HomeMy WebLinkAboutItem 5c. Request to Include 1421 Garden St. in the Inventory of Historic Resources as a Master List Resource Item 5c.
Department: Community Development
Cost Center: 4003
For Agenda of: 10/4/2022
Placement: Consent
Estimated Time: N/A
FROM: Michael Codron, Community Development Director
Prepared By: Walter Oetzell, Assistant Planner
SUBJECT: REQUEST TO INCLUDE PROPERTY AT 1421 GARDEN STREET IN THE
INVENTORY OF HISTORIC RESOURCES AS A MASTER LIST
RESOURCE (HIST-0337-2022)
RECOMMENDATION
As recommended by the Cultural Heritage Committee, adopt a draft Resolution entitled,
“A Resolution of the City Council of the City of S an Luis Obispo, California, adding the
property located at 1421 Garden Street to the Master List of Historic Resources as ‘The
D.M. and Carrie Proper Meredith House’ (Attachment A)
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 i n the
City’ s Historic Preservation Ordinance Sections 14.01.060 & 14.01.070.
DISCUSSION
Background
Beau and Jen Narragon, represented by James Papp, have requested that the property
at 1421 Garden Street be designated as a Master List Resource in the City’s Inventory of
Historic Resources, as The D.M. and Carrie Proper Meredith House, and have provided
an evaluation of the property and its eligibility for historic listing (Historical Evaluation,
Attachment B), prepared by James Papp, PhD, Historian and Architectural Historian.
On August 22, 2022, the Cultural Heritage Committee considered this request and found
that the property meets eligibility criteria for historical listing to a degree that qualifies it
for designation as a Master List Resource and recommended that the City Council
designate the property as such in the City’s Inventory of Historic Resources.
Site and Setting
The property is on the east side of Garden Street, about 100 feet south of Pismo Street,
in the Old Town Historic District, one of the City’s oldest residential neighborhoods, built
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Item 5c.
up historically around the turn of the twentieth century, with older structures dating back
to the 1880s. 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 (Neo-classic Row House, Folk Victorian, and Craftsman Bungalow), with
many homes borrowing architectural details from several styles. 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 D.M. and Carrie Proper Meredith House
The evaluation provided by the applicant (Attachment B) notes an April 13, 1883
announcement in the San Luis Obispo Tribune of the completion of a dwelling for David
Milton Meredith and his first wife Caroline Proper, and thus uses 1883 as the estimated
date of construction, with the building eventually appearing on Sanborn Maps by 1 891
(Evaluation, pg. 6). Although D. M. Meredith is described as “co-builder,” no other builder
or architect is identified. The building is described as the City’s “most sophisticated and
articulated example of Heimatstil architecture of the Krüppelwalmstil or Jerkinhead
subtype, which includes a steep roof pitch, deep eaves, and carved open brackets,” with
several characteristic features of the building highlighted (Evaluation, pg. 43):
Jerkinhead gables and dormers
Notched and roundel-terminated bargeboards
Roundel-terminated knee brackets and solid horizontal brackets
Singleton, twin, and triplet sash windows with crown molding and drop casings
Horizontal shiplap siding with vertical siding in the gables
Side entry porch with spindle columns and fretwork
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Item 5c.
Front apartment addition from 1924 with its fenestration, eaves, and knee
brackets
“H” footprint
Porches were replaced by apartments in the front and rear of the building in the 1920s,
with the front addition (but not the rear) replicating the house’s decorative motifs. The
house was occupied by D. M. Meredith, with his first wife Caroline Proper, and later his
second wife Louise Hardenbergh Meredith, until his death in 1929.
David Milton Meredith
The building at 1421 Garden is associated with its co-builder David Milton Meredith, from
its construction until his death in 1929. D. M. Meredith is described as “an early San Luis
Obispo leader who influenced the city’s development in education, finance, and religion”
(Evaluation, pg. 1):
“… an indefatigable toiler for progress and good governance in San Luis
Obispo City and County education and finance. Meredith’s direct influence on
education lasted for 35 years, from his appointment as principal of the city’s
schools in 1878 to the end of his term on the board of school directors of the
newly chartered city in 1913. This included 10 straight years on the County
Board of Education and 12 on the Mission School District Board of Trustees.
Meredith’s leadership in local finance was somewhat more brief – 23 years –
from his cofounding of the San Luis Obispo Building and Loan Association in
1888 to his resignation as cashier of the Andrews Bank in 1911. Yet these are
extraordinarily long years at the forefront of two fields. He then continued his
work as a real estate and insurance agent to his eightieth year and after that
served till his death as a publicly cited and consulted pioneer of influence,
prudence, and rectitude. (Evaluation, pg. 31)
The historic significance of D. M. Meredith and his contributions, ranging from
appointment as principal of the city’s schools in 1878, service on the County Board of
Education, Mission School District Board of Trustees, and the board of City school
directors, cofounding of the San Luis Obispo Building and Loan Association, director and
cashier of the Andrews Bank, and co-founder of the Baptist Church in San Luis Obispo,
are traced in detail from page 31 of the applicant’s Evaluation, with historical context,
specifically in the areas of education and banking, provided from pg. 11.
To be eligible for listing as an historic resource, a building must exhibit a high level of
historic integrity, be at least 50 years old, and meet one or more of the eligibility criteria
described in Section14.01.070 of the Historic Preservation Ordinance (see
Attachment C). 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, dis trict, or to the City as
a whole may be designated as a “Contributing List Resource” (SLO MC §14.01.050). 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
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Item 5c.
past may be designated as “Master List Resources.” The applicant’s Historical Evaluation
(Attachment B) provides a description of the architectural significance of the house (from
pg. 38) and historical significance of David Milton Meredith, in support of designation as
a Master List Resource.
Evaluation of Eligibility
Architectural Criteria
“Heimatstil” (Homeland Style) is described as a 19th-Century style based on Swiss and
Tyrolean folk architecture, not typically covered in guides to American domestic
architecture (Evaluation, pg. 22). It is likewise not among the predominate historical styles
described in the City’s Historic Context Statement. The applicant’s Evaluation (from pg.
22) more fully describes the style, its origins, and relationship to “Cottage” designs1 and
later transitions to Modernism. As such, this house is architecturally significant as a rare
example of the style in the City, as well as a sophisticated and articulated example of it
(Evaluation pg. 38), with its period of significance described as spanning from its
construction in 1883 to the death of David Milton Meredith.
Historic Criteria
A timeline of the historical context surrounding the building’s period of significance,
including contributions and events in the life of David Milton Meredith, is provided from
page 3 of the applicant’s Evaluation. As summarized in Section 2.3 of this report, above,
D.M. Meredith is described as a person who made significant contributions to the
community and to early local history in the areas of education and finance, and this
property and the dwelling on it are closely associated with him, as its occupant during its
period of significant, satisfying Historic Criteria described in Section 14.01.070(B) of the
Historic Preservation Ordinance.
Integrity
The dwelling remains in its original location, and in the discussion of the integrity of its
design2 the various character-defining elements of the home are discussed, concluding
that, notwithstanding subsequent minor additions to the apartment expansions, and other
minor details, the buildings and property satisfy the criteria for Integrity set out in
§14.01.070(C) of the Historic Preservation Ordinance, noting, in reference to the
apartment additions:
The house’s overall design from the latter end of its period of significance, with
additions to front and rear, remains, communicating the thrifty but aesthetically
respectful character of D. M. Meredith. Its original design of an H-footprint
Heimatstil villa with front porch, rising consistently toward the rear, is easily
understandable despite the porch’s replacement by a slightly wider, deeper
apartment. The Heimatstil forms of that apartment reinforce the house’s
overall ability to communicate its stylistic significance. (Papp pg. 2)
1 E.g. Myron Angel House (714 Buchon) and Greenfield House (676 Pismo) as Cottage-style examples
employing distinctive jerkinhead gables; and the Muscio House (1330 Mill) and Madonna Inn in related
Heimatstil subtypes.
2 Historical Evaluation (Attachment B), from pg. 19
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Item 5c.
Conclusion
The information in the Historical Evaluation prepared for this application, documenting the
architectural character and integrity of the house, the contributions and life of D.M.
Meredith, 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, Historic Criteria, 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.
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 22, 2022.
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: 2022-23
Funding Identified: No
Fiscal Analysis:
Funding
Sources
Total Budget
Available
Current
Funding
Request
Remaining
Balance
Annual
Ongoing
Cost
General Fund $N/A $ $ $
State
Federal
Fees
Other:
Total $ $0 $ $0
Adding the 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 request to
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Item 5c.
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
of the 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 Criter ia
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
ATTACHMENTS
A. – Draft Resolution (1421 Garden)
B. – Historic Resource Evaluation, 1421 Garden (James Papp, PhD)
C. – Evaluation Criteria (Historic Preservation Ordinance)
Page 20 of 364
R ______
RESOLUTION NO. _____ (2022 SERIES)
A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SAN LUIS
OBISPO, CALIFORNIA, ADDING THE PROPERTY LOCATED AT 1421
GARDEN STREET TO THE MASTER LIST OF HISTORIC RESOURCES
AS “THE D.M. AND CARRIE PROPER MEREDITH HOUSE”
(HIST-0337-2022)
WHEREAS, the applicants, Beau and Jen Narragon, filed an application on
June 24, 2022, for review of the inclusion of the property at 1421 Garden 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 22, 2022 and recommended that the City Council add the property at
1421 Garden Street to the Master List of Historic Resources; and
WHEREAS, the City Council of the City of San Luis Obispo conducted a public hearing
on October 4, 2022 for the purpose of considering the request to add the propert y to the
Inventory of Historic Resources; and
WHEREAS, notices of said public hearings 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 historic integrity, and is more than 50 years old.
b) The subject property satisfies Architectural Criteria for Style and Design
(§§ 14.01.070 (A)), Historic Criteria for History-Person (§ 14.01.070 (B)), and
Criteria for Integrity (§§ 14.01.070 (C)) to a degree that qualifies it for
designation as a Master List Historic Resource. The dwelling on the site and
its subsequent additions convey a purity of style, exhibit attractiveness through
detailing and craftsmanship, and embody a sophisticated and articulated
example of Heimatstil architecture of the Krüppelwalmstil or Jerkinhead
subtype in a manner that expresses interesting details with notable
Page 21 of 364
Resolution No. _____ (2022 Series) Page 2
R ______
attractiveness. The building and property are associated with David Milton
Meredith, an early San Luis Obispo leader who influenced the city’s
development in education, finance, and religion. The building occupies its
original site, and apart from minor apartment additions from the period of
significance, retains a largely unaltered exterior, with its characteristic design
and materials.
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 1421 Garden Street in the Master List of Historic Resources
as “The D.M. and Carrie Proper Meredith House.”
Upon motion of ____________________, seconded by ____________________, and
on the following roll call vote:
AYES:
NOES:
ABSENT:
The foregoing resolution was adopted this 4th day of October 2022.
___________________________
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
Page 22 of 364
1
The D. M. and Carrie Proper Meredith House • 1421 Garden Street
Historic Resource Evaluation and Master List Application
Summary Conclusion
The 1883 D. M. and Carrie Proper Meredith House qualifies for San Luis Obispo’s Master
List for its long association with an early San Luis Obispo leader who influenced the city’s
development in education, finance, and religion. One of the city’s “most unique and
important” resources, it would be the first one placed on the Master List for its association
with an educator.
It is also the city’s finest embodiment of the Krüppelwalmstil subtype of Heimatstil, or
Homeland Style, an influential Central European genre that reached America by the 1840s.
Likely originating in the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century vogue in France and
England for the cottage orné and carried back to Central Europe through the Suburban
Cottage Movement, Heimatstil would later meld with avant-garde Jugendstil in the
transition to Modernism, while in America it contributed to the development of the
California Bungalow; the Scandinavification of Solvang; and the creation of San Luis
Obispo’s most famous work of architecture, the Madonna Inn.
Iowa-born David Milton Meredith and his first wife Caroline Proper landed at Port San Luis
in 1877; he was appointed principal of the city’s schools in 1878; and they likely built the
house in 1883, the same year they helped found the local Baptist congregation. The next
year the Board of Supervisors appointed D. M. Meredith to the Board of Education, on
which he served for ten years. He followed this with twelve years as a Mission School
District (City of San Luis Obispo) trustee, during which time he was devoted to the creation
of the city’s first district high school, both conceptually and with William H. Weeks’s 1905–
1906 Neoclassical building of Bishop Peak granite (demolished). The year after the high
Page 23 of 364
2
school opened, Meredith laid the foundation stone for the new Baptist Church at Pacific and
Osos (extant).
Simultaneously, D. M. Meredith helped found the San Luis Obispo Building and Loan
Association in 1888, as its first secretary, and he served as cashier—or second in
command—of the Andrews Bank 1898–1904 and 1907–1911, during a period when R. E.
Jack, cashier of the County Bank, set off a countywide bank run that the Andrews Bank
managed to withstand, with the result that it preserved financial fluidity in the region.
In 1911 D. M. Meredith was elected to the school board under the new city charter and the
following year helped quash the board’s recall, which finally set a precedent against ad hoc
community interference in personnel decisions. He ran his insurance, real estate, and rental
brokerage till his eightieth year and—outliving his second wife, Louise Hardenbergh—
thriftily added rental apartments to the front and back of his own house, whereupon he
settled into the role of elder statesman. He died at home at the age of eighty-six.
The Meredith House maintains the integrity of location, design, setting, materials,
workmanship, feeling, and association to communicate its significance as the house of
pioneer educator, financier, and religious leader D. M. Meredith, retaining the alterations he
made during his and its period of significance. As the façade alterations were made within
the characteristics of Heimatstil, it also retains its ability to communicate its architectural
significance.
Submitted on behalf of Beau and Jennifer Narragon, 1421 Garden Street, by
James Papp, PhD, Historian and Architectural Historian, Secretary of the Interior Professional
Qualification Standards
7 June 2022
Page 24 of 364
3
Contents
Summary Conclusion 1
Timeline 4
Historic Context 11
Education 11
Banking 17
Architectural Historic Context: Heimatstil 22
Historiographic Context: Old Town Historic District 1983 and 1987 Surveys 28
Definition: “Associated with the lives of persons significant in our past” 30
Historic Significance of David Milton Meredith 31
City education in chaos 31
Meredith as organization man 33
The quest to build a high school 35
The struggle for normalcy 36
The role of pioneer 36
Architectural Significance of the D. M. and Carrie Proper Meredith House 38
Period of Significance and Character-Defining Features 43
Integrity 44
Conclusion` 46
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4
Timeline
1844 June 17 David Milton Meredith is born in Iowa, the third son of a laborer (in the
1850 census) who later becomes a farmer (in the 1860 census).1
1860 The US Census shows D. M. Meredith at sixteen working on his father’s
farm.
1867 Under State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Swett, California
introduces free public education for all children.
1868 The Lee County Gazeteer lists Meredith as a clerk in Keokuk, Iowa, on the
Mississippi River by the Missouri border.
1870 July 13 Meredith marries Caroline May (Carrie) Proper in Van Buren County, Iowa,
home of his family’s farm.
1874 The Republicans having run in 1871 on a platform of compulsory
education, “that the safety and perpetuity of republican institutions depend
mainly upon popular education and intelligence,” California mandates
compulsory instruction for children age 8–14 and guarantees aid based on
the number of children in each district.
1876 The school census shows 582 children between 5 and 17 in San Luis
Obispo’s Mission School District, with 370 attending public school, 41
private school, and 160 non-attendants. An additional 10 Chinese children
and one Indian child appear to be excluded from attendance.2
1877 Aug. The Merediths sail into Port San Luis; D. M. Meredith subsequently teaches
school at Lompoc, Bear Canyon, and Las Cruces (“Pioneer of City”).
1878 July 25 The Merediths’ first child, Lewis M., dies three days after birth, delaying his
father’s move from Lompoc to San Luis Obispo to take up his new position
as principal of the city’s schools.3
Aug. D. M. Meredith moves to San Luis as the new principal of the city’s Mission
School District, comprising the Mission School on Nipomo Street (where
Emerson Park is now) and new Court School on Santa Rosa and Mill. There
are five other teachers and 252 students in three grades. Meredith teaches
the forty-one students of the first grade.4
Dec. 21 Announces his “first-class private school during the winter months,”
enquiries at the Court School.5
1. “Pioneer of City Dies at Local Home,” San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram, 26 Oct. 1929, p. 1; US Census 1850,
1860, Van Buren County, IA.
2. “School Census,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 1 July 1876, p. 4; J. M. Felts, “Our Public Schools,” weekly
San Luis Obispo Tribune, 28 Apr. 1877, p. 4.
3. Gravestone, Lompoc Evergreen Cemetery.
4. Weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune: “Personals,” 3 Aug. 1878, p. 1; “Mr. Meredith,” 17 Aug. 1878, p. 1.
5. Weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, p. 5.
Page 26 of 364
5
1879 March The Mission School District Board of Trustees reappoint Meredith as
principal for the ensuing year.6
June 11 W. M. Armstrong, teacher of the Hope School District east of San Luis, files
suit against the Mission District Board of Trustees and the county
superintendent, calling for the trustees’ removal over a misallocation of
funds that kept the district from going from six months to eight months per
year.7
June 17 Meredith is elected vice-president of the County Teachers’ Institute and
Armstrong its secretary.8
July The three Mission District trustees, now with two newly elected members,
reappoint Meredith as teacher but appoint J. W. Stringfield, previously the
teacher for the county’s East Santa Fe School, as principal.9
Aug. Stringfield is nominated as the Republican candidate for county school
superintendent, but J. F. Beckett is chosen.10
Nov. Announcing that Meredith will conduct a private school in his public
classroom during the winter break, the Tribune opines, “Mr. Meredith is
one of the most popular instructors who has ever been engaged in our
public schools.”11
Dec. Stringfield defends a teacher from an angry mother who threatens him
with her influence on one of the members of the board of trustees. He
resigns under pressure from a threat by the trustee to boycott the schools
and takes charge of the Guadalupe school for the next two-and-a-half
years.12 He is replaced by C. H. Woods, who in November ran unsuccessfully
for superintendent of County Schools on the Workingmen’s and New
Constitution Party ticket.13
Carrie Meredith gives birth to a daughter, California May.
1880 Feb. D. M. Meredith purchases a lot running from Chorro to Garden Street for
$575 from I. L. Wilson.14
May C. H. Woods is appointed to the County Board of Education by the Board of
Supervisors.15
6. “In another column,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 22 Mar. 1879, p. 5.
7. “School Troubles,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 14 June 1879, p. 1.
8. “Teachers’ Institute,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 21 June 1879, p. 1.
9. “Our Schools,” 12 July 1879, p. 8, and 19 July 1879, p. 8, weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune.
10. “Republican Convention,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 8 Aug. 1879, p. 1.
11. “Mr. D. M. Meredith,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 29 Nov. 1879, p. 5.
12. J. W. Stringfield, “Mr. Stringfield Resigns,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 6 Dec. 1879, p. 8; “Guadalupe
and Vicinity,” Santa Barbara Daily Independent, 13 June 1883, p. 4.
13. “Mr. C. H. Woods of Cambria,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 20 Dec. 1879, p. 1.
14. “Real Estate Transactions,” Weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 28 Feb. 1880, p. 5.
15. “Our Schools,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 8 May 1880, p. 8.
Page 27 of 364
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1881 Oct. D. M. Meredith becomes superintendent of the Juvenile Temperance Society
at the Garden Street Methodist Episcopal Church (i.e., the ME Church that
had not countenanced slavery before the Civil War; the ME Church South,
which had, meets on Mill and Toro Streets).16
1883 Apr. 13 The Tribune announces the completion of Meredith’s “neat and comfortable
dwelling … . The ability of a schoolteacher to own a dwelling speaks well for
the teacher and shows the liberality of the people of San Luis.”17 Though
the 1888 Sanborn Map does not show a house at 1421 Garden Street, the
1891 map does, and a structure appears in the location in a circa 1887
panoramic photograph from Cerro San Luis. Lack of any subsequent press
mention of the Merediths building a house suggests this is the Garden
Street house.
Apr. 29 Meredith takes the topic of school government in the annual Teachers’
Institute.18
July 14 For the second year in a row, trustees of Mission District are unable to
decide on a principal. They agree on Meredith as vice-principal.19
Oct. 20 Meredith is one of the founders of the Baptist Church in San Luis Obispo.20
Dec. 26 Carrie Meredith gives birth to a son, Carl DeWitt.
1884 Apr. 14 D. M. Meredith finishes a distant second of three candidates for city clerk.21
May 5 The County Board of Supervisors appoints Meredith to the Board of
Education.22
1885 July Meredith is elected president of the County Board of Education.23
1886 Nov. Runs as the Republican candidate for county auditor but comes in a close
second.24
Dec. 15 Carrie Proper Meredith dies.25
Dec. 17 The Tribune announces that Meredith has become a real estate agent with
Loomis and Ortega.26
16. “J. W. Webb,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 22 Oct. 1881, p. 1.
17. “Improvements,” p. 2.
18. “Educational Notes,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 29 Apr. 1883, p. 3.
19. “San Luis Obispo, July 14th, 1883,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 20 July 1883, p. 7.
20. “For God’s Work,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 29 Nov. 1907, p. 1.
21. “City Election,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 18 Apr. 1884, p. 1.
22. “Board of Supervisors,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 30 May 1884, p. 3.
23. “Personal,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 24 July 1885, p. 5.
24. “Official Returns,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 12 Nov. 1886, p. 1.
25. Findagrave.com.
26. “Personal,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 17 Dec. 1886, p. 5.
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1888 Mar. D. M. Meredith becomes the founding secretary of the San Luis Obispo
Building and Loan Association, with William Sandercock the founding
president.27 The association flourishes into the 1960s.
June The Board of Supervisors reappoints Meredith to the Board of Education.28
1889 Jan. 31 The daily Tribune describes Meredith as teaching school in the Cuesta
district.29
Feb. Meredith builds a Queen
Anne wash house and
opium joint on Broad Street.
Right: Items from the daily
San Luis Obispo Tribune, 10
Feb. 1889, p. 3. Unlike most
Californians, Meredith didn’t
discriminate against the
Chinese.
1890 Teaches Belleview school.30
Jan. 9 The daily Tribune announces that D. M. Meredith will be in charge of the
new schoolhouse in the Hope district (p. 3).
June 3 The Board of Supervisors reappoints Meredith to the Board of Education in
response to a petition “signed by a large number of prominent citizens.”31
Sep. Meredith runs as the Republican candidate for County Superintendent of
Schools but loses by 156 votes out of 2,678 cast (47 to 53 percent).32
1892 Aug. Under new California legislation, San Luis Obispo’s Mission School District
starts a new union high school, in the Agricultural Pavilion at Monterey and
Toro, with twelve other tiny school districts surrounding it.
Dec. Meredith advertises real estate under the name D. M. Meredith & Co.
1893 The New Society Blue Book, California edition lists D. M. Meredith & Co. as a
real estate and insurance agent with office on Chorro Street.
June Meredith is reappointed to the Board of Education for a one-year term.33
1894 Ends ten years on the County Board of Education.
27. “25th Anniversary SLO B&L Ass’n,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 25 Jan. 1913, p. 1.
28. “Educational,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 13 June 1888, p. 1.
29. “Real and Personal,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, p. 2.
30. “Old Glory Waves,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 1 Aug. 1897, p. 3.
31. “Board of Supervisors,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 4 June 1890, p. 3.
32. “Within Walls of Old Fort,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 23 Apr. 1915, p.1; “Official Returns of the Vote
of San Luis Obispo County,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 6 Nov. 1890, p. 3.
33. Arroyo Grande Herald, 10 June 1893, p. 1.
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Jan. 2 J. P. Andrews forms the Andrews Banking Company.34
June The San Luis Obispo Union High School fails for lack of funding.
1895 June 7 Meredith is elected trustee of the Mission School District of San Luis
Obispo.35
July 5 San Luis Obispo electors vote for a Mission District high school.36
July 18 Meredith, trustee Loobliner, and County Superintendent Messer announce
a new San Luis Obispo High School.37 It will be housed in one room of the
Court School at Santa Rosa and Mill.
1896 June 5 Meredith runs unopposed for a full three-year term as Mission School
District trustee.38
1897 Mar. 24 In Los Angeles marries Louise Hardenbergh of Grand Falls, NY.39
Sep. 25 Meredith and the other Mission District trustees, McD. R. Venable and H.
Loobliner, petition for the closure of the houses of ill fame at Palm and
Morro.40
1898 Jan. Meredith is elected a director and the cashier of the Andrews Bank.41
1899 June 2 Re-elected to three-year term as school trustee with 80 percent of vote.42
1902 June 6 Runs unopposed for school trustee and elected unanimously.43
1904 Mar. 17 Meredith, Louis Sinsheimer, and J. L. Anderson elected to auditing
committee of SLO Building and Loan Association.44
Nov. 1 Meredith resigns as cashier of Andrews Bank.45
1905 Jan. 7 The Tribune announces that Meredith has gone into the real estate
business.46
1905 Apr. 7 Meredith is re-elected to Mission District board of trustees against future
mayor Dr. W. M. Stover by 110 votes to 98.47 The upcoming bond for the
high school is one of the issues.
1906 William H. Weeks’s high school is completed.
34. “Statement,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 7 July 1894, p. 2.
35. “School Trustees,” Daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 8 June 1895, p. 3.
36. “High School–Yes,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 6 July 1895, p. 2.
37. “San Luis High School,” Daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 19 July 1895, p. 1.
38. “Twenty-Three Majority,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 6 June 1896, p. 3.
39. California State Marriage License.
40. “To Abate a Nuisance,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 25 Sep. 1897, p. 4.
41. “Directors and Officers Elected,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 6 Jan. 1898, p. 2.
42. “Meredith Wins Out,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 3 June 1899, p. 1.
43. “Only Twenty-One Votes,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 7 June 1902, p. 1.
44. “Regular Annual Meeting,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 18 Mar. 1904, p. 4.
45. “Cashier Meredith Resigns,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 21 Oct. 1904, p. 4.
46. “Personal Mention,” p. 4.
47. “Meredith Is Re-Elected,” Morning Tribune, 8 Apr. 1905, p. 1.
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1907 Jan. Meredith returns as a director, secretary to the board, and cashier of the
Andrews Bank, with J. P. Andrews president.48
Oct. Resigns from school board of trustees “owing to his many other duties.”49
Nov. 27 Lays the foundation stone for the new Baptist Church at Pacific and Osos, as
one of three members of the founding congregation still alive and resident
in San Luis (“For God’s Work”).
1911 Jan. Resigns as cashier of the Andrews Bank after eleven years in two periods,
being replaced by George Andrews, J. P.’s son.50
Apr. Runs for board of school directors under the new San Luis Obispo city
charter and wins.51
Oct. Opens a real estate partnership with R. A. Minor.52
1912 July 26 The sixty-eight-year-old Meredith, while riding with Mrs. Meredith south of
town, chases a bobcat and captures it with his buggy whip, trussing it and
bringing it back to town.53
July “Women of San Luis Obispo” submit a recall petition of 1,500 names against
the five male school directors, including Meredith, over the city school
superintendent, Mr. Small. The school directors refuse to resign.54 The city
council rejects the petition, and the subsequent “mass meeting” is “slimly
attended.”55
1913 Apr. Meredith finishes his term as school director and does not run again.56
The Andrews family sells its bank to the Commercial Bank (“Andrews
Banking Cp. No More”).
1917 Oct. Meredith, who has advertised the forty-acre Andrews property as a
possible city park, sells it to Cholame rancher Edward Henry Meinecke.57 In
1927, five acres of that will be subdivided into the second phase of the
racially restricted Mount Pleasanton Square.58
1920 Apr. 21 D. M. Meredith’s second wife, Louise Hardenbergh Meredith, dies.59
48. “Andrews Banking Co.,” Morning Tribune, 10 Feb. 1907, p. 1.
49. “New School Trustee,” Morning Tribune, 4 Nov. 1907, p. 1.
50. “Social and Personal,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 6 Jan. 1911, p. .
51. “The City Ticket,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 4 Apr. 1911, p.1.
52. “New Partnership,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 24 Oct. 1911, p. 1.
53. “D. M. Meredith Captures Wildcat in Open Road with Buggy Whip and Gives It to a Friend for a Pet,” San
Luis Obispo Daily Telegram, 26 July 1912, p. 1.
54. “Petitions Are Filed,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 19 July 1912, p. 1; “School Board Replies,” “Council
Delays Action,” San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram, 6 Aug. 1912, p. 1.
55. “Mass Meeting Was Slimly Attended,” San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram, 2 Sep. 1912, p. 1.
56. “Norton’s Majority 183,” San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram, 8 Apr. 1913, p. 8.
57. “Personals,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 2 Nov. 1917, p. 2.
58. James Papp, “Master List Application: Elbert Earle Christopher House,” 10 Dec. 2020, p. 2.
59. “Passed On,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 23 Apr. 1920, p. 2.
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1922–1924 Meredith continues to come in to his office.60
1923–1924 Continues to advertise real estate and insurance.
1924 Nov. 3 Applies for a permit to build the front addition to his house for a separate
apartment.61
1926 June 17 San Luis Obispo’s Baptist Church marks former deacon Meredith’s eighty-
second birthday with a banquet, in honor of his being the only man living
among the church’s founders.62
1927 With a new high school planned, D. M. Meredith is remembered as trustee
when the old one was built.63
1929 June 24 Five-term county supervisor John Norton recalls D. M. Meredith, “a pioneer
educator,” as one of “the strongest influences in his career as a youth,
urging him toward the leadership he was finally to assume in the civic life
of the community.”64
1929 Oct. Meredith dictates letter to Baptist Church recollecting the circumstances of
its founding in 1883 (“Pioneer of City”).
Oct. 25 D. M. Meredith dies at his home of nearly half a century at 1421 Garden
Street.
60. “Reported Better,” San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram, 5 Dec. 1922, p. 5; “D. M. Meredith,” San Luis Obispo
Daily Telegram, 31 Mar. 1924, p. 2.
61. City of San Luis Obispo Historic Permit File, Cal Poly Special Collections.
62. “Reported Better,” San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram, 5 Dec. 1922, p. 5.
63. “City Schools Show Real Progress,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 29 Oct. 1927, sec. 2, p. 1.
64. “Who’s Who in County Offices,” San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram, p. 1.
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Historic Context
Despite San Luis Obispo’s diminutive size and remote location, in the second half of the
nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century, it was keyed into the latest
developments in culture. An indicative if somewhat frivolous example is that Gilbert and
Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore premiered in London on 25 May 1878 and was being rehearsed by
San Luis’s St. Cecilia Choral Society within a year, on 14 May 1879.65 A number of the city’s
buildings have been the first of their kind, though—like the Fremont Theater and Heyd
Adobe—they later became targets of demolition by the less appreciative.
Education The State of California imposed standards of educational administration
and representation on the County and City of San Luis Obispo, but the county and city were
keen, in many instances, to keep up with such national trends as the creation of high
schools and polytechnics. The county’s elected school superintendent and appointed
members of the Board of Education were often respected local teachers, certainly more
often than in modern times.
In contrast, the three-member school district boards of trustees (usually outnumbering in
membership the single teacher of a one-room schoolhouse they employed) seem often to
have attracted small-time politicians who considered it just another office of power and
patronage. In D. M. Meredith’s second year with the city schools, one of the three school
trustees, P. S. Finney, had just left the city council and lost an election for mayor, and
another, R. E. Jack, was a future member of the council and mayor (or by then—after a
reform movement—president of the city’s board of trustees).
Mission School with St. Stephen’s beyond in a detail from Carleton Watkins’ 1876 panoramic
photograph of San Luis Obispo from the west. The Nipomo Street School and Emerson School
would be built in the same location, now Emerson Park. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art.
This politicization of local education had a chaotic effect on school funding, administration,
and personnel that Meredith observed first-hand as a principal, vice-principal, and teacher
in his early years in San Luis. He would also have observed, especially as a new arrival from
Iowa, that California’s racial politics had seeped into local education. In November 1879,
during Meredith’s second year with the city schools, one candidate for county school
65. “The regular election,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 3 May 1879.
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superintendent, C. H. Woods, “a Dartmouth man … who reflects credit on his alma mater,”66
was running on the Workingmen’s and New Constitution Party ticket, whose raison d’être
was virulent anti-Chinese agitation and whose slogan was “The Chinese must go!” The new
California constitution it had achieved by popular referendum in May 1879 had numerous
anti-Chinese measures, including forbidding governments and corporations from
employing Chinese people and allowing municipalities to drive all Chinese from their city
limits. (Some of these were ultimately struck down by the State Supreme Court.)
Woods was opposed by a Republican-Democratic fusion candidate, J. F. Becket, who, in a
high-minded campaign statement referencing Mozart, Napoleon, Daniel Webster, Daniel
Boone, Lycurgus, the Spartans, the Norsemen, and Carthage, also declared,
“The Chinese must go,” because the presence of so degraded a foreign element is
alike detrimental to the morals and industries of the people and dangerous to the
perpetuation of free principles. But foreigners other than Mongolians should be
encouraged by all suitable means to settle among us … .67
A census of the students of the Mission School District in 1876 showed 571 White boys and
girls between age 5 and 17, plus 10 Chinese and 1 Indian, genders unspecified. The Mission
District’s students made up about a quarter of the county’s school-age population.68 Given
that California’s Chinese population was about 9 percent of the total, the Chinese school age
population of 1.7 percent in San Luis Obispo would seem extraordinarily low for it to
become a school superintendent campaign issue in any real sense, except for the state’s
vast ocean of racism. In fact, the Chinese and Indian children appear to have been excluded
from the public and private schools, as the census’s figures of public attendance (370),
private attendance (41), and nonattendance (160) falls exactly 11 short of the total school-
age population.
Beckett won in November, but in December Woods was appointed principal of the Mission
District. In 1882, California succeeded in getting Congress to pass the federal Chinese
Exclusion Act. Meredith’s own feeling’s on the subject can be deduced from the fact that in
1889 he built a Queen Anne structure at Broad and Pacific to house Ung Sing and Company,
a Chinese Laundry and “opium joint,” at the height of the of the city’s Anti-Chinese Laundry
War, which culminated five years later in the bombing of another Chinese laundry.
The reason a school census was being taken at all was that in 1874, after much controversy,
the State of California mandated compulsory instruction for children 8–14 and guaranteed
aid based upon the number of children in each district. California made primary education
compulsory 22 years after Massachusetts but 44 years before Mississippi. California’s
clement winter climate and continuous growing season made a fall-to-spring schooling
season less obvious or easily enforceable than in the northeastern states. The progress of
compulsory school attendance extended from Massachusetts (1852) to New York (1853),
Vermont (1867), New Hampshire, Michigan, and Washington (1871), Connecticut (1872),
Nevada (1873), and then Kansas and California (1874).
66. J. F. Beckett and Clara B. Churchill, “Our Schools,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 26 July 1879, p. 8.
67. J. F. Beckett, “My Creed,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 16 Aug. 1879, p. 1.
68. “School Census,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 1 July 1876, p. 4; J. M. Felts, “Our Public Schools,” weekly
San Luis Obispo Tribune, 28 Apr. 1877, p. 4.
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When D. M. Meredith arrived in San Luis, it had just added the Court School at Santa Rosa
and Mill Streets to supplement the original one-story, two-room school on Nipomo Street.
These schools taught a 6- rather than 8-month year, with a 4-month winter break, despite
the fact that a school year less than 8 months was considered characteristic of the poorer
funding of districts with fewer than 25 students.69 Meredith’s response to the situation was
to launch a private school within a public school building for the higher and intermediate
grades during the 1878–1879 and 1879–1880 breaks. This seems to have been regarded as
a positive innovation rather than any kind of conflict of interest.
Court School, Mill Street in foreground, circa 1907. Courtesy of Cal Poly Special Collections.
A more confrontational response came from a June 1879 lawsuit by W. M. Armstrong, the
teacher of a neighboring district, who had been engaged by the Mission District teachers
(whether including Meredith is unknown) to audit its books. Armstrong’s suit accused the
trustees of preventing an eight-month school year by misallocating funds. There is no
documentation of success for his suit; it was ruled against him regarding the county
superintendent in a separate funding matter, and the Mission trustees seem to have been
dropped as defendants, possibly because Armstrong, from a different district, lacked
standing.70 The fact that Meredith was not announced to be teaching winter private school
after the 1879–1880 year suggests the Mission District worked out its funding problems.
For students, free public education, mandatory attendance, and the extension of the school
year were the noticeable late-nineteenth-century reforms. For teachers, state normal
schools, annual county teachers’ institutes, and county testing and credentialing loomed
large. (San Luis Obispo County endured an answers-for-sale scandal in the credentialing
69. “School Matters,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 9 March 1883, p. 3.
70. Weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune: “School Troubles,” “Why He Prosecutes,” 14 June 1879, p. 1; “Supt. Darke
Exonerated,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 4 Oct. 1879, p. 1
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examinations during Meredith’s first year.71) For communities, the last major reform was
the provision of high schools.
County Superintendent F. C. Beckett advocated for a high school in San Luis Obispo, to
serve the rest of the county, as early as 1882.72 By 1889 San Luis had something described
as a high school, but that year it graduated only one student, Mabel Dunbar.73
A state high school bill was passed in 1891; under the legislation, the many tiny school
districts could combine for a union district high school. In 1892 one was proposed for San
Luis Obispo. W. M. Armstrong (now county superintendent) advocated for it.74 Thirteen
districts voted on it, for a combined 235 votes in favor to 20 against.75 The thirteen agreed
to house the new union high school in San Luis Obispo’s Court School, but it ultimately
opened in rooms in Hilamon Spencer Laird’s Agricultural Pavilion at Monterey and Toro.76
It soon had an organ, bookcase, library, and Le Conte Literary Society, whose debates were
regularly reported on in the Tribune.77 Cambria Union High School opened at the same
time. Paso Robles, in contrast, voted for its own district high school and passed bonds for a
building.
Hilamon Spencer Laird’s Agricultural Pavilion at Monterey and Toro. Built for the district fair,
it housed many different institutions during its existence, including the San Luis Obispo Union
District High School from 1892 to 1894. Detail of panoramic photograph from Terrace Hill,
early 1906 courtesy of Cal Poly Special Collections.
The San Luis Obispo Union High School found itself unable to collect the taxes it levied and
ran out of funding after two years, finding just enough money to limp to the end of term in
June 1894.78 At this point not only Cambria but Arroyo Grande had a union high school. It
71. “The School Fraud,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 7 Dec. 1878, p. 1.
72. F. C. Becket, ed., “School Notes,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 4 Aug. 1882, p. 8.
73. “The Mission schools,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 5 June 1889, p. 3.
74. W. M. Armstrong, “The High School,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 26 Jan. 1892, p. 3.
75. “High School Election,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 10 Feb. 1892, p. 3.
76. “Higher Education,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 21 Feb. 1892, p. 5.
77. “Union High School,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 17 July 1892, p. 3.
78. “It Will Continue,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 6 June 1894, p. 3.
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must have been a huge embarrassment for San Luis Obispo—as the county’s seat and
largest town, and only a month after the Southern Pacific, following a great civic campaign
to assemble railroad right-of-way, finally steamed in from San Francisco—to lose its high
school. A suit that was filed against the high school tax levy was finally decided against the
plaintiffs at the State Supreme Court a year after the high school closed.79
But a month before that decision, on 5 July 1895, the electors of San Luis voted for a
Mission District high school by 127 to “a woeful” 14.80 A month before that, D. M. Meredith
had been elected and H. Loobliner re-elected to the board of trustees as continuity
candidates, the idea having become “prevalent” that the rival candidates, John Barneberg
and E. C. Ivens, “meant opposition to the present management of the schools.”81
By late July, Loobliner and Meredith were meeting with the county superintendent to
announce the new district high school, but for the underfunded district it was to be done on
the cheap. It purchased the effects of the old San Luis Obispo Union High School for $250
and moved them into a room at the Court School.82
Nipomo Street School, built circa 1880, with its wider rear annex, built circa 1896.
Photograph by L. M. Fitzhugh, Fire Department’s Souvenir of San Luis Obispo, 1904.
The district that, in 1876, had two school buildings and 582 children between 5 and 17,
now, two decades later, had two school buildings but 1136 children—plus a high school of
79. “Affirmed by the Supreme Court,” Daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 6 Aug 1895, p 2.
80. “High School–Yes,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 6 July 1895, p. 2.
81. “School Trustees,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 8 June 1895, p. 3.
82. “Board of Supervisors,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 7 Aug. 1895, p. 2.
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54 students housed in a single classroom (not the most populous classroom, at that;
another one had 90 students under one teacher).83 Meredith and his fellow trustees
succeeded in getting the voters to pass $6,000 in bonds for an annex to the brick Colonial
Revival Mission School on Nipomo Street in May 1896,84 but with the country in the depths
of an agricultural depression and the population of San Luis Obispo static, despite the new
railroad line from San Francisco, a purpose-built high school would be a decade off. The
1904 Fire Department Souvenir of San Luis Obispo labels a photo of the Court School as the
High School, so after the annex was constructed on the Nipomo Street School, presumably
the upper grades were concentrated at Santa Rosa and Mill.
William Weeks’s 1905–1906 Neoclassical Bishop Peak granite Mission High School. Weeks
was chosen in 1902 to be the architect of the first two Cal Poly buildings (one residential, one
classroom and administrative) and in 1906 as architect for its third building, all in Mission
Revival and stucco. Courtesy Cal Poly Special Collections.
Four factors seem finally to have brought William H. Weeks’s grand high school building to
fruition:
• the SP’s completion of the Los Angeles connection in 1901, which put San Luis in the
middle of a continuous coastal line
• a boom in town population, rising 71 percent, from 3,021 to 5,157 between the 1900 and
1910 US Census
• the end of the agricultural depression
• a 1902 change to the California Constitution allowing the legislature to levy state taxes to
support high schools and technical schools, where previously state funding was limited to
83. “Board of Supervisors,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 7 Aug. 1895, p. 2.
84. “Proposals for construction of an addition to Mission School House,” advertisement, daily San Luis Obispo
Tribune, 25 June 1896, p. 2. The front page of the 24 May 1896 Tribune announcing the results of the election
is missing.
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primary and grammar schools.85 This also allowed the creation of Cal Poly as a technical
high school.
A fifth factor was certainly D. M. Meredith’s stick-to-it-iveness, as the only Mission District
trustee to serve from the vote to create a district high school through the high school’s
completion more than a decade later, passing two bond issues for school construction
during that time, among many competing bond issues for the growing town.
Banking Infrastructure comes in many forms, but little of the physical kind is possible
without the financial kind to transfer funds for workers and materials and to direct
investment. In California, the introduction of American rule—and the coincident huge
production of gold and the huge investments in gold production, in the extraction of other
commodities, and in the creation of industries and the means of transport and
communications—moved the region precipitously from a backwater barter economy to a
central monetary one.
San Luis Obispo County, however—whose major industry, cattle raising, remained for two
decades the same as in Spanish and Mexican days—persisted as a financial backwater for
those two decades, until Chauncy Phillips and Horatio Warden formed its first bank in
December 1871.
Chauncey Hatch Phillips, seven years older than David Milton Meredith, was, like him, the
son of Midwestern farmers, and, like him, came to rural California as a schoolteacher,
though thirteen years earlier. Within a year, according to Myron Angel—who clearly had
the account from his subject—Phillips had gone from a Napa schoolteacher to an
apprentice in the powerful Chancellor Hartson’s law office to deputy clerk of Napa County
to chief deputy collector of Internal Revenue in the Fifth District. Within five years he was
deputy collector at the Second District in San Jose and then running the First District’s San
Francisco office with $5 million in annual receipts.86
Except contemporary evidence suggests little of this was true. Phillips did work in the Fifth
District, but as one of the gaugers, inspecting alcoholic spirits, and though he was indeed
appointed deputy collector in the Second District in April 1870, he was still there, not in
San Francisco, in late July 1871, just before he came to San Luis.87 In 1869 he ran for Napa
County Treasurer and came in third out four candidates in the Republican primary, despite
(or because of) being highly spoken of by a local Democratic paper.88
People with spectacular success elsewhere did not, by and large, come to San Luis. But no
one who did come seems to have seriously questioned anyone else’s creation myth. There
is no question Phillips achieved a great deal in San Luis Obispo County, as a banker and
especially as a developer of new towns, including Cayucos and Templeton. In property
development, a penchant for “exaggeration” doubtless helped.
85. “Taxation for School Purposes,” San Francisco Chronicle, 21 Sep. 1902, p. 10.
86. Myron Angel, “C. H. Phillips,” History of San Luis Obispo County (Berkeley: Howell-North, 1966), after p. 60.
87. “Political Intelligence,” Daily Alta California, 1 Oct. 1868, p. 1; “The Collectorship,” San Jose Daily Mercury, 7
Apr. 1870, p. 3; San Jose Election District, 1871, No. 2, p. 115.
88. “The Napa County Primary Election,” Sacramento Daily Union, 3 Aug. 1869, p. 2.
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Horatio Moore Warden removed from Ohio to Hangtown, now Placerville, in 1850,
according to Angel: mined gold, ran stagecoaches, and later farmed in Napa (after p. 72),
where he may have known or known of Phillips. He moved to San Luis Obispo County in
1868 to raise sheep. His would appear to have been the capital and Phillips’ the financial
acumen in the Bank of Warden and Phillips.
A check made out by R. E. Jack on a torn scrap of paper for $24 to “Spaniard or bearer,”
Messrs Warden and Philips (sic), June 1873. Jack Family Papers, Cal Poly Special Collections.
In October 1873, two years after they formed the bank, Warden and Phillips transformed it
into the Bank of San Luis Obispo, incorporated with $200,000 capital stock, the additional
capital coming from the Steele brothers, Gen. Patrick Washington Murphy, John Harford,
William Beebee, I. G. Wickersham, J. P. Andrews, and a few others: all substantial ranchers
and merchants of the area (Angel, after p. 60). Warden was president and Phillips cashier.
The bank survived a run in 1875 when rancher R. E. Jack left $18,000 deposited and
convinced merchant Nathan Goldtree (Goldbaum) to leave $10,000 in, as well (ibid.). By
1878 (when California began to publish bank information), Phillips had gone into real
estate and development, and all of the original stockholders except for Andrews and
Beebee were out, with Andrews—who had started in the county as a hog farmer (feeding
his hogs dead cattle in the drought of 1864) and had subscribed to $10,000 worth of stock
in 1873—now holding the vast majority of stock and the presidency and R. E. Jack serving
as cashier.89 Jack was replaced as cashier by 1880, and by 1883 some of the original
stockholders, like P. W. Murphy, George Steele, and I. G. Wickersham, seem to have been
reintroduced (Angel 361).
In 1884 Jack, the Goldtree brothers, and Sherman Stow (Jack’s brother-in-law and son of W.
W. Stow, the lawyer for the Southern Pacific and Central Pacific and known as the most
powerful man in California) founded the Bank of Jack, Goldtree, and Co., at which point
89. “Andrews Died at 12:40 Today,” San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram, 6 Jan. 1914, pp. 1 and 8; James Papp, The
Jack House and Garden Handbook (San Luis Obispo: Department of Parks and Recreation, 2017), pp. 74–75.
Page 40 of 364
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there were three banks in the county, the third being the Farmers’ Bank and Trust Co.
(Papp 75).
Jack, Goldtree incorporated as a National Bank in 1887 with the same stockholders, but in
1890 J. P. Andrews sold out his 47 percent of the Bank of San Luis Obispo (“Andrews
Died”), leaving I. G. Wickersham as president; deposited $150,000 in the First National
Bank of San Luis Obispo; and replaced Jack as president, while Jack replaced Morris
Goldtree as cashier (Papp 75). In 1892 the First National Bank of San Luis Obispo
reincorporated as a County Bank, with Jack, Isaac and Nathan Goldtree, and William Beebee
as the stockholders, with Beebee president and Jack cashier. J. P. Andrews opened his own
bank, the Andrews Banking Co., in January 1894 (“Statement”).
The Commercial Bank of San Luis Obispo incorporated in 1888 with Jack’s associate
McDowell Reid Venable as president and Andrews’ former banking partner H. M. Warden
prominent among the shareholders and directors.
In other words, the banking capitalists of San Luis Obispo were a small group who played
corporate musical chairs. D. M. Meredith would challenge this obscure hegemony by
helping found the San Luis Obispo Building and Loan Association with twenty-six
shareholders and at whose meetings borrowers publicly bid for loans.90 The association
would survive into the 1960s.
Above: Hilamon Spencer Laird’s Bank of San
Luis Obispo (1877), Monterey and Court.
Right: Laird’s County Bank of San Luis Obispo
(1891), Chorro and Higuera, from a San
Francisco Call article on its 1899 closure.
The cashier of the Andrews Bank from its 1894 founding to 1897 was J. W. Smith, a local
carriage dealer and property developer who was simultaneously on the board of the Bank
of San Luis Obispo and would later become vice-president of the Commercial Bank. D. M.
90. “100 Years Ago,” San Luis Obispo County Telegram-Tribune, quoting the Daily Republic, 30 Jan. 1988, p. 7.
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Meredith seems to have been an atypical replacement as cashier—certainly unlike R. E.
Jack, the cashier of the County Bank, who was a high roller, one of the largest landowners in
the state and a speculator in railroads and real estate, or W. E. Stewart, cashier of the Bank
of San Luis Obispo, a huckstering Higuera Street dry goods merchant and steamship agent
until he became cashier after Andrews’ original takeover in 1878. Yet Meredith seems to
have suited the conservative and public spirited Andrews, who still lived in his simple (if
extended) adobe at the east end of town, had donated the land of the Court House and
Court School, and built the second floor of the Andrews Bank Building to be used for a
public library.
What Meredith brought to this historical context was caution and rectitude—plus a
reputation for them, in banking even more important. When, during the 1898–1899
drought, cashier R. E. Jack placed a flippant notice on the door of the closed County Bank on
Friday afternoon that “it was useless to keep the bank running when there was no
opportunity to do any business,” he set off a run that resulted in the temporary or
permanent failure of six banks in the county. The Commercial Bank closed after fifteen
minutes on Saturday, and its president confidently predicted its failure. The Andrews Bank
was the only major bank that stayed open Saturday, reopened Monday, and stayed open all
subsequent days. Meredith’s only public statement was that he handed depositors their
money and they handed it right back, knowing the Andrews Bank was solvent. (The Bank of
San Luis Obispo also stayed open but had shrunk to $30,000 in deposits by then.)91
Against its president’s own predictions, the Commercial Bank survived. A substantial
number of its stockholders were Swiss-Italian dairymen, rather than the ranchers of earlier
banks, and they were more drought-proof. The County Bank also revived, but when the
reorganized County Bank failed again in 1905, the Andrews Bank remained. Meredith
retired from the cashiership in 1911; Andrews stepped down from the presidency in 1913,
having suffered a stroke in spring 1912; and shortly after that the Andrews family sold out,
after twenty years, to the Commercial Bank, which had taken over the County Bank’s
building at Higuera and Chorro. For John Pinckney Andrews—of the early capitalists who
had subscribed to the Bank of San Luis Obispo’s stock in 1873, the last still in the
business—this ended a career in banking that started forty-two years earlier. J. P. Andrews
died, nearly ninety, at the beginning of 1914.
Though local banks would still open in San Luis Obispo, the future weighed in favor of
super-banks like A. P. Giannini’s San Francisco–based Bank of Italy, later the Bank of
America. On his first visit to San Luis in 1911, “accompanied by nine prominent
businessmen of the northern metropolis,” Giannini had stayed at J. P. Andrews’ Hotel
Andrews, bookending a block entirely built by Andrews, with the Andrews Bank at the
other end.92 With 24 offices in 18 California cities by 1919, the Bank of Italy entered the San
Luis market in 1920, when it took over the Union National Bank.93 The Union National,
founded in 1905, was with the Commercial, one of two local banks left in San Luis.94
91. “Three More Banks Close Their Doors,” San Francisco Examiner, 14 Mar. 1899, p. 1.
92. “Prominent Banker Visits,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 7 Sep. 1911, p. 5.
93. “Wealthiest Banking Instituition West of the Mississippi,” advertisement, daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 5
Sep. 1919, p. 3; “Officials of the Bank of Italy Here,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 11 Nov. 1920, p. 1.
94. “Local Banks Increase More than Half Million in Year,” San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram, 22 Jan. 1920, p. 3.
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The granite and brick Andrews Bank, built 1893–1894 where the Eagle Hotel and first
Andrews Hotel had once stood, before serially being destroyed by fire. The architect of this
impressive Richardsonian Romanesque structure—with rare rusticated brick foundation and
six of San Luis Obispo’s eight Green Men peering from its capitals—was the same as for the
other banks in town: Hilamon Spencer Laird.95
95. “The foundations … have been laid out by the architect, Mr. Laird,” “The Andrews Building,” daily San Luis
Obispo Tribune, 24 Sep. 1893, p. 3.
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Architectural Historic Context: Heimatstil
The D. M. Meredith is built in Heimatstil, or Homeland Style, based on Swiss and Tyrolean
folk architecture. Heimatstil was one of the European National Folk Architecture Revival
Movements that by the late nineteenth century melded with the Jugendstil in the transition
to Modernism. Le Corbusier, arguably architectural Modernism’s founder, did his earliest
works in Heimatstil-Jugendstil in his native La Chaux-de-Fonds, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.96
Le Corbusier’s Heimatstil-Jugendstil Villa Fallet (1905, designed with his teacher René
Chapallaz and two other students), Villa Jacquemet (1907), and Villa Stotzer (1907–1908), all
in the Krüppelwalmstil (Jerkinhead or hip gable) subtype
Heimatstil is not covered in standard guides to American domestic architecture, including
Virginia and Lee McAlester’s A Field Guide to American Houses (New York: Knopf, 1984).
The McAlesters were influenced by Vincent Scully’s The Shingle Style and the Stick Style
96. See, for example, Friedhelm Gerecke’s Historismus Jugendstil Heimatstil in Hessen, im Rheinland, und im
Westerwald: Das Lebenswerk des Architekten und Denkmalpflegers Ludwig Hofmann (Petersberg: Michael
Imhof, 2010)
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(New Haven: Yale, 1955); Scully—in his discussion of Andrew Jackson Downing’s
influential mid-1800s American architectural patterns, regards Heimatstil in America as a
sort of cottage Stick with foreign twee (xxxviii, note 44; xl, note 49; and xlvi). As Heimatstil
often uses half-timbering and fretwork, it can easily be mistaken for Tudor-inspired Stick.
Yet the “Swiss Cottage” design in Downing’s 1850 The Architecture of Country Houses is
definitively Heimatstil: characteristic jerkinhead gables with steep pitch, deep eaves, and
carved open brackets—distinct from the chalet-like “bracketed style,” with wide, low-
pitched roofs, deep eaves, and solid brackets that Downing described in his 1842 Cottage
Residences as “suitable to North America and especially the Southern states” and something
out of which “a very ingenious architect might produce an American cottage style.”97
Swiss Cottage from Andrew Jackson
Downing’s The Architecture of Country
Houses (New York: Appleton, 1850), shown
in shingle and clapboard variants
Scully posits that Downing adapted this design from Samuel H. Brooks’s “Cottage in the
Swiss Style” in his 1839 Designs for Cottage and Villa Architecture (London: Thomas Kelly).
In 1842, Downing was more interested in establishing an American style than in 1850,
when he included not only a “Swiss Cottage” but a “Farm House in the Swiss Manner” and
went on to a “Regular Bracketed Cottage” that looked more chalet-like than any of his other
designs. This wide-spread, low-pitched chalet roof with deep, shady eaves supported by
knee brackets was picked up in the early twentieth century by Greene and Greene, given a
Japanese refinement, and became the California Bungalow—what William Randolph
Hearst described to Julia Morgan as a “Jappo-Swisso bungalow” when he asked her in 1919
to design him one for San Simeon, before they changed their minds and did Hearst Castle.
In Cottage Residences, Downing experimented with jerkinhead gables in other styles, such
as the “Rustic Pointed” (i.e., Gothic), but none combined the steep pitch, deep eaves, and
carved open brackets that defined his “Swiss Cottage” in 1850 and the D. M. Meredith
House in 1883. In The Architecture of Country Houses, Downing describes a jerkinhead
house with deep eaves but flat brackets as “Farm House in the English Rural Style” (Design
XVII). Jerkinhead gables are rare but do exist in English rural architecture.
97. (New York: John Wiley and Son, 1873 edition), p. 89.
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The Master List Myron Angel House at 714 Buchon and Greenfield House at 676 Pismo (ca
1889–1890) are distinguished by jerkinhead gables, but with bracketless shallow eaves,
they do not attempt Heimatstil, only Cottage. The Greenfield’s jerkinhead gable,
Above: Samuel H. Brooks’s “Cottage in the
Swiss Style” (plate xli) from Designs for
Cottage and Villa Architecture (London:
1839). Top right: Andrew Jackson Downing’s
“A Cottage Villa in the Bracketed Mode as
Designed in Wood” (design v, fig. 40) and
(bottom right) “A Villa in the Italianate Style”
(design vi), Cottage Residences (New York:
1842). Below, left and right, designs xv and ix
from Downing’s The Architecture of
Country Houses (New York: 1850).
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dramatically sloped shed dormer, and Romanesque entry suggest the influence of
Philadelphia architect Frank Furness. San Luis Obispo’s website of Master List Historic
Properties accords to the Angel and Greenfield Houses the bizarre descriptors “American
Farmhouse” and “Carpenter Gothic Revival with Victorian Stick,” demonstrating modern
confusion over what to make of their cottage evocation.
In Central Europe, Heimatstil was bound up in the notion of das Cottage, a German
borrowing from the English that communicates an exotic charm absent in the German
diminutive das Häuschen (a small house). Das Cottage is marked in das Cottageviertel
(Cottage Quarter) of suburban Döbling and Währing on the northwest outskirts of Vienna,
shown in the circa 1900 photograph below. The notion of a charming English country
house (englische Landhaus in German) and informal English park (angolpark in Hungarian)
captured the post-Romantic Central European imagination, even if die Cottage ended up as
opulent villas looking Swiss, Italianate, or French, as on the pictured Hasenauerstraße.
Heimatstil coincided with the ability of the middle class to work in urban jobs but live in
suburban detached or semi-detached villas and cottages with a countrified air. In Austria
and Germany, Heimatstil, a bourgeois reimagining of a rural folk style by a people obsessed
with taxonomies, was perceived and described in many aspects: Schweizerstil (Swiss style),
Schweizerhausstil (Swiss House style), Tirolerhausstil (Tyrolean House style), Schweizer
Holzstil (Swiss Wood style), Fachwerkstil (Half-Timber style), and Laubsägelistil (Fretwork
style), etc. The Tyrol had for Austrians the same cultural Ur-quality that Transylvania had
for Hungarians, and the Austrians turned to Tyrol as the Hungarians to Transylvania for
their national folk revival architecture. (Though a thousand miles apart, Transylvanian and
the Tyrolean peasants were both keen on needle spires and jerkinhead gables.)
It is plausible that the Anglophile Austrians and Germans borrowed Heimatstil from the
English along with the Cottagebewegung, the Suburban Cottage Movement, which itself
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borrowed from the cottage orné (see Marie Antoinette’s hameau de la Reine at Versaille).
Heimatstil is regarded as a late-nineteenth-century phenomenon in the German-speaking
world, whereas already by 1822, the architect P. F. Robinson had published Rural
Architecture; or, A Series of Designs for Ornamental Cottages (London: Rodwell and Martin)
and advertised it as containing “a Design for a Swiss Cottage” (seen below).98
The low-pitched chalet and the high-pitched jerkinhead structures are, of course, two
different Heimatstil subtypes: Chaletstil and Krüppelwalmstil. A third is included by
Downing in Cottage Residences as “A Cottage in the Rhine Style” and includes a steeply-
pitched pavilion-roofed tower and steeply pitched gables with fretwork bargeboards.
In 1957 Alex Madonna and his Beverly Hills architect Louis Gould designed the former’s
supermotel with needle spires and wide chalet-like gables, the gables executed with
fretwork and half-timbering: Chaletstil, Fachwerkstil, and Laubsägelistil. Madonna then
combined these with Ranch House style (including covered walkways for motel rooms) and
National Park Service Rustic style (which used up the boulders he was fond of collecting).
Below left: “A Carriage House and Stable in the Rustic Pointed Style” from Cottage
Residences, the Gothicism in the high-pitched front gable, vertical siding, and Gothic doors.
Below right: Greenfield House, 676 Pismo (ca 1890), conceived as a rural but not Heimatstil
cottage. Jerkinhead gable, long shed dormer, and Romanesque entry are Furness motifs.
98. “Rural Architecture,” advertisement, London Morning Post, 13 May 1822, p. 4.
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Above: Heimatstil-Jugenstil “country house” in suburban Wrocław, Poland (then Breslau,
Prussia), 1906 (demolished), by Deutscher Werkbund architect Hans Poelzig (Karl Scheffler,
Moderne Baukunst [Leipzig: Julius Zeitler, 1908]). With jerkinhead gable, long shed dormers,
and Romanesque entry, it shares the elements of the Greenfield House, though the dormers,
arch, and tile-hung walls are not Heimatstil and may have been borrowed from Frank
Furness (whose William Peddle Henszey House, Ardmore, PA, 1881 [demolished], below is
distinctly Heimatstil with its jerkinheads, half-timbering and fretwork) and from American
Shingle style, which was borrowed in turn from Norman Shaw’s tile-hung mock-Tudors.
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Historiographic Context: Old Town Historic District 1983 and 1987 Surveys
The Contributing List in the Old Town Historic District, to which the D. M. Meredith house
was added in 1987, was assembled in two waves segregated by geographic area.
In 1983, 59 properties were added to the Contributing List from the 1400–1500 blocks of
Broad, 500–600 blocks of Buchon, 400–600 blocks of Islay, 1400–1500 blocks of Nipomo,
and 500–600 blocks of Pismo.99
The original Master List properties in the Old Town Historic District are similarly
concentrated in the same or immediately contiguous areas: on Broad’s 1400 block (4
properties) and 1500 block (4 properties); Buchon’s 700 block (11 properties) and 800
block (4 properties); Islay’s 400 block (3 properties), 500 block (2 properties), and 600
block (4 properties); Nipomo’s 1400 block (3 properties); and Pismo’s 600 block (3). The
1600 block of Morro (3 properties) is an inexplained outlier with two matching Streamline
Colonials built in close succession and a nearby gambrel-roof house that seems to have
caught someone’s eye.
The Marshall and Stanton Houses, 2 of the 11 Master List houses among 15 total houses on
the 700 block of Buchon: “Nob Hill.” The builders of both embezzled to complete their projects.
E. B. Stanton was sentenced to five years in San Quentin; J. C. Naylor skipped town, sold his
house to Azorean jeweler Manuel Marshall, self-exiled to Bakersfield, and avoided prison.
Four years later, in 1987, 173 properties were added to the Contributing List in the Old
Town Historic District on the 1400–1500 blocks of Beach, 700–1100 blocks of Buchon,
1500–1600 blocks of Chorro, 800–900 blocks of Church, 1400–1500 blocks of Garden,
700–1100 blocks of Islay, 900–1000 blocks of Leff, 1300–1800 blocks of Morro, 1300–1600
blocks of Osos, 700–1100 blocks of Pismo, 1400–1700 blocks of Santa Rosa, and 1400 block
of Toro. These were all new areas for the Contributing List. In addition, the 1987
Contributing list revisited the 500–600 blocks of Buchon to add 6 properties, bringing the
recent total to 238 Contributing List properties in the Old Town Historic District. No new
Master List properties seem to have been added in 1987.
99. In 1987 the 3 Master List properties on the 400 block of Islay were cited as being in the Old Town Historic
District and the 5 Contributing List properties were not; currently the 5 Contributing List properties are cited
as being in the Old Town Historic and the 3 Master List properties are not; the map in 1987 disincluding the
400 block was probably misdrawn and has never been corrected.
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The likelihood that an area’s most significant structures will be concentrated on 10 of a
historic district’s more than 50 blocks is tiny. More likely this reflects a wealth bias toward
the larger and more expensive houses of what was referred to as, circa 1890–1910, “Nob
Hill”: 23 Master List properties occupy only four blocks there on Buchon and Broad.
The 1987 wave of Contributing List additions to the Old Town Historic District did not
come with a second wave of Master List additions, perhaps because the 1987 wave was not
accompanied by the documentation that distinguished the 1983 Master List entries from
Contributing List entries: a DPR 523. In fact, every historically listed house should have a
DPR 523 or similar documentation, because documentation is a baseline expectation in
preservation. A windshield or reconnaissance survey is only the first step, but with the
Contributing List it also appears also to have been the last step.
1421 Garden Street was one of the Contributing List properties added in 1987 on the lower
slope of “Nob Hill.” It is possible it was never added to the Master List because its style was
unfamiliar to the surveyors, or an addition had been made to the front of the building, or
most likely it was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time: not on one of the ten
privileged blocks of the Old Town Historic District to which the Master List was restricted
in 1983.
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Definition: “Associated with the lives of persons significant in our past”
Often owners or even historians are so pleased to have found information about the builder
or early occupant of a structure that such a person’s existence, or pursuit of any activity, is
taken to be historically significant. The National Register Bulletin How To Apply the
National Register Criteria for Evaluation makes clear that “the persons associated with a
property must be individually significant within a historic context,” not “a person who is a
member of an identifiable profession, class, or social or ethnic group” but someone who
“gained importance within his or her profession or group.”
Such properties “are usually those associated with a person’s productive life” rather than
those “that pre- or post-date an individual’s significant accomplishments.”
Under this understanding, an ordinary businessperson, even an ordinary Chinese
businessperson, would not be significant, but a Chinese businessperson who had become
the leading employer in the county, founded local industries, and made major public works
projects possible—like Ah Louis—would be significant. An ordinary businessperson, even
an ordinary African American businessperson, would not be historically significant, but the
first Black businesspeople to own their own premises in the transition to civil rights in
lending—like Frank and Alberta Bell of Tiny Mart—would be. Even a director or president
of Cal Poly would not, per se, be historically significant, but the first director, like Leroy
Anderson, or the first woman president, like Margaret Chase—both of whose houses
survive on the 1300 block of Mill Street, neither of them currently on the Master List—
would be.
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Historic Significance of David Milton Meredith
The D. M. and Carrie Proper Meredith House is one of the City of San Luis Obispo’s “most
unique and important” resources for its forty-six-year association with its co-builder and
occupant David Milton Meredith, an indefatigable toiler for progress and good governance
in San Luis Obispo City and County education and finance. Meredith’s direct influence on
education lasted for 35 years, from his appointment as principal of the city’s schools in
1878 to the end of his term on the board of school directors of the newly chartered city in
1913. This included 10 straight years on the County Board of Education and 12 on the
Mission School District Board of Trustees.
Meredith’s leadership in local finance was somewhat more brief—23 years—from his co-
founding of the San Luis Obispo Building and Loan Association in 1888 to his resignation as
cashier of the Andrews Bank in 1911. Yet these are extraordinarily long years at the
forefront of two fields. He then continued his work as a real estate and insurance agent to
his eightieth year and after that served till his death as a publicly cited and consulted
pioneer of influence, prudence, and rectitude.
In San Luis Obispo’s Master Listing precedent, early city and county leaders are considered
by default to have had historic significance in the creation and solidification of local
institutions. A number of D. M. Meredith’s contributions, however, are quite well defined.
The Tribune’s first “School Troubles” headline, 14 June 1879, over W. M. Armstrong’s lawsuit
City education in chaos Meredith’s 1878–1879 year as principal of San Luis Obispo’s
two schools was successful enough for the Mission District trustees R. E. Jack, J. B. Hazen,
and Dr. W. W. Hays, in March 1879, to extend his principalship for the coming year. By July
a new board of Jack, Frank M. Branch, and P. S. Finney had changed its mind and replaced
him with J. W. Stringfield, sole teacher of the Santa Fe District’s forty-one students, three
miles south of San Luis.100
It is possible a factor was the lawsuit filed on 11 June 1879 by W. M. Armstrong, teacher of
the Hope School District east of San Luis, against the Mission District Board of Trustees and
the county superintendent, calling for the trustees’ removal over a misallocation of funds
that kept the Mission District going from six months to eight months per year. A
100. J. M. Felts, “Our Public Schools,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 5 May 1877, p. 1.
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justification, however, was never published. Armstrong claimed teachers in the Mission
District had asked him to audit the books after they failed to get their last paycheck and
that they were now afraid of retributive firings from the trustees.101 Whether Meredith was
one of those teachers or considered responsible for them is unknown. The court ruled
against Armstrong in the case of the superintendent in October, and there is no
documentation on what happened to the case against the trustees, but it seems likely to
have been dropped from the suit before then, perhaps for a lack of standing by
Armstrong.102
The second, 26 July 1879, over J. H. Burks
Scandal almost immediately ensued under Stringfield’s leadership of the schools, when one
of the male teachers, J. H. Burks, whipped a boy for circulating a petition for his dismissal
and physically attacking his son when the latter refused to sign it.103 Without the support of
the board of trustees, Burks resigned.
Later a mother complained about a female teacher, Stringfield defended the teacher, the
mother asserted that she could have Stringfield’s “head” because of her influence with one
of the trustees, and the trustee (the newly elected P. S. Finney, a former city councilman
who had earlier that year been defeated on the Citizens’ ticket for mayor) accused
Stringfield of incompetence and threatened to withdraw his own children from the school.
The other trustees, R. E. Jack and Frank M. Branch, stood by, and Stringfield sent a caustic
resignation to the Tribune with this account of the events (Stringfield, op. cit.).
The third, 6 Dec. 1879, over Principal Stringfield’s resignation
C. H. Woods of the Cambria School, not Meredith, was chosen to replace Stringfield. Woods
had just run (and lost) for county school superintendent on the (anti-Chinese)
Workingmen’s and New Constitution Party ticket (the winning candidate of the
Republican-Democratic fusion ticket also had a Chinese-exclusion plank in his platform).
The Tribune pessimistically welcomed Woods to the district: “As Mr. Woods is an attentive
101. Weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 14 June 1879, p. 1: “School Troubles”; “Why He Prosecutes.”
102. “Supt. Darke Exonerated,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 4 Oct. 1879, p. 1.
103. “School Troubles,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 26 July 1879, p. 1; “More School Trouble,” 6 Dec.
1879, p. 4.
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reader of the Tribune, he has of course been apprised of the pitfalls and unpleasant
vicissitudes which are likely to beset his path. It is to be hoped he will prove equal to the
occasion. We shall see.”104 At any rate, “School Troubles” became a recurring headline for
the Tribune in the coming decades.
Woods served for two-and-a-half years, but then the three Mission School District trustees
were unable to decide between him or J. F. Kent as a replacement, despite petitions being
circulated among parents and students for Woods. By June of 1883, John L. Raines seems to
have taken on the principalship, but then the trustees were unable to decide between
Raines and William M. Armstrong—who had sued a previous board of trustees in 1879 and
would later be elected county superintendent—for the subsequent year.
In 1883 the trustees did manage to agree, however, on the second in command: D. M.
Meredith as vice-principal.
Meredith as organization man A position as secondary officer or part of a
consultative body was where fate and county movers, shakers, and voters consistently
placed Meredith. There he thrived, and there he made his significant impact. Losing out on
his races for city clerk, county auditor, and county superintendent of schools, he
nonetheless kept being reappointed to the County Board of Education for ten years and re-
elected to the Mission School District Board of Trustees for twelve.
Meredith was also founding secretary of the San Luis Obispo Building and Loan Association
and secretary, as well as cashier, of the Andrews Bank, but these were not his only
secretaryships: He was periodically chosen secretary of ad hoc groups, such as one to
negotiate with the Southern Pacific over reduced schedules following the Panic of 1893,
with Tribune publisher Benjamin Brooks as chair.105 Meredith appears to have been
regarded as a man of probity, reliability, and sound judgment.
Helping found as secretary, with Brooks as
president, the Building and Loan
Assocation, was a particularly important
act. With twenty-six shareholders rather
than the usual half-dozen capitalists, and a
public and transparent bidding process on
loans, the association democratized access
to and profit from capital in the county.
Left: daily Tribune, 16 May 1888, p. 3
The San Luis Obispo Bank crisis of 1899 Probity, reliability, and sound judgment did
not belong to R. E. Jack, a Maine ship captain’s son who, largely on the strength of marrying
a Hollister heiress at 29, became the cashier of the Bank of San Luis Obispo, the county’s
only bank, at 37.106 At 43 he founded the private bank of Jack, Goldtree, and Co. with the
Goldtree (Goldbaum) brothers and his brother-in-law Sherman Stow. Jack, Goldtree was
104. “Mr. C. H. Woods of Cambria,” weekly San Luis Obispo Tribune, 20 Dec. 1879, p. 1.
105. “Citizens Assemble,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 30 Dec. 1896, p. 3.
106. James Papp, The Jack House and Garden Handbook (San Luis Obispo: Department of Parks and
Recreation, 2017), pp. 39–40, 78–80.
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incorporated as a national bank three years later and county bank five years after that.
Seven years on, and with R. E. Jack as its cashier, it failed spectacularly, nearly drawing the
rest of the county’s banks down after it, but for the survival of the Andrews Bank, of which
D. M. Meredith was cashier.
Three years younger than Jack, and of a much more modest background and fortune,
Meredith was also more cautious. When a severe drought in the winter of 1898–1899
undermined the financial state of the county’s finances, the Jack banks did not have
sufficient capital to make it through. On the afternoon of Friday, March 10, the day of the
County Bank’s annual meeting, cashier R. E. Jack affixed a notice to the bank’s closed door
insouciantly claiming there was a surplus on hand to pay all depositors, but “it was useless
to keep the bank running when there was no opportunity to do any business.”
This statement caused a run on the Commercial Bank the next morning, possibly because of
association in the public mind between its president, McDowell Reid Venable, and Jack. The
Commercial had to close in fifteen minutes, after the modern-day equivalent of about
$300,000 had been withdrawn, but the Andrews Bank, which had ordered extra cash,
remained steadfastly open till its regular time of 3 pm and reopened the following Monday.
Jack didn’t get agreement, and everything was not all right
Jack’s Bank of Paso Robles kept its doors closed Saturday (and into the following year), but
there was a run on Venable’s Citizens Bank of Paso Robles, which managed to stay open
Saturday but did not open Monday. The Commercial Bank–associated Bank of Cambria,
managed by one of Jack’s in-laws, also closed. The Bank of Templeton, unrelated to any of
the others, was ruined. Besides the Andrews Bank, only the venerable Bank of San Luis
Obispo, the oldest in the county, was still operating, and it had devolved to an insignificant
size with a select clientele.
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The cashier of the Commercial Bank, after closing Saturday, referred questions to its
president, and its president, McD. R. Venable, predicted his bank’s failure and castigated
borrowers and depositors. Andrews, meanwhile, claiming to have the money to pay all
depositors, said “he had looked for a ‘puff’ to come with another dry season and had
prepared for it.”107 Cashier D. M. Meredith was quoted as saying depositors were putting
their money back in as soon as they found they could take it out (“Three More Banks Close
Their Doors”).
After a scathing report on its finances from the state regulators, the County Bank reopened
later in 1899 and the Bank of Paso Robles in 1900, but in late 1900 Jack was indicted for
fraud and perjury, after a last-minute transfer of his bank stock to wife Nellie Hollister Jack,
in order to protect it from lawsuit. Ultimately the jury acquitted R. E. Jack, at the instruction
of Judge Unangst, his friend and mortgagor.
In contrast, D. M. Meredith, a devout and perhaps slightly dull Baptist, never lost the trust
of the community or attracted the scrutiny of the law. He resigned the cashiership of the
Andrews Bank for a couple of years in late 1904 but came back after school bonds had been
voted and the new high school built, and also after the County Bank failed for a second and
last time, when the Ramona Hotel—which R. E. Jack appears to have sold to it—burned to
the ground, dramatically underinsured. Meredith resigned in 1911 in favor of J. P. Andrews’
son George, who then briefly took over the presidency of the Andrews Banking Company
after the elder Andrews’ stroke in 1912 before selling out to the now-recovered
Commercial Bank in 1913. J. P. Andrews died at the beginning of 1914.
The quest to build a high school Despite his move into finance, Meredith never lost
his interest in education—indeed never moved from the house that he built for his family
as a schoolteacher. He served as president and secretary of the County Board of Education
and taught at some of the county’s small rural schools while on the board, but it is easier to
discern his influence in the three-person Board of Trustees of the Mission School District,
where he had served as principle for a single year.
Meredith came onto that board in 1895, a year after the
San Luis Obispo Union District High School—housed in the
Agricultural Pavilion—had failed, and a month before the
city voted to create a district high school, which would
more economically be squeezed into the Court School. He
resigned from the board twelve years later, just after the
magnificent new Neoclassical high school building
designed by William H. Weeks was constructed out of
Bishop Peak granite (in contrast to the rival Polytechnic
School’s more numerous but merely stucco Mission
Revival buildings, also designed by Weeks).
Weekly Tribune, 3 June 1899
In 1896 Meredith and his fellow trustees got a bond measure passed to expand the Nipomo
Street School in the middle of a depression, which allowed the Court School to be
designated the San Luis Obispo High School. Newspaper reports show that Meredith was
significant booster of the effort to build a new high school, and his fiscal reputation must
107. “It Did Not Open Its Doors,” daily San Luis Obispo Tribune, 14 Mar. 1899, p. 1.
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36
have been important when bonds for construction were voted on. Indeed, the rare (and
unsuccessful) opposition to his re-election in 1905 by future mayor W. M. Stover was
reported by the Morning Tribune as a possible protest vote against the new high school’s
bonds (“Meredith Is Re-elected”). But the bonds were passed, and in 1906 Weeks’s
magnificent high school opened.
The struggle for normalcy Another significant moment for Meredith came the year
after he won election to the new, larger school board of directors under San Luis Obispo’s
new city charter in 1911 (after earlier in the year resigning the second time as Andrews
Bank cashier). In 1912 a group of district women, unhappy over teacher resignations and
dismissals and supported by the Telegram, demanded first the resignation of the
superintendent and then, after an investigation by the board absolved him, either the
resignation of the entire board or its recall. The board refused to resign and issued a strong
counter-statement emphasizing the numerous past controversies over individual teachers
and the importance of continuity and of insulating school personnel from popular
interference.
A recurrent headline in the Tribune of the 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, and 1900s, these would be,
significantly, the last two of “School Trouble”: on the front page of the successor Telegram, 17
June and 5 July 1912
Though its examples of past teachers were, reasonably, taken from recent history, it is easy
to discern the influence of Meredith’s institutional memory: school chaos going back to his
first years in the Mission School District in the 1870s and 1880s amid parental and trustee
vendettas. The board’s response seems to have done the trick, with the City Council
rejecting a recall vote—illegally, it would appear, but the mass meeting in response was
sparsely attended, and the rebellion petered out. With this final establishment of
administrative normalcy, D. M. Meredith stepped down at the end of his term in 1913,
thirty-five years after first leading San Luis Obispo’s schools and with twenty-four years of
service on the County Board of Education, Mission District Board of Trustees, and San Luis
Obispo School Board of Directors.
The role of pioneer By now nearly seventy, Meredith continued his real estate, rental,
and insurance practice till he was eighty, even after the death of his second wife in 1920,
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37
accomplishing major sales, like the property that ten years later would become phase two
of the race-restricted Mount Pleasanton Square but that Meredith had pushed
unsuccessfully for a city park. At his retirement, he went into the rental business for
himself, adding one apartment in back and one in front to a house he had built on a
schoolteacher’s half-year salary, augmented with winter-term private schooling. Thriftily
but with respect to Heimatstil aesthetics, Meredith replicated his house’s decorative motifs
on the front addition but not on the rear.
San Luis Obispo, in the early twentieth century highly respectful to its nineteenth-century
roots, celebrated Meredith for his persistence, frequently referring to his earlier
cashiership of the Andrews Bank, noting his contribution to the first high school when its
replacement building was planned, and seeking his thoughts and recollections on the
Baptist Church, which he served as deacon, of whose founding 1883 congregation he was
the last of two members, whose 1895 structure he had helped to be built, and of whose
magnificent Carpenter Romanesque 1907 edifice, the last great wood structure to be built
in San Luis Obispo, he had laid the foundation stone. His letter to the church on its forty-
sixth anniversary, quoted shortly thereafter in his obituary, became his last published
statement. His obituary headline—“Pioneer of City Dies at Local Home”—noted both the
man and his house.
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Architectural Significance of the D. M. and Carrie Proper Meredith House
The Meredith House is architecturally one of the City of San Luis Obispo’s “most unique and
important” resources as its most sophisticated and articulated example of Heimatstil
architecture of the Krüppelwalmstil or Jerkinhead subtype, which includes a steep roof
pitch, deep eaves, and carved open brackets and would become the Jugendstil variant. The
Master List Muscio House at 1330 Mill (1909, below) is the finest and best preserved
Chaletstil structure (Romilio and Clelia Muscio’s four parents were all Swiss Italian
immigrants), and the Madonna Inn (1957–1969) is the most sophisticated amalgam of
Heimatstil subtypes and non-Heimatstil types.
Unlike the Muscios and Alex Madonna, the
Merediths seem to have chosen Heimatstil
for fashion rather than national pride. The
house was built with a remarkable seven
jerkinhead gables (perhaps David Milton or
Carrie Meredith was also a Hawthorne
devotee). They comprise one front-facing
gable, two one-and-a-half-story side-facing
gables, two two-story side-facing gables,
and two small dormers set in the bar of the
H-form roof. The effect is a house that rises
subtly from front to back on the cross-axis
to the rising hillside.
The five main gables of the Meredith House
are each lined with a narrow bargeboard
that is notched at crest and sides and
terminated with a roundel. Roundels also
terminate the flat brackets and knee braces.
Vertical siding in the gable crests contrasts
with horizontal shiplap on the main body of
the house.
Above: jerkinhead gable of the street façade
with notched and roundel-terminated
bargeboard and knee brackets. Left: Solid
and open brackets terminated in simpler
roundels support the eaves in an angled view.
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Right: The 1881 John McMullen House in San
Francisco incorporates one jerkinhead gable
similar to those of the Meredith House but
without the Heimatstil brackets and
surrounded by Queen Anne features: a round
tower, wall shingles, and horseshoe arch
The Meredith House’s triplet, twin, and
singleton sash windows culminate in the
two-story façades, triplet and twin in the
one-and-a-half-story (below). The windows
have crown molding and casings that
extend elegantly below the stool and apron.
Side entry into the bar of the H is provided
by a porch with spindle columns and
fretwork. The total effect is not quite Le
Corbusier, but it is carefully thought out in
its horizontal and vertical rhythms from
details to full structural form.
At one time there were front and rear porches, but these were replaced by D. M. Meredith
with apartments in the 1920s. Significantly, the front apartment was provided with
singleton front and twinned side windows that match the 1883 windows exactly, down to
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40
Meredith House, 1891 Sanborn Map. Oddly, the house does not appear on the 1888 Sanborn,
though its construction is recorded in 1883 and it appears indistinctly but where it should be
in a circa 1887 panoramic photograph taken from Cerro San Luis, in the History Center
collection. The “1½ [stories]” changes to “2” for the rear wing by the 1905 Sanborn, more
likely through re-evaluation than raising the roof.
1926 Sanborn Map, after front and rear apartments replaced porches
Google satellite view today
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crown moldings and drop casings. Likewise, knee braces terminated with roundels support
the deep eaves of the addition. Clearly in replacing the porch with an income-earning unit,
D. M. Meredith was intent on it matching the architectural detail of four decades before.
The front apartment also provides a one-story replacement for the original one-story
porch, transitioning to a one-and-a-half-story front wing and two-story rear wing, thus
retaining the original massing. In contrast, the rear apartment did not merit matching
fenestration or Heimatstil details and did not copy the original back porch’s massing.
The Meredith House is a villa in size and a cottage in reference, much like suburban
Heimatstil in Central Europe, which tends to be fairly monumental. The H footprint is a
form I have not encountered elsewhere but allows it to make the most of its distinctive
deep-eaved and open-bracketed jerkinhead gables. The variation in heights allows for
crescendos both vertically and horizontally.
The front apartment is wider than the original porch but of similar height, retaining the
stepped effect of one to one-and-a-half to two stories. Whether the original porch had deep
eaves and knee brackets is unknown, but the these and the matching fenestration retain
stylistic consistency with the main wings of the house in D. M. Meredith’s changes.
The preservation of Heimatstil structures in San Luis Obispo, in both Chaletstil and
Krüppelwalmstil subtypes, is not only important in retaining the eclecticism that
distinguishes our city as a built environment and as a cultural attraction distinct from the
more homogenous Monterey (Greek Revival adobes), Santa Barbara (City Beautiful
Spanish, Mission, and Moorish Revival), and Palm Springs (Mid Century Modern), but it
helps residents and cultural tourists understand where the Madonna Inn—our one world-
famous landmark—came from. Alex Madonna, descendant of Swiss Italian dairy ranchers,
may have had deep feelings of Swiss cultural patriotism, but they were able to be expressed
architecturally only because of tradition that started with the cottage orné, developed
through the Suburban Cottage and National Folk Architecture Revival Movements into
Heimatstil, and became part of the fabric of the San Luis Obispo where Madonna grew up—
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42
after the death of his father forced his family from their Chorro Valley ranch. Heimatstil,
Ranch House, and National Park Service Rustic (which incorporated the boulders from his
highway engineering) combined into a unique agglomeration of structures that, when
combined with Phyllis Madonna’s pink paint and fantasy interiors, created a landmark that
captured the world’s imagination.
Equally, Scandinavian enthusiasm for Heimatstil resulted in National Folk Architecture
Revival Movement there. The first permanent open-air museum of national folk
architecture and customs, Skansen, opened on Djurgården Island in Stockholm in 1891, and
skansen and skanzen have become generic words for such institutions in various European
languages. In Skansen lie the roots of Solvang, and in Heimatstil lie the roots of Skansen.
“Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner”—including ebelskiver.
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Period of Significance and Character-Defining Features
The Meredith House’s period of significance encompasses its 1883 construction and the
1929 death of David Milton Meredith. Therefore the house in its period of significance
includes the front and rear additions. Unlike the front addition, however, the rear addition
was not constructed to match the design, materials, and workmanship of the 1883 corpus
and would not be considered a character-defining feature. The basement fenestration also
does not match the main body of the house, though consistent within itself, and does not
define the building’s Heimatstil character.
The Heimatstil character-defining features of the Meredith House include
• jerkinhead gables and dormers
• notched and roundel-terminated bargeboards
• roundel-terminated knee brackets and solid horizontal brackets
• singleton, twin, and triplet sash windows with crown molding and drop casings
• horizontal shiplap siding in the main fabric and contrasting vertical siding in the gables
• side entry porch with spindle columns and fretwork
• front apartment addition from 1924 with its fenestration, eaves, and knee brackets
• H footprint
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Integrity
The Meredith House’s 1883–1929 period of significance includes the front and rear
additions.
Location The Meredith House remains in its original location from 1883 to 1929.
Design The house retains the design of its period of significance apart from a small
add-on to the south end of the front apartment, a small add-on to the south end of the rear
apartment, and minor details such as metal railings leading to the entry porch. The front
apartment door appears original to its era. The windowed door from the side entry porch
seems less likely to be original to 1883, but it is not out of the question. A line of four
windows on the north side of the rear apartment are of modern construction and plausibly
of post-1929 framing and surrounding siding.
The house’s overall design from the latter end of its period of significance, with additions to
front and rear, remains, communicating the thrifty but aesthetically respectful character of
D. M. Meredith. Its original design of an H-footprint Heimatstil villa with front porch, rising
consistently toward the rear, is easily understandable despite the porch’s replacement by a
slightly wider, deeper apartment. The Heimatstil forms of that apartment reinforce the
house’s overall ability to communicate its stylistic significance.
Setting Meredith was known locally for his gardening, with various references in the
contemporary press, and the house is obscured by foliage in panoramic photographs. His
gardening, however, did not define his significance and was not a character-defining
feature of the property.
The surrounding neighborhood is not greatly changed from the early twentieth century.
The buildings up the hill on the same side—the Craftsman 1425 Garden (by 1914) and E. B.
Stanton House (1904–1905)—predate Meredith’s death. Down the hill is a post-1929 office
building but low-built, consistent with the neighborhood. On the other side of the street,
777 Pismo is part and 770 Buchon all turn-of-the-century, with the bungalows in between
circa 1920s–1930s and modest in footprint and one-story in height like their predecessor
buildings of the early 1900s. The current view of San Luis Obispo’s historically low-built
downtown and unbuilt Cerro San Luis is what Meredith would have seen during his
lifetime in the house.
Materials With the previously mentioned exception of four modern windows on the
rear apartment with dubious surrounding siding, modern iron stair railings, and new
roofing, the visible fabric—including siding, decorative features, and fenestration—appears
to be original to the period of significance and its various times of construction.
Workmanship As with materials, workmanship is well and consistently preserved.
Feeling Though Downtown has edged a block nearer (Marsh now being business
rather than residential), the late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century suburban
feeling consistent with the cottage character of Heimatstil remains, comprising mostly low-
built single-family houses and single-business buildings and garden foliage.
Association The Meredith House is scarcely changed from D. M. Meredith’s residence
in it, and even Carrie Proper Meredith would instantly recognize her house. The thrifty
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schoolteacher’s house noticed by the Tribune in 1883, and altered to be income-producing
during the retirement of D. M. Meredith’s ninth decade, well represents the character and
accomplishments of this leading teacher, banker, and Baptist deacon.
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Conclusion
The D. M. and Carrie Proper Meredith House qualifies for the Master List of Historic
Resources as one of the city’s “most unique and important” resources for its historic
association with pioneer educator, banker, and religious leader David Milton Meredith, for
best embodying Heimatstil architecture of the important Krüppelwalmstil subtype in the
City of San Luis Obispo, and for retaining the integrity to communicate its dual historical
and architectural significance
.
Page 68 of 364
12
Zoning, or remove the property from historic listing if the structure on the property no longer
meets eligibility criteria for listing, following the process for listing set forth herein.
14.01.070. Evaluation Criteria for Historic Resource Listing
When determining if a property should be designated as a listed Historic or Cultural Resource,
the CHC and City Council shall consider this ordinance and State Historic Preservation Office
(“SHPO”) standards. In order to be eligible for designation, the resource shall exhibit a high
level of historic integrity, be at least fifty (50) years old (less than 50 if it can be demonstrated
that enough time has passed to understand its historical importance) and satisfy at least one of the
following criteria:
A. Architectural Criteria: Embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, region, or
method of construction, or represents the work of a master, or possesses high artistic values.
(1) Style: Describes the form of a building, such as size, structural shape and details
within that form (e.g. arrangement of windows and doors, ornamentation, etc.). Building
style will be evaluated as a measure of:
a. The relative purity of a traditional style;
b. Rarity of existence at any time in the locale; and/or current rarity although the
structure reflects a once popular style;
c. Traditional, vernacular and/or eclectic influences that represent a particular social
milieu and period of the community; and/or the uniqueness of hybrid styles and how
these styles are put together.
(2) Design: Describes the architectural concept of a structure and the quality of artistic
merit and craftsmanship of the individual parts. Reflects how well a particular style or
combination of styles are expressed through compatibility and detailing of elements.
Also, suggests degree to which the designer (e.g., carpenter-builder) accurately
interpreted and conveyed the style(s). Building design will be evaluated as a measure of:
a. Notable attractiveness with aesthetic appeal because of its artistic merit, details and
craftsmanship (even if not necessarily unique);
b. An expression of interesting details and eclecticism among carpenter-builders,
although the craftsmanship and artistic quality may not be superior.
(3) Architect: Describes the professional (an individual or firm) directly responsible for
the building design and plans of the structure. The architect will be evaluated as a
reference to:
Page 69 of 364
13
a. A notable architect (e.g., Wright, Morgan), including architects who made
significant contributions to the state or region, or an architect whose work influenced
development of the city, state or nation.
b. An architect who, in terms of craftsmanship, made significant contributions to San
Luis Obispo (e.g., Abrahams who, according to local sources, designed the house at
810 Osos - Frank Avila's father's home - built between 1927 – 30).
B. Historic Criteria
(1) History – Person: Associated with the lives of persons important to local, California,
or national history. Historic person will be evaluated as a measure of the degree to which
a person or group was:
a. Significant to the community as a public leader (e.g., mayor, congress member,
etc.) or for his or her fame and outstanding recognition - locally, regionally, or
nationally.
b. Significant to the community as a public servant or person who made early, unique,
or outstanding contributions to the community, important local affairs or institutions
(e.g., council members, educators, medical professionals, clergymen, railroad
officials).
(2) History – Event: Associated with events that have made a significant contribution to
the broad patterns of local or regional history or the cultural heritage of California or the
United States. Historic event will be evaluated as a measure of:
(i) A landmark, famous, or first-of-its-kind event for the city - regardless of whether
the impact of the event spread beyond the city.
(ii) A relatively unique, important or interesting contribution to the city (e.g., the Ah
Louis Store as the center for Chinese-American cultural activities in early San Luis
Obispo history).
(3) History-Context: Associated with and also a prime illustration of predominant
patterns of political, social, economic, cultural, medical, educational, governmental,
military, industrial, or religious history. Historic context will be evaluated as a measure
of the degree to which it reflects:
a. Early, first, or major patterns of local history, regardless of whether the historic
effects go beyond the city level, that are intimately connected with the building (e.g.,
County Museum).
b. Secondary patterns of local history, but closely associated with the building (e.g.,
Park Hotel).
Page 70 of 364
1010 Marsh St., San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
(805) 546-8208 . FAX (805) 546-8641
PROOF OF PUBLICATION
(2015.5 C.C.P.) Proof of Publication of
STATE OF CALIFORNIA,
County of San Luis Obispo,
' _ �_ SAN LUIS OBISPO CITE
I am a citizen of the United States and a resident
v/;
of the county aforesaid; I am over the age of
" NOTICE OF PUB IIC HEARING
eighteen years, and not a party interested in the
above entitled matter. I am the principal clerk
The San Luis Obispo City Council invites all interested
Tuesday. October
of the printer of the New Times, a newspaper
persons to attend a public hearing on
held in the Council Chambers at City
of general circulation, printed and published
g P P
9 at al Street,
9, Hall,
Hall, 990 Palm Street, San Luis Obispo. Please note that
weekly in the City of San Luis Obispo, County
zoom participation will not be supported, as this will he
Meetings can be viewed remotely
of San Luis Obispo, and which has been
an in -parson meeting.
Government Access Channel 20 or streamedhive
adjudged a newspaper of general circulation by
an she
from me City's YouTube channel at
to the start of the meeting,
the Superior Court of the County of San Luis
gipt. Public comment, Prior
may be submitted in writing via U.S. Mail delivered to the
Obispo, State of California, under the date of
City Clerk's office at 9M Palm Street, San Luis Obispo, CA
February 5, 1993, Case number CV72789: that
93401 or by email to englilcouncil0slocinvirril,
notice of which the annexed is a printed copy
PUBLIC HEARING REM:
As recommended by the Cultural Heritage
(set in type not smaller than nonpareil), has been
Committee, adopt a Resolution adding the property
Gorden Street to the Master List of
published in each regular and entire issue of said
lamina d at 1421
Historic Resources as The D.M. and Carrie Proper
newspaper and not in an supplement [hereof on
Y PP
Meredith House:' This project is categorically
the following dates, to -wit:
exempt- from the provisions of the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEUAI. Inclusion of the
S !� 2i i 7 J� -
l.J (� L
subject the City's otentialf of Historic
does not have the potential for causing
does not
( /_�J _
Or
es
Resources
a significant effect on the environment, and so is
rule described in 915081 (0
in the year 2022.
covered by the general
(3) of the CEQA Guidelines. (1421 Garden St. MST-
0337-20221
I certify (or declare) under the the penalty of
For more information, you are invited to contact
Walter Oeuell of the Cifp's Community Development
perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.
Department at f805)781-7M or woetre110510cityorg
The City Council may also discuss other hearings or
the items listed above. If
Dated Luis Obispo, California, this daybusiness
items before or after
court you maybe
,atrS-aan
.�y ? of Z-Z ' 2022.
you challenge the proposed issuesyo
limited to raising only those issues you or someone else
`
raised at the public hearing described in this notice, or in
written correspondence delivered to the City Council at,
&4mue4i-I
or prior to, the public hearing.
Council Agenda Reports for this meeting will be available
of the meeting date on
Michael Gould, New Times Legals
for review one week in advance
the City's website, under the Public Meeting Agendas
web page: I
d iR nc'l/ da - d-m notes. Please call the
City Clerk's Office at (8051701.7100 for more information.
be televised live an Charter
The City Council meeting will
Cable Channel 20 and live streaming an the Cdy's
YouTube channel ss .N�.
September 22, 2027
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