braces with square ends (chamfered for
softening) and plain shafts support the deep eaves and substantial bargeboard of the street
façade. Wide, plain, framing of an attic vent at the gable crest echoes, on a smaller scale, the
framing of the windows and door, while descending uprights and canted head add a
distinctive touch.
In form, the Hansen House has a dominant roof peak running from front to back, with a
small side-projecting wing toward the front left with its own side -facing gable, like Greene
and Greene’s California House. The front - and side-facing gables are wide and low-pitched,
typical for the California Bungalow’s reference to the Swiss chalet, but unlike a Swiss chalet,
the house is a single story, appropriate for the California suburbs.
An integrated asymmetric porch follows the arrangement familiar to Californians from the
Colonial Bungalow. In an elegantly symmetrical touch, the porch divides the façade exactly
in half, which is rare for Colonial Bungalows, which are more likely to have either the porch
or the enclosed façade dominant. The corner is supported by one tapered square column
rather than the series of Tuscan columns typical of Colonial Bungalows. A brick base
supports the column.
Triplet windows on the right are explicitly echoed within the porch by the front door and
flanking windows, also in wide, plain frames. The right windows , in simplified effect, are
flush to the wall rather than projecting in a canted bay, as would be typical in the Colonial
Bungalow. A brick dado runs below the right windows.
The rear façade echoes this arrangement with subtle differences: An identical attic vent is
present, but only the lowest beams have knee braces, the three highest projecting without
further support, and the wide, plain frieze is absent as a divider between the square shingle
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siding and clapboard. A larger door frame and single window are in a purely utilitarian
arrangement rather than the rhythmic aesthetic of the street façade.
The west façade’s projecting wing terminates in a chimney with flanking windows and also
has side windows, providing a light and airy inglenook for the interior. Two lower knee
braces on its gable echo the larger gable’s brackets, with a beam projection from the
brickwork at the gable crest completing the arrangement. An original dining room pushout
(seen on the Sanborn Map five years later) is obscured from the street beyond the gabled
inglenook wing. A kitchen window beyond the pushout appears to be the only one of the
bungalow’s twenty windows whose original sash has been replaced.
West-facing inglenook wing
East façade’s seven windows
Rear façade
West façade with pushout and wing
The large number of windows, all with wide, plain frames, are testament to the emphasis
on access to fresh air—shaded by deep eaves—in the ideal California Bungalow.
Inside, the living room and dining room of the Hansen House retain their shoulder -high
wainscots, divided by battens and, in the dining room, topped by molding that provides a
shelf for display of dishes or other artifacts. Interior door and window frames echo the
width, plainness, and strength of the exterior but in natural finish, with a multi -paned
pocket door between the two rooms. Stylistic harmony between the interior and exterior,
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as well as communication between the two —e.g., in the large windows and door that make
a continuous space of the porch, living room, and (with pocket doors open) dining room —
are ideals of the California Bungalow and are particularly well executed here.
Inglenook wing side window
Axis through pocket doors from dining room
to living room and porch
A garage opening to the Pismobuchon Alley
(right) dates from the same era as the
house, with both of them present in the
1926–1956 Sanborn Map book in 1926. It
copies California Bungalow design with a
low-pitched roof, exposed rafter tails, and
vent of vertical slats, a distant echo of
vertical siding in Swiss Revival gable crests
and present in the attic vents of the Hansen
House.
Living room wainscot and doorway to hall
Dining room alcove
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VIII. Period of Significance
Given that the Hansen House is significant for its embodiment of the California Bungalow
rather than historic association, the period of significance would normally be the year of its
construction, 1921. Extending the period of significance to the residence of the Hansens
(1921–1937) would have little relevance to issues of integrity of design, materials, and
workmanship, as the few minor changes to the house occurred well after 1937. Its setting,
comprising the other 22 houses on 1100 block of Buchon, consists overwhelmingly of
construction predating the Hansen House.
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IX. Integrity
The earliest available image we have of the Hansen House is from the 1926–1956 Sanborn
Map book (top), showing the footprint, height, materials, and location of the house and
garage in 1926 (partial lamination over the garage records an update to the lot next door).
A black and white photograph from the 1982 Historic Resources Survey is next (middle),
supplement by Google Street Views from 2007 to the present (2015 and 2017 at bottom).
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Location As shown in a comparison of the 1926 image in the 1926 –1956 Sanborn Map
book with the current Google Satellite image (below), the Hansen House and garage retain
their location at 1110 Buchon and in the same configuration.
Setting The Hansen House is remarkable for the preservation of its setting not only as
a low-built surburban street but with almost all of its original houses as it developed from
1901. The most significant change was a Seventh Day Adventist church built on the lot to
the west of the Hansen House, the Buchon –Santa Rosa corner, in 1924–1925, three years
after the Hansen House was constructed, with a Contributing List Spanish Colonial Revival
bungalow added to the rear of that lot in 1929.35 The church has been replaced by a
compact, modernist two-story house, but the 1929 bungalow remains. A California
Bungalow at the rear of the lot to the east is the Hansen House is of unclear construction
date, appearing by 1926 on the Sanborn Map, and is currently obscured from the steet.
To the east, the remaining 10 houses on the 1100 block of Buchon were all Contributing
Listed in 1987, and 9 are documented to have pre-existed the Hansen House. Of the 10
houses on the facing side of the block , 9 were Contributing Listed in 1987, and all but 1 are
documented to have pre-existed the Hansen House. These Contributing buildings (with 2 —
1144 and 1152 Buchon—since Master Listed as the Hill and Strickland Houses) consist of
13 Colonial Bungalows, 5 California Bungalows, and 1 nondescript bungalow .
The 13 Colonial Bungalows date between 1901 and 1910. They are, by 190136, 1504 Santa
Rosa; by the 1905 Sanborn Map37, 1132, 1151, 1157, 1165, 1176, 1189, and the since–
Master Listed 1144 Buchon; and, by 191038, 1190 Buchon; in addition to 1 Colonial
35. San Luis Obispo Building Permits Collection .
36. “Death Call for Two,” Tribune, 16 Feb. 1901, p. 1.
37. Confirmed by “San Luis Obispo, Panoramic View from Terrace Hill, 1907” (probably a year
earlier), San Luis Obispo, City—Streets and General Views, Box 1, Folder 35.
https://archives.calstate.edu/concern/archives/2v23vx97d, Cal Poly Special Collections.
38. “WANTED—A girl for general housework,” Telegram, 20 Sep. 1910, p. 4.
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Bungalow with some Eastlake features , 1145 Buchon (on the 1905 Sanborn Map); 2
Colonial Bungalows with some Queen Anne features , 1137 and 1160 Buchon (on the 1905
Sanborn Map); and the since–Master Listed Colonial-Japonesque Bungalow 1152 Buchon
(ca. 1906–190739).
Five California Bungalows date between 1910 and 192 6. They are, from 191040, 1182
Buchon; from 191141, 1170 Buchon; 1124 Buchon, built by Harry Lyman in 1916 (San Luis
Obispo Building Permits Collection ); from 1923, 1175 Buchon (op. cit.); and, by the 1926
Sanborn, 1118 Buchon.
One nondescript Contributing List bungalow, 1135 Buchon, was built by 1916.42
Thus, not only does the setting retain its suburban residential use, the actual bungalows—
with their design, craftsmanship, and materials—preserve the setting of the Hansen
House’s naissance. Though there have been many additions to these houses, the horizontal
additions are mostly to the rear and the vertical ones mostly in the form of dormer
conversions of attic space, retaining the scale and massing of the street.
Design The Hansen House’s footprint is unchanged from its 1926 appearance in the
1926–1956 Sanborn Map book, the only one of the 21 Master and Contributing Listed
buildings on the 1100 block—apart from 1160 and 1177—with this distinction. It has also
avoided the fate of other listed houses on the block not only of lean -tos and extensions but
second-story additions and dormers to expand attic to living space. Its form, scale, and
massing are pristine.
The earliest photograph we have is from the 1982 Historic Resources Survey, but the
weathered-brick dado that appears by then on the street façade of the building was
permitted in 1967. It is, however, reversible. The plinth of the column, of different brick
and height and functional rather than decorative, is likely original.
There are two changes to the façade design since the survey photograph, both taking place
between 2015 and 2017, according to Google Street Views . (Otis Maxwell, the previous
owner, died in 2014.)
1. The plain frieze has been extended continuously across the façade, having been
previously notched along the right-hand half. This seems to make aesthetic sense, and,
39. The early 1906 right-hand Terrace Hill photo at Cal Poly Special Collections (168-1-b-01-35-02,
incorrectly dated on the back 1907) does not show 1152 Buchon, but a panoramic photo (Cal Poly
Special Collections 168-1-b-01-36-01) that can be dated to the first months of 1907 does. 1150
(now 1152) Buchon was listed as Strickland’s address in the advertisement for a patent kidney
medication by 17 May 1907 (“In San Luis Obispo,” Tribune, p. 2).
40. San Luis Obispo Building Permits Collection .
41. “WANTED—a good girl to help in a home of culture. […] Address or inquire 1170 Buchon St.,”
Telegram, 14 Sep. 1911, p. 4.
42. “FOR RENT—Modern 5 room furnished house,” Telegram, 18 Nov. 1916, p. 1.
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absent the discovery of earlier photographs, it is impossible to tell if the notch is original or
was made for a utilitarian purpose, e.g., to accommodate the window canopy or a larger
one than that seen in 1982. It is reversible, but there is currently no indication that it
should be reversed.
2. A falsely historicist
tapering has been laminated
to the porch’s apparently
original square corner porch
column in an overt hashira
reference that does not seem
to have been intended in the
original design, for square
posts were common through
Swiss Revival architecture in
the nineteenth century and
occur in actual Swiss chalets.
This change is reversible and,
minor though it seems,
would ideally be reversed to
restore the bungalow’s
original aesthetic.
Workmanship As previously mentioned, the kitchen sash has been replaced. The
front and rear doors are also not original, the one in front being a mid -century door with
colored diamond panes. This may be an artifact of Otis Maxwell’s work for Alex Madonna,
either surplus from a job site or influenced by Madonna’s fondness for this aesthetic in his
own Swiss Revival architecture, including Madonna Inn. These diamond-pane replacement
doors are, however, not uncommon on older houses in San Luis Obispo.
No evidence suggests that bargeboards, beam ends, knee braces, or rafter tails have been
altered from their original plain appearance—other than that they and the siding were
quite likely stained rather than painted. The mid -century white paint obliterated all
perception of detail, which the current painting arrangement at least restores. Few if any
houses in San Luis have their original paint or staining. Where unpainted siding has been
restored, as with the Leroy Smith House at Johnson and Mill, the origi nal redwood shingles
had to be replaced.
Materials Clapboard and shingle siding appears to be original, as do door and window
frames, all preserving the California Bungalow plain and muscular aesthetic. The original
wood-shingle roofing has been, as usual and expected, replaced.
Feeling Feeling as the summation of location, setting, design, workmanship, and
materials has high integrity based on the high integrity of these elements. The passerby on
the street experiences a California Bungalow in an almost perfectly preserved state in a
block of contemporary Colonial and California Bungalows nearly as well preserved in
theirs. The ideal of early-twentieth-century suburban California life—expressed in
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simplicity and livability of design and workmanship, with the indoor-outdoor experience of
the California climate embodied in the front porch, its connection to an open interior, and
the plethora of windows—strongly communicates not only to the passerby but the
individual admitted to the living room and dining room with their respective inglenook and
alcove in original condition.
Association As the application is to list the Hansen House for embodiment of the
California Bungalow rather than association with a historic event or person, association is
not relevant. Nonetheless, early occupants would easily recognize the bungalow they lived
in, with minor changes of tapered porch column and brick dado.
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X. Conclusion
The Hans Nissen and Lena Peterson Hansen House embodies the architecture of the
California Bungalow in its Southern California ur -form: full-width, street-facing, low-pitch
gable, rectangular footprint and dominant ridgeline front to back, paying tribute to the
simple, rustic nature of the Swiss chalet, with an asymmetric integrated porch inherited
from the earliest established American bungalow type, the Colonial Bungalow .
Eschewing the accretions of Swiss decorative features like ogee brackets and gable trusses,
as well as Japanese ones like hari, hijiki, faux kooryoo, torii elements, and kaza-ana
terminations, the Hansen House displays consistently plain, functional details. Simplicity is
clearly its design ideal, from the basic chalet form to the façade bisected in two equal halves
between porch and enclosure.
The Hansen House is also extremely unusual for the integrity of its setting and even more
unusual for its absence of horizontal and vertical additions. The minor changes to its design
features, craftsmanship, and materials detract little from its ability to communicate its
significance as a California Bungalow and are largely reversible. In contrast, the only other
Master List California Bungalow of the same subtype, the Anholm House, has virtually no
integrity, with significant irreversible changes to design, materials, and workmanship, and
it does not contribute to a historic district.
In the Old Town Historic District, originally conceived to celebrated the California
Bungalow, why were so few of such bungalows Master Listed, and indeed the whole type—
perhaps California’s major contribution to world architecture—dismissed as “other, more
modest structures with simpler styles […] in other areas of the district”? The culprit seems
to be a misguided effort to valorize the very few two -story nineteenth-century houses in an
overwhelmingly twentieth-century bungalow district, perhaps with a view to seeming
more like the East Coast than the West Coast, or more like San Francisco than Pasadena.
Whatever the cause, in updating its Historic Resources Survey, the City of San Luis Obispo
should review and correct these early biases through
• recording and analyzing its historic resources statistically
• acknowledging that San Luis Obispo architects, builders, and clients participated in and
frequently led the mainstream of American architectural movements
• applying accurate dates, clients, and architectural types to historic resources, including
key types it has previously overlooked, misnamed, or marginalized, from Greek Revival
adobes to Swiss/Bracketed and Eastlake houses and Colonial and California Bungalows
• adopting listing criteria that follow national and state standards and practices
In the meantime, the Hansen House—for its important embodiment of the minimalist
aesthetic in California Bungalow design and its extraordinary degree of integrity to
communicate its significance—should be added to the Master List as one of the Old Town
Historic District’s “most unique and important historic properties and resources in terms of
[…] architectural […] significance [or] rarity.”
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