HomeMy WebLinkAbout08-24-2026 CHC Agenda Packet
Cultural Heritage Committee
AGENDA
Monday, August 24, 2026, 5:30 p.m.
Council Chambers, 990 Palm Street, San Luis Obispo
The Cultural Heritage Committee holds in-person meetings. Zoom participation will not be supported
at this time. Attendees of City Council or Advisory Body meetings are eligible to receive one hour of
complimentary parking; restrictions apply, visit Parking for Public Meetings for more details.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR PUBLIC COMMENT:
Public Comment prior to the meeting (must be received 3 hours in advance of the meeting):
Mail - Delivered by the U.S. Postal Service. Address letters to the City Clerk's Office at 990
Palm Street, San Luis Obispo, California, 93401.
Email - Submit Public Comments via email to advisorybodies@slocity.org. In the body of your
email, please include the date of the meeting and the item number (if applicable). Emails will not
be read aloud during the meeting.
Voicemail - Call (805) 781-7164 and leave a voicemail. Please state and spell your name, the
agenda item number you are calling about, and leave your comment. Verbal comments must be
limited to 3 minutes. Voicemails will not be played during the meeting.
*All correspondence will be archived and distributed to members, however, submissions received
after the deadline may not be processed until the following day.
Public Comment during the meeting:
Meetings are held in-person. To provide public comment during the meeting, you must be
present at the meeting location.
Electronic Visual Aid Presentation. To conform with the City's Network Access and Use Policy,
Chapter 1.3.8 of the Council Policies & Procedures Manual, members of the public who desire
to utilize electronic visual aids to supplement their oral presentation must provide display-ready
material to the City Clerk by 12:00 p.m. on the day of the meeting. Contact the City Clerk's
Office at cityclerk@slocity.org or (805) 781-7114.
Pages
1.CALL TO ORDER
Chair Tischler will call the Regular Meeting of the Cultural Heritage Committee
to order.
2.PUBLIC COMMENT FOR ITEMS NOT ON THE AGENDA
The public is encouraged to submit comments on any subject within the
jurisdiction of the Cultural Heritage Committee that does not appear on this
agenda. Although the Committee will not take action on items presented during
the Public Comment Period, the Chair may direct staff to place an item on a
future agenda for discussion.
3.CONSENT
Matters appearing on the Consent Calendar are expected to be non-
controversial and will be acted upon at one time. A member of the public may
request the Cultural Heritage Committee to pull an item for discussion. The
public may comment on any and all items on the Consent Agenda within the
three-minute time limit.
3.a CONSIDERATION OF MINUTES - JULY 27, 2026 CULTURAL
HERITAGE COMMITTEE MINUTES
5
Recommendation:
To approve the Cultural Heritage Committee Minutes of July 27, 2026.
4.PUBLIC HEARINGS
Note: The action of the Cultural Heritage Committee is a recommendation to the
Community Development Director, another advisory body, or to City Council
and, therefore, is not final and cannot be appealed.
4.a REVIEW OF THE REQUEST TO DESIGNATE THE PROPERTY AT
771 TORO STREET AS A LANDMARK HISTORIC RESOURCE ON
THE CITY’S INVENTORY OF HISTORIC RESOURCES, REFERRED
TO AS THE ALMA GIOVANOTTI BUNGALOW
11
Recommendation:
Recommend the City Council designate the property at 771 Toro Street
as a Landmark in the City’s Inventory of Historic Resources, in
accordance with the City’s Historic Preservation Ordinance.
4.b REVIEW OF THE REQUEST TO DESIGNATE THE PROPERTY AT
1811 CHORRO STREET AS A LANDMARK HISTORIC RESOURCE
ON THE CITY’S INVENTORY OF HISTORIC RESOURCES,
REFERRED TO AS THE CHARLES AND IDA PALMER HOUSE.
45
Recommendation:
Recommend the City Council designate the property at 1811 Chorro
Street as a Landmark in the City’s Inventory of Historic Resources, in
accordance with the City’s Historic Preservation Ordinance.
5.COMMENT AND DISCUSSION
5.a STAFF UPDATES AND AGENDA FORECAST
Receive a brief update from Principal Planner Brian Leveille.
6.ADJOURNMENT
The next Regular Meeting of the Cultural Heritage Committee is scheduled for
September 28, 2026 at 5:30 p.m. in the Council Chambers at City Hall, 990
Palm Street, San Luis Obispo.
LISTENING ASSISTIVE DEVICES are available -- see the Clerk
The City of San Luis Obispo wishes to make all of its public meetings accessible
to the public. Upon request, this agenda will be made available in appropriate
alternative formats to persons with disabilities. Any person with a disability who
requires a modification or accommodation in order to participate in a meeting
should direct such request to the City Clerk’s Office at (805) 781-7114 at least
48 hours before the meeting, if possible. Telecommunications Device for the
Deaf (805) 781-7410.
Agenda related writings or documents provided to the Cultural Heritage
Committee are available for public inspection on the City’s website:
https://www.slocity.org/government/mayor-and-city-council/agendas-and-
minutes. Meeting video recordings can be found on the City’s website:
http://opengov.slocity.org/WebLink/Browse.aspx?id=60971&dbid=0&repo=CityCl
erk
1
Cultural Heritage Committee Minutes
July 27, 2026, 5:30 p.m.
Council Chambers, 990 Palm Street, San Luis Obispo
Cultural Heritage
Committee Members
Present:
Member John Ashbaugh, Member David Blakely, Member Sabin
Gray, Member Ivan Simon, Member Mayank Singh. Vice Chair
Benjamin Arrona, Chair John Tischler
City Staff Present: Principal Planner Brian Leveille, City Clerk Teresa Purrington
_____________________________________________________________________
1. CALL TO ORDER
A Regular Meeting of the San Luis Obispo Cultural Heritage Committee was
called to order on July 27, 2026 at 5:34 p.m. in the Council Chambers at City
Hall, 990 Palm Street, San Luis Obispo, by Chair Tischler.
2. OATH OF OFFICE
City Clerk Teresa Purrington administered the Oath of Office to newly appointed
Cultural Heritage Committee Member Mayank Singh.
3. ELECTION OF CHAIR AND VICE CHAIR
Motion By Member Ashbaugh
Second By Member Blakely
To appoint John Tischler to serve as Chair for a second year.
Ayes (7): Member Benjamin Arrona, Member David Blakely, Member Sabin Gray,
Member Ivan Simon, Member Mayank Singh. Vice Chair John Ashbaugh, Chair
John Tischler
CARRIED (7 to 0)
Motion By Member Blakely
Second By Member Ashbaugh
To appoint Member Arrona to serve as Vice Chair.
Page 5 of 76
2
Ayes (7): Member Benjamin Arrona, Member David Blakely, Member Sabin Gray,
Member Ivan Simon, Member Mayank Singh. Vice Chair John Ashbaugh, Chair
John Tischler
CARRIED (7 to 0)
4. PUBLIC COMMENT FOR ITEMS NOT ON THE AGENDA
Public Comment:
None
--End of Public Comment--
5. CONSENT
5.a CONSIDERATION OF MINUTES - APRIL 27, 2026 CULTURAL
HERITAGE COMMITTEE MINUTES
Motion By Member Ashbaugh
Second By Member Gray
To approve the Cultural Heritage Committee Minutes of April 27, 2026.
Ayes (7): Member John Ashbaugh, Member David Blakely, Member Sabin
Gray, Member Ivan Simon, Member Mayank Singh. Vice Chair Benjamin
Arrona, Chair John Tischler
CARRIED (7 to 0)
6. PUBLIC HEARINGS
6.a REVIEW OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW 2-STORY DWELLING
UNIT ON THE SAME LOT AS A LOCAL REGISTER RESOURCE AND
WITHIN THE OLD TOWN HISTORIC DISTRICT (1520 BEACH STREET,
ARCH-0124-2026)
All Committee Members reported having no Ex Parte Communications.
Assistant Planner Eva Wynn presented the staff report and responded to
Committee inquiries.
Applicant representative, John Bellisario, provided a brief overview of the
project and responded to questions raised.
Chair Tischler opened the Public Hearing
Public Comment:
James Papp
Page 6 of 76
3
--End of Public Comment--
Chair Tischler closed Public Comment
Motion By Member Ashbaugh
Second By Vice Chair Arrona
Recommend to the Community Development Director that the proposed
new development is consistent with applicable historic preservation
policies including the Historic Preservation Ordinance, Historic
Preservation Program Guidelines, and Secretary of the Interior’s
Standards.
Ayes (7): Member John Ashbaugh, Member David Blakely, Member Sabin
Gray, Member Ivan Simon, Member Mayank Singh. Vice Chair Benjamin
Arrona, Chair John Tischler
CARRIED (7 to 0)
6.b REVIEW OF A REQUEST TO ENTER INTO A HISTORICAL PROPERTY
PRESERVATION CONTRACT (MILLS ACT) FOR THE LANDMARK
HANS NISSEN AND LENA PETERSON HANSEN HOUSE LOCATED AT
1110 BUCHON STREET
All Committee Members reported having no Ex Parte Communications.
Assistant Planner Eva Wynn presented the staff report and responded to
Committee inquiries.
Applicant representative, James Papp, provided a brief overview of the
project and responded to questions raised.
Chair Tischler opened the Public Hearing
Public Comment:
None
--End of Public Comment--
Chair Tischler closed Public Comment
Motion By Chair Tischler
Second By Member Ashbaugh
Recommend to the City Council that the City enter a historic property
preservation contract (Mills Act) with the property owner at 1110 Buchon
Street, to encourage maintenance and restoration of the Landmark
Page 7 of 76
4
“Hansen House” property based on the property’s eligibility and submitted
list of proposed improvements.
Ayes (7): Member John Ashbaugh, Member David Blakely, Member Sabin
Gray, Member Ivan Simon, Member Mayank Singh. Vice Chair Benjamin
Arrona, Chair John Tischler
CARRIED (7 to 0)
6.c REVIEW OF A REQUEST TO ENTER INTO A HISTORICAL PROPERTY
PRESERVATION CONTRACT (MILLS ACT) FOR THE LANDMARK
GEORGE AND CORDELIA MCCABE HOUSE LOCATED AT 571 PISMO
STREET
All Committee Members reported having no Ex Parte Communications.
Assistant Planner Eva Wynn presented the staff report and responded to
Committee inquiries.
Applicant representative, James Papp, provided a brief overview of the
project and responded to questions raised.
Chair Tischler opened the Public Hearing
Public Comment:
None
--End of Public Comment--
Chair Tischler closed Public Comment
Motion By Member Ashbaugh
Second By Chair Tischler
Recommend to the City Council that the City enter a historic property
preservation contract (Mills Act) with the property owners at 571 Pismo
Street, to encourage maintenance and restoration of the Landmark
“McCabe House” property based on the property’s eligibility and submitted
list of proposed improvements.
Ayes (7): Member John Ashbaugh, Member David Blakely, Member Sabin
Gray, Member Ivan Simon, Member Mayank Singh. Vice Chair Benjamin
Arrona, Chair John Tischler
CARRIED (7 to 0)
7. COMMENT AND DISCUSSION
Page 8 of 76
5
7.a STAFF UPDATES AND AGENDA FORECAST
Principal Planner Brian Leveille provided an update of upcoming projects.
Members Blakely, Gray and Ashbaugh provided an overview of the
Preservation Conference in May.
Member Blakely indicated he has some ideas of how to streamline the
landmark and Mills Act process and would like to have a discussion
regarding this on a future agenda. Member Blakey noted his concerns
over state housing legislation which will impact the ability of the City to
carry out historic preservation goals.
8. ADJOURNMENT
The meeting was adjourned at 7:36 p.m. The next Regular Meeting of the
Cultural Heritage Committee is scheduled for August 24, 2026, at 5:30 p.m. in the
Council Chambers at City Hall, 990 Palm Street, San Luis Obispo.
APPROVED BY CULTURAL HERITAGE COMMITTEE: XX/XX/202X
Page 9 of 76
Page 10 of 76
CULTURAL HERITAGE COMMITTEE AGENDA REPORT
SUBJECT: REVIEW OF THE REQUEST TO DESIGNATE THE PROPERTY AT 771
TORO STREET AS A LANDMARK HISTORIC RESOURCE ON THE CITY’S
INVENTORY OF HISTORIC RESOURCES, REFERRED TO AS THE ALMA
GIOVANOTTI BUNGALOW
BY: Eva Wynn, Assistant Planner FROM: Brian Leveille, Principal Planner
Phone Number: (805) 781-7172 Phone Number: (805) 781-7166
Email: ewynn@slocity.org Email: bleveille@slocity.org
APPLICATION NUMBER(S): HIST-0338-2026
PROJECT ADDRESS(ES): 771 Toro Street
APPLICANT: Jennifer Collins REPRESENTATIVE: James Papp, PhD
RECOMMENDATION
Recommend the City Council designate the property at 771 Toro Street as a Landmark
in the City’s Inventory of Historic Resources, in accordance with the City’s Historic
Preservation Ordinance.
1.0 BACKGROUND
The property owner(s) have
requested that the property at 771
Toro Street be designated as a
Landmark in the City’s Inventory of
Historic Resources, as the Alma
Giovanotti Bungalow. The property
is currently listed as a Local
Register Resource. The applicant
has provided a historic evaluation
documenting the property’s
eligibility for Landmark designation
(Attachment A), prepared by
James Papp, PhD, Historian and
Architectural Historian.
Meeting Date: 8/24/2026
Item Number: 4a
Time Estimate: 30 minutes
Figure 1 - 771 Toro Street
Page 11 of 76
Item 4a
HIST-0338-2026
Cultural Heritage Committee Report – August 24, 2026
2.0 DISCUSSION
2.1 Site and Setting
The property at 771 Toro
Street is located at the
northern end of Toro Street
between Peach Street and
Mill Street. The property is
currently listed as a Local
Register Resource, added by
Resolution No. 5197 in 1983,
and is within the Mill Street
Historic District. According to
the submitted evaluation
(Attachment A), the residence
was developed as part of a
small-family development
alongside the residence at
1163 Peach Street.
According to the Historic Preservation Program and Guidelines (HPPGs, § 5.2.4), the Mill
Street Historic District is a small, highly concentrated residential historic district in San
Luis Obispo, established in 1987. Covering approximately 20 acres, it contains one of the
highest concentrations of historic structures among the city’s five historic districts . The
district developed primarily during the 1900s–1920s, a period of population and economic
growth in San Luis Obispo. The neighborhood was originally part of the Town of San Luis
Obispo subdivision, recorded in 1878, and was informally known as Fremont Heights. Its
location on higher ground and its originally very wide 100 -foot lots reflected practical
responses to early San Luis Obispo’s problems with seasonal flooding and fires. Many of
the large lots were later subdivided into approximately 50 –60-foot lots, although some of
the original wider lots remain.
Predominant architectural features in the District include:
One- and occasionally two-story houses
Mostly gable and hip roof types
Traditional fenestration, such as double -hung, wood sash windows, ornamental
front doors, wood screen doors
Ornamental roof features, including prominent fascias, bargeboards, prominent
pediments or cornices
Painted wood or stucco surface material, including siding and molding
Figure 2 - Location of 771 Toro
Page 12 of 76
Item 4a
HIST-0338-2026
Cultural Heritage Committee Report – August 24, 2026
2.2 Alma Giovanotti Bungalow
According to the submitted evaluation (Attachment A), the Alma Giovanotti Bungalow at
771 Toro Street is a California Bungalow built in 1922. The building was designed by
William Whitley McKinney and constructed by W. J. Smith, a local builder. The Giovanotti
Bungalow exhibits notable features that further characterize the modern, “airplane
bungalow” with Prairie School influences (pg. 2). Attachment A characterizes the features
that elevate the residence’s significance to the Landmark level as the elements that
establish a relationship between the Alma Giovanotti Bungalow and the residence at 1163
Peach Street (Local Register Resource), referred to as the Rose Giovanotti Bungalow.
The two buildings were designed by the same architect and employ architectural
repetitions and variations which creates a complementary pair with distinct forms and
expressions (pg. 2).
3.0 EVALUATION
Pursuant to §14.01.030 of the City’s Historic Preservation Ordinance (HPO), the Cultural
Heritage Committee makes recommendations to the City Council on applications for
designation of Landmarks. A Landmark, as defined in §14.01.020.28 of the HPO, is the
highest level of individual local designation and may be applied to a historic resource that
has been found significant at the local, state, or national level . In order to be eligible for
designation, a Landmark shall be at least fifty years old, demonstrate significance under
at least one of the criteria outlined in §14.01.060, and retain a high degree of integrity.
The HPO indicates that the National Register Bulletin No. 15: How to Apply the National
Register Criteria for Evaluation should be consulted when evaluating and determining
significance. Additionally, the designation of Landmark is reserved to those properties
that are of the greatest importance at the local, regional, state, or national level in terms
of age, architectural or historical significance, rarity, or association with important persons
or events in the City’s past that meet the eligibility criteria.
Figure 3 - The Alma Giovanotti Bungalow
Page 13 of 76
Item 4a
HIST-0338-2026
Cultural Heritage Committee Report – August 24, 2026
3.1 Significance Criteria
The submitted evaluation (Attachment A) requests th at the residence at 771 Toro Street
be designated as a Landmark for its architectural significance and rarity. Designation of
the Giovanotti Bungalow is not requested for its association with Persons, Events, or
Information Potential. Staff has reviewed the information provided in the evaluation and
under the applicable HPO criteria:
Significance Criteria - Architecture
The architectural significance of property is described in Attachment A (pgs. 16-23) as an
extremely rare and highly intact example of the California Bungalow that represents a
distinctive local interpretation incorporating Prairie School influences and a more modern
expression. The architectural significance of the property is noted as strengthened by its
relationship to the Rose Giovanotti Bungalow at 1163 Peach Street. The evaluation
provides that the two bungalows were built as a pair, designed by the same architect, and
“conceived as contrasting variations on the California Bungalow theme, late in the
California Bungalow era, with similar materials and footprints but quite different
presentations” (pg. 16). As such the Bungalows constitute a rare example of paired
variations on a common architectural theme (California Bungalow), both showcasing the
high artistic standards and inventive design by William Whitley McKinney. Their related
forms, repetitions, and distinctions demonstrate a level of design intentionality and
architectural experimentation that is unusual among residential properties of the period in
San Luis Obispo (pg. 2). The evaluation identifies the Alma Giovanotti Bungalows as
extremely rare among historic San Luis Obispo houses and buildings because of its
“formal and decorative interplay” with the Rose Giovanotti Bungalow (pg. 26). The
property is also described as significant within the context of the Mill Street Historic
District. The district's character is partly derived from the pattern of small family
developments that occurred during the late nineteenth and early twenti eth centuries (pg.
8).
The architectural significance of the Alma Giovanotti Bunglaow is expressed through
distinctive character-defining features, including:
An asymmetric porch
A flat porch roof
Square porch and stairway columns
A solid porch parapet
A flat-roofed square bay
A low-pitched house roof
Extended and flat-soffited eaves
Horizontally linear and grouped fenestration
Dual front entries,
Stucco fabric,
and footprint, fenestration, materials, and low profile shared with the Rose
Giovanotti House at 1163 Peach Street (Attachment A, pg. 24)
Page 14 of 76
Item 4a
HIST-0338-2026
Cultural Heritage Committee Report – August 24, 2026
These documented characteristics represent a distinctive architectural type and
demonstrate the property's architectural significance and rarity under §14.01.060. Based
on the submitted documentation and current listing as a Local Register Resource, staff
finds that the Alma Giovanotti Bunglaow meets the Architecture criterion.
3.2 Integrity
According to the HPO and consistent with the National Register Bulletin No. 15, integrity
is defined as “the ability of a historic resource to convey its significance, typically
evidenced by the retention of attributes that existed during a resource’s period of
significance and including location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and
association” (HPO 14.01.020 (26)). To be included in the City’s Inventory as a Landmark,
1811 Chorro Street must meet at least one significance criteria, be among the resources
with the greatest importance at the local, regional, state, or national level, and retain a
high degree of integrity to communicate its significance.
Attachment A provides an evaluation of the property’s integrity (pg. 25), including the
extent of alterations, and finds that the Giovanotti Bungalow retains a high degree of
integrity in location, design, materials, workmanship, and setting, with sufficient integrity
of feeling to continue communicating its architectural significance. The original wood sash
windows have been replaced with modern sash windows and one casement window,
although the original window surrounds or architraves remain. The front doors have also
been replaced, the front steps have been reconstructed, and the small center chimney
has been removed. The setting is noted as altered due to development in the
neighborhood, however the suburban setting is retained.
The house remains in its original location and retains the principal character -defining
features of its original design, including the asymmetric porch supported by three square
columns, solid porch parapet, flat-roofed square bay, low-pitched roof, extended and flat-
soffited eaves, horizontally linear and grouped fenestration, dual front doors, stucco
exterior, and original footprint. These features, together with the property’s low profile and
overall form, continue to convey the architectural character of the resource and its
relationship to the Mill Street Historic District (Attachment A, pg. 25).
Staff concurs that, although certain original materials and features have been removed or
replaced, the property retains the essential physical characteristics necessary to convey
its architectural significance. The retention of character defining features, as described in
Attachment A, indicate the Alma Giovanotti Bungalow retains a high degree of integrity to
support the requested Landmark designation.
3.3 Conclusion
The submitted application requests designation of the Alma Giovanotti Bungalow at 1811
Chorro Street as a Landmark in the City's Inventory of Historic Resources. The submitted
evaluation identifies the property as significant for its architectural character and rarity
and provides an analysis of the integrity of the Alma Giovanotti Bungalow.
Page 15 of 76
Item 4a
HIST-0338-2026
Cultural Heritage Committee Report – August 24, 2026
Based on the submitted evaluation, staff's analysis, and the applicable criteria established
by the Historic Preservation Ordinance, staff recommends that the Cultural Heritage
Committee deliberate and forward a recommendation to the City Council on the property’s
eligibility for Landmark designation as a resource among those of the greatest importance
to the City, State, or Nation with a high degree of integrity. Staff has prepared the following
findings for the Committee’s consideration:
The available documentation demonstrates that the property is a rare and
architecturally significant local example of California Bungalow. Its significance is
heightened by its relationship to the Rose Giovanotti Bungalow, which together
form a distinctive pair of complementary variations on the California Bungalow
theme. The Alma Bungalow was designed by William Whitley McKinney and
constructed by notable local builder W. J. Smith. Its “airplane bungalow” form,
Prairie School influences, artistic quality, and relationship to the companion Rose
Bungalow distinguish it from more typical California Bungalows in San Luis Obispo.
The property also retains a high degree of historic integrity in location, design,
materials, workmanship, setting, and feeling. As a resu lt, the building continues to
convey the architectural qualities and historical associations that establish its
significance.
4.0 ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINATION
This project is categorically exempt from the provisions of the California Environmental
Quality Act (CEQA). Inclusion of the subject property on the Landmark list of 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.
5.0 ACTION ALTERNATIVES
1. Staff Recommendation: Recommend the City Council elevate the property at 771
Toro Street to a Landmark in the City’s Inventory of Historic Resources, including
Staff’s findings and noted elements of the property which satisfy Evaluation Criteria
for Landmark listing as a resource of the greatest level of importance at the local,
regional, state, or national level and that the property retains a high degree of
integrity.
2. Recommend to the City Council that the property’s Local Register status should
be retained and the property not be designated as a Landmark in the City’s
Inventory of Historic Resources, based on the finding that the property does not
satisfy Evaluation Criteria to be a Landmark Historic Resource as there is not
sufficient information to support that the property is of the greatest importance at
the local, regional, state, or national level, and/or does not retain a high degree of
integrity.
Page 16 of 76
Item 4a
HIST-0338-2026
Cultural Heritage Committee Report – August 24, 2026
3. Continue consideration of the request with direction to the applicant and staff on
any needed information or analysis in order to reach a recommendation.
6.0 ATTACHMENTS
A - Historic Resource Evaluation - 771 Toro Street
Page 17 of 76
Page 18 of 76
1
The Alma Giovanotti Bungalow
771 Toro Street
Mill Street Historic District
Historic Resource Evaluation and Landmark Application
Summary Conclusion
The Alma Giovanotti Bungalow (above) is of the greatest importance at the local level in terms
of architectural significance and rarity, as a unique example in the cit y—with the Rose
Giovanotti Bungalow (below)—of architect-designed paired variations on the theme of the
California Bungalow, within the pattern of small family developments of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century. These small developments are what give the Mill Street Historic
District its eclectic character. The Giovanotti Bungalows are by far the most audacious of such
projects and qualify as Landmarks both for embodiment of style and high artistic standards.
Page 19 of 76
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The Giovanotti bungalows are extremely rare for historic San Luis houses or indeed buildings in
general in having been designed by one person—William Whitley McKinney—and built by
another—the notable local builder W. J. Smith. McKinney, arrived in San Luis Obispo in 1921
advertising himself as an architectural engineer—something of a reinvention for a rural Missouri
civil engineer whose previous purview had been bridges, roads, maps, and property lines. Yet
he quickly ran up a string of significant projects, including houses, stores, apartments, and the
Exposition Park grandstand. Then, within four years, McKinney reinvented himself again—as a
mining engineer. His last documented built projects are the Landmark Dughi, Wickenden, and
Smith Buildings at 1029 and 1033 Chorro and 1123–1127 Garden, respectively, all from mid-
1923. After his attempt to promote iron ore veins in the Irish Hills and turn San Luis into a
second Pittsburgh suddenly collapsed, he vanished from town in late 1925 or early 1926 and
died in San Francisco in 1928.
Of his six known surviving buildings here, three—the Dughi, Wickenden, and Smith Buildings—
are Landmarks, while the Alma and Rose Giovanotti Bungalows are Local Register Resources,
and the R. F. Richardson House at 1163 Marsh is unlisted. This is despite the fact that t he
Giovanotti Bungalows are far more inventive and significant architecturally than the Landmark
buildings, with a far higher degree of integrity to convey that significance.
Ideally, both Giovanotti Bungalows will be Landmarked. The owner of the Alma Giovanotti
Bungalow is ready to proceed, and the owners of the Rose Giovanotti Bungalow may soon be.
The Alma Giovanotti Bungalow garnered more press attention at the time for its “modern”
form, dubbed an “airplane bungalow,” with its Prairie School infusion and without the structural
nod to the traditional California Bungalow’s chalet gable in the Rose Giovanotti Bungalow,
which was in turn responding to the 1913 Battista and Rose Giovanotti Bungalow on the other
side (1151 Peach). But it is ultimately the architectural pairing—with almost musical repetitions,
and distinctions of form—of the two contemporary Alma and Rose Bungalows that make them
extremely rare in San Luis and among the most important historic buildings here.
Both bungalows have the high degree of integrity in location, design, materials, workmanship,
setting, and feeling to convey their architectural significance and rarity and to be eligible as
Landmarks.
James Papp, PhD • Historian & Architectural Historian, City & County of San Luis Obispo
964 Chorro St, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 • 805-470-0983 • papp.architectural.history@gmail.com
Research assistance by N. Y. North
Submitted 1 June 2026 on behalf of Jennifer Collins
Page 20 of 76
3
Contents
Summary Conclusion 1
Timeline: The Giovanottis 4
Timeline: William Whitley McKinney 5
Historic Context: Multiple-Property Developments in San Luis Obispo 7
Architectural Historic Context: The Airplane Bungalow 9
William Whitley McKinney 11
The Alma Giovanotti Bungalow: Architectural Significance 16
Character-Defining Features 24
Integrity 24
Conclusion 26
Page 21 of 76
4
Timeline: The Giovanottis
1858 Battista Giovanotti is born in Switzerland (Passenger List, City of Brooklyn, 1874).
1866 Oct 31 Rose Righetti is born in Switzerland (California Death Index, 1940–1997).
1874 At 16 Battista Giovanotti emigrates to the United States as a laborer, arriving in
New York on the City of Brooklyn, via Liverpool, England and Queenstown,
Ireland, November 3rd (Passenger List).
1880 Giovanotti is listed as living at the Swiss Benevolent Society in Langley’s San
Francisco Directory. Also in 1880, the US Census list Giovanotti working as a hired
hand on a farm in San Geronimo, Marin County.
1899 Oct 16 Alma Rose Giovanotti is born (California Death Index, 1940–1997).
1904 Jan 6 Rebecca Harris transfers the deed to block 33, lot 3 and 100 feet of block 2 to
Battista and Alma Giovanotti (“Proceedings in County Offices,” Morning Tribune,
12 Jan. 1904, p. 3).
1905 Aug The Sanborn map shows near-identical asymmetric Colonial Bungalows at 1137
and 1143 Peach on the Giovanottis’ newly-acquired property. Both were added
to the Contributing List in 1987, though 1143 had received an addition altering
its street façade to symmetry between 1926 and 1937. Falsely historicist Eastlake
decoration was added to 1143 by 2012 and 1137 by 2015 (Google Map Street
Views).
1910 Battista Giovanotti is working as a milker on a dairy ranch owned by a Swiss-
Italian couple in Arroyo Grande.
1912–1914 Circa 1913 and later, 1137 is documented as being used for the Giovanotti family
house and 1143 for a rental (Telegram: “Another Prize Winner,” 2 March 1912,
p. 8; “Former Resident Wins San Luis Obispo Bride,” 29 January 1914, p. 6).
1913 Jul 24 Battista and Rose Giovanotti apply for a permit for a 40’ x 38’ wood house, 100
feet from corner, lot 3, block 33 (1151 Peach), contractor H. W. Rulison, added
to the Contributing List in 1987 (Permit File, Cal Poly Special Collections and
Archives).
Oct 13 The Telegram notes Battista Giovanotti “has become the sole proprietor of a
dairy near the Union Creamery” and is referenced as being “of Morro” (With
Point and Without,” p. 2).
1920 In the US Census, Battista, Rose, and daughters Esther and Alma are living at
1137 Peach. Battista is listed as a laborer.
1922 Jan 9 Alma Giovanotti applies for a permit for 40’ x 32’ frame and stucco house,
southerly third of lot 3, block 33 (771 Toro), contractor W. J. Smith, cost
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5
$4,000, added to the Contributing List in 1987 (Permit File, Cal Poly Special
Collections and Archives).
Jan 16 Rose Giovanotti applies for a permit for a 40’ by 32’ frame and stucco house,
mid third of block 33, lot 3 (1163 Toro), contractor W. J. Smith, cost $4,500,
added to the Contributing List in 1987 (Permit File, Cal Poly Special Collections
and Archives).
1934 Sep 26 Battista Giovanotti dies in San Luis Obispo (plot OM-B3, San Luis Cemetery,
findagrave.com).
1940 Alma and Esther Giovanotti are living with their widowed mother Rose at 1151
Peach Street, (US Census).
1960 May 9 Rose Giovanotti dies in San Luis Obispo, after living 79 years there (“Rose
Giovanotti Dies at Age 93,” Telegram-Tribune, 9 May 1960, p. 2).
1985 Mar 24 Alma Giovanotti dies in San Luis Obispo (California Death Index, 1940 –1997).
Timeline: William Whitley McKinney
1873 Aug McKinney is born in August 1873 in Missouri (1900 US Census).
1893 While drinking with two friends in his hometown of Mexico, MO, McKinney
testifies that one kills the other with a rock in an unprovoked assault by the
railroad tracks. Joe Donnelly is tried three times for murder, convicted in the
third trial, and sentenced to hang. McKinney testifies in Donnelly’s trial; his
“testimony was regarded by many as an effort to shield himself at Donnelly’s
expense,” and is tried as accessory to murder but acquitted. “Since his discharge,
young McKinney has been living an upright, commendable life. He works with his
father at the carpenter’s trade and is not only industrious and steady, but seems
anxious to profit by his awful experience of the past” (Mexico Intelligencer, 21
Nov. 1895, p. 1). Donnelly is eventually pardoned.
1896 W. W. McKinney’s father, R. S. “Shanks” McKinney, born 1845, becomes
Audrain County Surveyor, a job he holds till 1923.
1897–1898 Mexico newspapers show W. W. McKinney is billing county for bridge,
carpentry, and painting work.
1898 In an affidavit, McKinney admits to fraudulent testimony over the location of a
grave in a noted inheritance case (“The Sublette Estate,” Mexico Weekly Ledger,
24 Nov. 1898, p. 2).
1899 Lectures on “Science and the Bible” (Mexico Daily Intelligencer, 15 and 23 Mar.
1899, p. 4).
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1899–1900 Works ten months in Hawaiian Islands for the US Government (“Home from
Honolulu,” Mexico Weekly Ledger, 10 May 1900, p. 2),
1900 The US Census lists McKinney in Mexico and employed in US Service as a
quartermaster.
1903 McKinney, with J. N. Cross, issues a 25-cent pocket atlas of Audrain County
(Mexico Evening Ledger, 13 Jan. 1903, p. 1).
1904 Is working as Audrain County’s deputy surveyor under father Richard S.
McKinney, county surveyor, and is billing, like his father, for “engineering”
(“Smoker Friday Night,” Mexico Evening Ledger, 7 May 1904, p. 4; “Street Work,”
Intelligencer, 21 July 1904, p. 8).
Is commissioned by Audrain County to make a school map (“County Court
Notes,” Mexico Evening Ledger, 9 Feb.1904, p. 4).
1906 “W. W. McKinney is getting up, by subscription, a commercial map of Mexico”
(Mexico Missouri Message, 22 Mar. 1906, p. 1). It is unclear if it is ever completed.
He writes to the Mexico Evening Ledger, noting that Mexico has almost doubled in
population in four years and encouraging the city administration to “advertize,
advertize, advertize” (“A Card from William McKinney,” 15 Mar. 1906, p. 1). It is
the first of a series of letters, articles, and poems on promotion, road
improvement, urban development, etc. He also designs plans for a “Model Dirt
Road” for farmers north of town (“To Make Model Road,” Mexico Evening Ledger,
27 June 1906, p. 4) and is listed in the Mexico newspapers as acting city engineer
and later city engineer.
1908 Offers to clean cemetery monuments for free to promote new product Presto
(“Fair Enough,” Mexico Evening Ledger, 10 June 1908, p. 4)
1913 In describing a demonstration of dynamite in farming, the Vandalia Mail describes
McKinney as former deputy surveyor of Audrain County (28 Nov. 1913, p. 4).
During the next few years he will live and work in various rural Missouri towns,
until, as assistant surveyor of Audrain County, he enlists in the Army Corps of
Engineers in 1917, qualifying by examination as a second lieutenant (“W. W.
McKinney to Army,” Mexico Weekly Ledger, 19 July 1917, p. 1).
For further chronology, see the section on William Whitley McKinney, p. 11.
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Historic Context: Multiple-Property Developments in San Luis Obispo
The first mass developer of the Chumash village of tiłhini was the Catholic Church, which
enslaved the local Indians by any measure of what slavery is—captivity, work for subsistence,
corporal punishment, the testimony of contemporary visitors, and later emancipation by the
Mexican government—and had them build a new form of housing: sex-segregated jacalitos or
small jacals (paling-based, mud-plastered, and thatched structures), which Fr. Pedro Font with
the De Anza expedition described in the expedition’s stop at the renamed San Luis Obispo in
1776 (Diario Íntimo [Hermosillo: University of Sonora, 2000], p. 225). Font called the church a
jacal and the parish hall and priests’ quarters a jacalon (or big jacal). He added, presciently, that
there was great risk of fire, and Yokuts Indians burned down the mission complex in the
subsequent year. Font did not mention any wickiups (or qnipu, as they are called in Northern
Chumash), despite fascination with these structures by other Spanish chroniclers. This
suggests—like Sherlock Holmes’ dog that did not bark in the nighttime —that there were no
qnipu left to describe.
In the early 1790s, Mexico City sent skilled craftsmen north to raise the missions above jacal
standards with carpentry, adobe brickwork, and stonework. In 1792–1793, the Mission San Luis
Obispo church and parish hall achieved (more or less) their current form, and between 1801
and 1810, the Indian slaves were set to building regimented housing for themselves: two ranks
of 17 x 20–foot adobes, some attached and some detached, eighty in all, on either side of
Chorro Street to replace the 20-foot-diameter qnipu that would have been scattered in a circle
(Paul H. Kocher, Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa: A Historical Sketch [San Luis Obispo: Blake,
1972], p. 19). Chroniclers described coastal wickiups as housing about twenty people each, and
the slave adobes probably housed a similar number, with nearly a thousand neophytes at the
height of this population in 1805.
Circa 1850, the Indians of San Luis Obispo were virtually wiped out by a cholera epidemic, and
by the 1874 Sanborn Map, the remaining slave adobes were subsumed by Whites (on the town
side of Chorro) or lay in “uninsurable” ruins (on the Mission side). Thr ee survive: one the
extended Sauer Adobe and two encased in the Sauer-Adams Adobe. (All had been granted
during the Mexican period to Victor Linares, majordomo of the Mission San Luis Obispo and
later juez segundo of the area and father of accused bandit Pio Linares. The author of this
report lives and works in one of the encased adobes of the Sauer-Adams, still 17’ x 20’.)
These slave adobes would be the last mass development until the Goldtree Tract in 1952,
planned for Poly faculty and school district and state highways employees, with slightly varying
Ranch-style houses designed by R. L. Graves, George Hasslein, and Ken Schwartz. While the
adobes were planned to keep the Indians in, the Goldtree development, like all such, was
planned to keep non-Whites out, as the FHA would not fund mixed-race housing. Prior to this
development, tracts and additions in San Luis were generaally sold as lots—occasionally with an
individual house built by the subdivider or a speculator—rather than as mass developments.
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8
Small family developments characterized San Luis Obispo in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, when a few contiguous lots were purchased or a larger lot subdivided, and
houses were constructed for family members or as investment properties, often over decades.
This practice was especially notable in the Mill Street Historic District, where lots were larger
than in many other parts of the city and could accommodate several houses. Examples
Sketch Map of the City of San Luis Obispo, Cal., by C. W. Henderson, city engineer, 1894 (detail)
range from the LeRoy Smith and Leroy Anderson Houses (1306 and 1318 Mill —neighboring
houses built at the same time by Cal Poly’s first two directors on the lot purchased and
subdivided by the second, Smith’s the second Bay Area Dutch Colonial [High-Peaked Colonial]
in town, Anderson’s the first Prairie School) to the five Torres family buildings (at Toro and
Mill’s north corner from the 1890s to the 1940s in Queen Anne [1202 Mill], Eastlake [1214
Mill], Colonial [1220 Mill], Deco-Mission [778 Toro], and Streamline Moderne [780 Toro]) and
the five Giovanotti bungalows (Colonial Bungalows at 1137 and 1143 Peach circa 1904–1905,
California Bungalow at 1151 Peach in 1913, and updated California Bungalows, one Prairie
School–influenced, in 1922 at 771 Toro and 1163 Peach).
The Alma and Rose Giovanotti at 771 Toro and 1163 Peach are unique of this genre for being
built at the same time, both designed by an architect, both designed by the same architect, and
being designed in sophisticated interplay with each other and the Battista and Rose Giovanotti
bungalow from 1913 (where the Giovanottis’ Colonial Bungalows from 1904–1905 were
identical in all but size).
Later large developments, like the Goldtree Tract, would vary designs to avoid monotony, but
the Alma and Rose Bungalows are clearly varied to both create visual delight and make the
viewer think about architecture and architectural styles.
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Architectural Historic Context: The Airplane Bungalow
I am not particularly interested in what other architectural
historians think is a style, not even very interested in what I
think is a style. I am very interested, however, in what
contemporary practitioners and observers thought was a
style. During his time in San Luis Obispo, William McKinney
was an almost daily advertiser in the local Telegram, and in
turn it regularly reported in detail on his projects. The
Telegram’s description of the Alma Giovanotti house as an
“airplane bungalow” thus is likely from McKinney’s mouth.
The paired bungalow on the other side of the lot (1163
Peach), fronted by a more traditionally California Bungalow
Swiss chalet gable, was not so described, though in other
respects it is a similar structure.
Telegram, 5 January 1922, p. 5
El Paso Herald, 21 April 1916, p. 11
References to Airplane Bungalows first appear
in the popular press in 1916 in Texas, and the
term initially refers to a California Bungalow
with a second floor consisting wholly of a
sleeping porch. The modern explanation that
air was supposed to plane across the roof to
cool the porch may be a later folk etymology.
More likely the term developed not from a
concept but a visual image: the sleeping porch’s
deep eaves atop the eaves of the larger
structure making the house appear like a
biplane (“The Airplane Bungalow,” Herald
[Melbourne, Australia], 26 July 1922, p. 12)
Greene and Greene’s famous 1908–1909 Gamble House in Pasadena has such a third-floor
room, which may be the concept’s origin.
By 1917, according to newspaper articles and advertisements, the term had spread to Iowa and
back to California, by 1918 to Oklahoma, and by 1920 across the United States, but by 1917 it
was no longer pictured or explained. From surviving examples where addresses are listed, it
appeared by this time to refer to a second bedroom floor smaller than the ground floor with
deep eaves, though purists might insist on a smaller cockpit-type elevation surrounded by
windows (e.g., 45th and Woodland, Des Moines [“New Airplane Bungalow,” Des Moines
Evening Tribune, 14 Sep. 1917, p. 15; 936 N. Roosevelt Ave in Fresno [“Price $4400,” Real
Estate—City, 23 Oct. 1918, Fresno Morning Republican, p. 15).
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This remains the common acceptance of the term throughout the 1920s and 1930s in various
parts of the country, but the permit application for the Alma Giovanotti House makes clear
that a second story was never contemplated.
However, as observers viewed houses with wide eaves associated with the Prairie School, these
also were dubbed “airplane houses.” Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1908 Mrs. Howard Weiss House in
Madison was known locally as “The Airplane House” (Jill Moore Marx, “Milestones in the
Architectural Past, Wisconsin State Journal, 3 Mar. 1968, section 6, p. 1), and the same is true of
Louis Sullivan’s 1909 Bradley House in Chicago (Frank Custer, “Bradley Did’t Like Landmark
Mansion,” Madison Capital Times, 6 July 1971, entertainment p. 1) and Purcell and Elmslie’s
famous 1912 house in Woods Hole, MA (below). A 1918 Modesto Morning Herald ad for a “one-
story airplane bungalow” suggests this may have had wider usage (1 Feb., p. 5).
It appears to have been solely in this sense of linear and horizontal style that the Telegram, and
presumably William McKinney, dubbed the Alma Giovanotti House an “airplane bungalow.”
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11
William Whitley McKinney
Initially advertising himself as W. McKinney, CE, Architectural Engineer, William McKinney,
arrived in San Luis Obispo in 1921 with a splash. On June 14, the Telegram reported on page
one that McKinney, who has “recently come to this city with his family from San Francisco,”
had been engaged to draw the plans for a $35,000 garage, showroom, and office development
by Ed Kaiser at Santa Rosa and Higuera. On June 30, he began daily display ads in the Telegram,
listing his office in the iconic Johnson Block at Chorro and Higuera (p. 5). He also ran daily ads
in the Tribune. On July 6, the Telegram reported on page one that he had applied for the post of
city engineer (which he did not receive).
Where did he come from, and how did he cut such a swathe and reach such heights, before his
precipitous fall? Unlike other early figures who appear to have invented their professional
pedigrees—Walter Murray, with no evidence of legal training or even citi zenship, who died a
superior court judge; Chauncey Hatch Phillips, who wildly exaggerated his résumé and became
a respected banker and land developer; and Hilamon Spencer Laird, who mysteriously morphed
from Point Reyes dairyman into San Luis Obispo’s first and most notable architect —William
McKinney appears to have been perfectly qualified as a civil engineer, with a record as a
community organizer and community booster attested to in the Mexico Evening Ledger, the
newspaper of his hometown, Mexico, Audrain County, Missouri.
What he did not have during his career in Missouri was a documented experience in
architecture. (But the same can be said of William Parker, the County Surveyor who appears to
have designed our Landmark Hays-Latimer Adobe, a sophisticated semi-peripteral that appears
to be the only Gothic Revival domestic adobe anywhere.)
While assistant county surveyor of Audrain, Missouri, McKinney volunteered for the US Army
Corps of Engineers in July 1917 and was admitted as a lieutenant and promoted to first
lieutenant, becoming the supply officer for the 41st Engineers in Washington, DC.1 If
volunteering for the army just before his forty-fourth birthday seems an unusual move, it is
worth noting that his father, Richard “Shanks” McKinney, born in 1845, was Audrain County
Surveyor and showed no sign of retiring—serving till his seventy-eighth year, in 1923.
The posting to Washington must have widened William McKinney’s geographical horizons
beyond rural Missouri, and an expected promotion to captain that never came when the war
ended had to widen his ambitions beyond the army.
McKinney was born in Missouri in August 1873, and the 1900 US Census found him, his wife
Carrie (née Motz), and their two children living with his father (the county surveyor), mother,
and three sisters in Mexico, pop. 21,160, while apparently doing US service in the
Quartermaster Corps. In the 1910 census, McKinney was listed as a civil engineer living with
1. Mexico Evening Ledger: “W. W. McKinney to Army, 17 July 1917, p. 1; “Lieut. W. W. McKinney
Writes,” 19 Jan. 1918, p. 4
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12
wife Carrie and four children in Mexico. In 1915, he registered the birth of his sixth child in tiny
Middletown, Montgomery County, MO, where he applied but was rejected for county surveyor
in 1916 (“W. W. McKinney,” Mexico Evening Ledger, 4 Mar. 1916, p. 1). By the 1920 census, his
wife and younger five children were listed in Mexico without McKinney, whether he was not
yet demobilized or was by then in San Francisco, where he and his wife both had sisters. In
1921, most of the family were in San Luis. He had no known previous connection here.
McKinney’s drive, personality, and networking ability, however, seem to have been the perfect
fit for San Luis. Drawing on a blank slate, he quickly acquired substantial projects, according to
the Telegram (which also reported his hiring of a draftsman, secretary, and stenographer 2).
These projects included, in 1921, a two-story stucco apartment house for Queenie Warden
(apparently never built) and a store in Santa Maria for a P. Farrentelli. In 1922 McKinney
designed the Alma and Rose Giovanotti Bungalows (extant), a cottage for W. E. Alderman (built
but no longer extant) across from the sanitarium on Marsh, a Spanish house for R. F.
Richardson (extant) at 1363 Marsh, a house for former district attorney Albert Nelson (no
longer extant) at Santa Rosa and Walnut, another store in Santa Maria for P. Tarantilli, and the
Exposition Park grandstand (no longer extant).3
1922 Exposition Park grandstand, left, and 1922 Richardson House with 1954 façade screen, right
There were more houses and business buildings in 1923, including the now -Landmark Dughi
and Wickenden Buildings at 1033 and 1029 Chorro (built for J. B. Berkemeyer and the Luigi
Marre Cattle Co.4), as well as, during the spring, the buildings, plank access road, and cable car
2. “With Architect,” Telegram, 8 Sep. 1921, p. 5; “Accepts Position,” Telegram, 28 Aug. 1922, p. 5.
3. Warden Apartments: ‘Mrs. Warden Will Erect Apartments,” Telegram, 6 Sep. 1921, p. 7; P. Farrentilli
Store: “Dinner Guests,” Telegram, 23 Aug. 1921, p. 5; "Alma Giovanotti House: “Miss Giovanotti to
Build,” Telegram, 5 Jan. 1922, p. 5; Rose Giovanotti House: “Start on New House,” Telegram, 12 Jan.
1922, p. 5; W. E. Alderman House: “Building Cottage,” Telegram, 6 Feb. 1922, p.5; R. F. Richardson
House: “Building Begun,” Telegram, 26 July 1922, p. 5; Exposition Park, Cal Poly Special Collections
Building Permit File.
4. “New Building on Chorro St. Now Planned,” Telegram, 27 June 1923, p. 8.
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system for the US Refractories mining project off the Osos Valley, where McKinney was
ultimately described as “engineer for the company” in June.5
In May he applied again for the vacant post of city
engineer and again was not chosen (“Merchants to
Provide Pay of City Policeman,” Telegram, 22 May
1923, p. 8).
He now got involved in larger and more speculative
projects, including a subdivision and country club on
the Orcutt Ranch that appear never to have gotten
built next to a golf course that was built but has now
vanished. On 20 October 2023 the Mount Pleasanton
Square addition ran a half-page ad on page three of
the Morning Tribune touting McKinney’s purchase of a
lot there that assumed not only that he was well-
known in the city for his house designs but for the
nickname Mac.
Yet his focus would soon be diverted from
architecture. On December 5, 1923, the Tribune
reported as an “authentically verified” leak—with a
seven-column banner headline across the top of its
front page “MAY DEVELOP IRON INDUSTRY IN
THIS COUNTY”—the news that McKinney had taken
the president and geologist of the Pacific Coast Steel
Company through iron ore deposits in the Irish Hills.
On 17 April 1924, the Telegram, under the headline
“New Pittsburg [sic] May Be Developed at San Luis,”
revealed that McKinney had leased 7,000 acres of the
Irish Hills where he believed iron ore deposits to be.
Nonetheless, this hard-charging community man, who had founded four Boy Scout troops in
San Luis Obispo and Pismo on his arrival in the county, made time from June to become the
active commander of the San Luis Obispo post of the American Legion.6
5. Telegram: “Quarry Building Plans Are Made,” 13 Apr. 1923, p. 1; “Quarry Road Building Begun,” 9
Apr. 1923, p. 8; “Quarry Plant Being Improved,” 27 Apr. 1923, p. 8; “Refractories Mine to Work
Continuously,” 19 June 2023, p. 8.
6. “Will Organize Fourth Troop,” Tribune, 4 Dec. 1921, p. 2; “Legion Selects New Commander,”
Telegram, 21 June 1924, p. 1.
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McKinney still kept his hand in architectural engineering, the Telegram making a front-page
announcement in September of his plans to construct a two-story, sixteen-unit apartment
building embodying “the most modern designs” to provide for “a greater exclusiveness in
apartment house life.7 The local capitalists backing it and its location were not announced, and
the city’s (incomplete) surviving permit file at Cal Poly Special Collections has no record that it
was ever built. The last verifiable McKinney project built appears to be the Landmark E. Taylor
Smith Building at 1123–1127 Garden, built as two stores and two apartments with a façade of
Flemish bond in two tones of brick, faux castellated parapet, and center segmental arch entry
originally to the second-floor apartments, now preserved as part of the Hotel Cerro complex
(“Roof Garden Is Added to Plans,” Telegram, 10 Aug. 1923, p. 8).
In September 1924, McKinney organized a display of the mineral resources in San Luis Obispo
County at a national mining exposition in Sacramento (“Minerals from County Go to Big
Exhibit,” Telegram, 22 Sep. 1924, p. 1). By October his daily ads in the Tribune had changed from
“Architectural Engineer” to “Consulting Engineer” (2 Oct. 1924, p. 3), and he resumed his daily
ads in the Telegram with the new legend. Ever the local booster, in November he organized
representatives of the Riverside Portland Cement Co. to visit lime deposits in South County
(“Will Investigate Lime Deposits,” Arroyo Grande Herald-Reporter, 20 Nov. 1924, p. 5).
The Pacific Coast Steel Co. appears to have
lost interest in San Luis Obispo’s iron ore. By
26 February 1925, the Herald-Recorder was
reporting that the Pittsburgh Mines Co. was on
the verge of taking over McKinney’s 7,000
acres of leases (“Iron Ore Deposits May Be
Developed, p. 1). On April 16, the Telegram
predicted the future at left for San Luis, which
may have horrified as many citizens as it
excited. McKinney organized a local Iron Ore
Development Association to capitalize the
project (“Plan Working of Iron Ores withjin
County,” Telegram, 18 Apr. 1925, p. 1). He was
now referred to by the Telegram as a mining
engineer and began discussions with a third
company, Bardue Steel (“More Offers for Iron
Ore Deposits Here,” 24 Apr. 1925, p. 1). The
Pittsburgh Mining Co. wanted a good-faith
investment of $15,000 from the people of San
Luis (San Luis Obispo County’s Iron Deposits,”
Herald-Recorder, 7 May 1925, p. 4); presumably
this was not forthcoming. The association
made arrangements to take over McKinney’s
leases and have him represent them to the
landowners (“Iron Ore Meet Again Tonight,”
Telegram, 25 May 1925, p. 1).
7. “$35,000 Will Be Spent for Apartments,” Telegram, 10 Sep. 1924, p. 1.
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Toward the end of 1925, William McKinney seemed to have achieved a statewide profile. In
September he was named chair of the Committee on Metallic Minerals of the Mines
Department of the California Development Association—but this notice also included the last
mention of the Iron Ore Development Association in county newspapers. In December the
State Mining Review published articles by him and the mining bureau representative for the
district, but this would be the last news of McKinney at all till a notice of foreclosure of his
Mount Pleasanton Square lot, number 79, for a $250 note the following May.8 The last of his
daily ads of five years appeared in the Tribune on 1 January 1926.
Having been constant fodder for the local papers for half a decade, with frequent front-page
appearances, William McKinney simply vanished from the discourse, as did iron ore and any
mention of a new Pittsburgh. What exactly happened is not clear; the collapse was not
reported on; but McKinney’s name appeared for the final time in a brief sheriff’s report on lot
79’s sale for $379.12 in October 1926. Two years later, his death in San Francisco went
unreported in both San Luis and Mexico, Missouri papers.9
When, more than half a century later, five of his buildings were put on the Master and
Contributing Lists, none was attributed to William Whitley McKinney.
8. “M’Kinney Is Honored by Mining Men,” Telegram, 28 Sep. 1925, p. 4; “County Minerals Subject of
Treatise,” Herald-Recorder, 17 Dec. 1925, p. 6; “Foreclosure Suit,” Telegram, 6 May 1926, p. 8.
9. “The Public Service: Miscellaneous,” Tribune, 27 Oct. 1926, p. 14; “McKinney,” San Francisco Chronicle,
1 Nov. 1928, p. 14.
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The Alma Giovanotti Bungalow: Architectural Significance
Alma Giovanotti was a longtime employee of the Post Office, a position that would have gained
her historic significance under San Luis Obispo’s 1987 Historical Preservation Program
Guidelines—“Contributions which, though minor, directly or indirectly, had a beneficial effect
on the community (i.e., […] postal workers […])—but not under subsequent revisions. Given
her father’s documented professions as milker and laborer, it seems reasonable to assume that
the money for their investment properties came from her mother Rose’s Righetti family.
The investment bungalows built by Rose Giovanotti and her daughter Alma in early 1922 are
rare and significant for a number of reasons: they were
• built as a pair
• architect-designed
Page 34 of 76
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• conceived as contrasting variations on the California Bungalow theme, late in the
California Bungalow era, with similar materials and footprints but quite different
presentations.
Their designer, William McKinney, had arrived in San Luis only the year before and advertised
himself as an architectural engineer, though the Telegram generally referred to him as an
architect. He had no documented experience designing buildings before his arrival here, having
spent a career in city engineering, county surveying, and (briefly during World War I) as a
supply officer in the US Army Corps of Engineers. But he had swift and a spectacular rise here,
within two years designingimportant projects in San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria.
Three of his buildings are Landmarks in San Luis, though the 1923 Dughi and Wickenden
Buildings appear to have been added in a misapprehension that they are wood buildings of circa
1885 rather than steel of 1923 (planned for adding five stories later). They were designed for
the Luigi Marre Cattle Co. and were intended to share the same parapet height with J. B.
Berkemeyer’s meat market, also designed by McKinney, and now the site of Luna Red (“New
Building on Chorro St. Now Planned,” Telegram, 27 June 1923, p. 8.). They were also designed
to present a 92-foot frontage with Berkemeyer’s, and that they still do.
The planned frontage was described as “panels of white enameled brick facing and lengthwise
panels across the top of the buildings of white Kellastone terracotta with ornaments set in a
darker shade of Kellastone,” with which their current stucco covering bears no resemblance.
The Luigi Marre Cattle Company Building (officially Dughi and Wickenden Buildings) at left
The Smith Building’s DPR 523 states, in the Significance section: “A classic example of early
twentieth century common brick is this structure,” and no other justification is given for its
original Master Listing. It is of workmanlike design, with the dual -shade variegated Flemish bond
and faux castellation adding charm to the plain profile. Its recent incorporation into the Hotel
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Cerro has significantly altered its fenestration but not otherwise altered its design , though the
faux castellation has sadly been erased with painting.
McKinney’s Landmark Smith Building in 2016
None of these Landmark buildings, however, hold a candle to the Giovanotti Bungalows.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1903 W. R. Heath House in Buffalo (above and next page top) shows the
linearity from which the Alma Giovanotti Bungalow would eventually gain its aesthetic: square
columns, grouped windows, extended soffited horizontal eaves, shallow hip roofs that from the
ground appear flat.
Page 36 of 76
19
The flat-roofed Glendale bungalow below, published in Gustave Stickley’s The Craftsman in June
1912, shows how this Prairie School aesthetic migrated to the California Bungalow. The
Craftsman referred to this as “a modern California House of the Spanish type, adding “Like all
Spanish residences, the roof is flat” (Gustav Stickley, ed. Craftsman Bungalows: 59 Homes from
“The Craftsman” [New York: Dover, 1988], p. 71).
Page 37 of 76
20
Older Google Street Views pre-landscaping (above) make the relationship between the Alma
Giovanotti and Rose Giovanotti Bungalows clear. Each has the same footprint and a front
façade with a left window grouping, a central door-and-window grouping, and a right window
grouping. From here, McKinney centered a classic California Bungalow chalet gable on Rose and
canted an asymmetric flat-roofed, flat soffited porch on Alma.
The open structure and dual columns of Rose recollect the Shinto temple origins of much of
California Bungalow architecture in its California state (Midwest and Eastern architects were
less purist), but the open gable also gives a symbolic air to the house : a play on the chalet gable
without quite being the gableof a chalet. The two square columns are not torii-based (or
elephant leg, as they have lately and incorrectly been renamed). This would be incorrect for the
classic California Bungalow but are a correct echoing of Alma’s columns.
Alma’s columns number three, which is perfectly correct for the “modern,” non-torii-based
bungalow. Alma’s porch has a higher rectangular porch parapet, Rose a lower curved one, but
both are of smooth, streamlined, unbalustraded stucco. Rose has a side-gabled roof and
Page 38 of 76
21
exposed rafter tails, Alma a hip roof barely visible beyond a flat-roofed porch and deep, finished
eaves.
As well, Alma has a square side bay window with flat roof and Rose a canted bay with shed
roof, which matches a similarly positioned canted shed-roofed bay on the Battista and Rose
Giovanotti Bungalow.
Above: Side bays on the Alma, Rose, and Battista and Rose Giovanotti Bungalows
The Alma and Rose Bungalows invite oscillation by the viewer walking back and forth between
them, because these features were never intended by McKinney to be seen simultaneously.
Compared to the cynical variation of a few plastered-on elements to hide the monotony of
modern tract housing, this pair is an exercise in architectural rhythm, reference, and I would go
so far as to say playfulness. They are much more interesting as an essay than the unrelated
buildings of LeRoy Smith and Leroy Anderson (as impressive as those houses are individually)
and the unrelated Torres houses of quite different styles and no structural interplay.
The interplay not only between the Alma and Rose Giovanotti Bungalows, but between the
Rose-Giovanotti and Battista-and-Rose-Giovanotti Bungalows, is important for understanding all
three. Here the two latter are seen in tandem as they appear on Peach Street.
Page 39 of 76
22
Their images stacked, we see again William McKinney’s ability to play variations on a theme, the
later bungalow with wider presentation, lower pitch, more streamlined arrangement of
fenestration, and smooth stucco instead of wood. Square columns replace torii ones; a solid
parapet, a balustrade; and there are no old-fashioned ogee knee brackets. The architecture of
the Alma Giovanotti Bungalow cannot be understood absent the architecture of the Rose
Giovanotti Bungalow, or of the Rose Giovanotti Bungalow absent the architecture of the
Battista and Rose Giovanotti Bungalow. It is a bit like an Ages of Man illustration but instead the
Ages of the California Bungalow.
As William McKinney spent only two years designing buildings, the Alma and Rose Giovanotti
Bungalows scarcely qualify for listing as the work of master, but they embody their styles of
architecture in unusually developed, creative, explicit, and playful ways and are designed to an
unusually high artistic standard, both criteria of architectural significance for Landmarking.
Page 40 of 76
23
It is a great pity that William McKinney spent so long planning roads and supervising their
macadamization, was lured away so quickly from architecture by visions of an iron ore fortune,
and died so young.
Page 41 of 76
24
Character-Defining Features
These features include the asymmetric porch, flat porch roof, square porch and stairway
columns, solid porch parapet, flat-roofed square bay, low-pitched house roof, extended and flat-
soffited eaves, horizontally linear and grouped fenestration, dual front entries, stucco fabric, and
footprint, fenestration, materials, and low profile shared with the Rose Giovanotti House at
1163 Peach Street.
Page 42 of 76
25
Integrity
The bungalow occupies its original location. It retains W. W. McKinney’s original exterior
design of character-defining asymmetric porch supported by three square porch columns, dual
front doors, grouped fenestration, extended eaves, and low-pitched roof. Front steps have been
replaced but retain their side parapets. In materials and workmanship, the original
character-defining stucco fabric remains, though unfortunately the original wood sash windows
have been replaced by modern sash windows and one casement window, though the window
surrounds or architraves remain. The front doors have also been recently replaced, though the
solid and glass doors have been replaced with like doors (the previous solid door was likely also
a replacement). The small center chimney has been removed. These losses are unfortunate but
do not prevent the bungalow from communicating its architectural significance through aligning
and grouping of fenestration.
The setting has been altered by the City Council’s approval (on the Cultural Heritage
Committee’s recommendation) of two-story buildings behind the house and one on the corner
between the Alma and Rose Giovanotti Bungalows to SOI Standards. The rear houses are not
visible from most angles (as intended). As for the intervening corner house, the front façades of
the Giovanotti Bungalows were never viewable together; they were understood in tandem by
the viewer walking by both. The eclectic suburban setting of the bungalows remains largely
intact in the Mill Street Historic District. The high degree of integrity in location, design,
materials, workmanship, and setting contribute to retention of feeling. As the property is not
being applied for listing for historic association, integrity of association is not relevant.
The Alma and Rose Giovanotti Bungalows fulfill the all three of the National Parks Service 2023
(conflicting) definitions of “high degree of integrity”: (1) “possesses […] most if not all seven
aspects of integrity”; (2) “retains nearly all of those features and materials that would have
characterized it during its period of significance”; (3) still possess[es] those essential physical
features necessary to tell [its] story” (NHL Bulletin: Guidelines for Preparing National Historic
Landmark Nominations (Washington, DC: National Parks Service, 2023), p. 64).
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26
Conclusion
The Alma Giovanotti Bungalow qualifies for Landmarking based on its embodiment of Prairie
School–influenced California Bungalow style; its extremely rare formal and decorative interplay
with the similarly footprinted and fenestrated but more traditionally Swiss chalet –based Rose
Giovanotti Bungalow, designed in turn to play off the neighboring 1913 Battista and Rose
Giovanotti Bungalow; and architect William McKinney’s high artistic standards in the aesthetic
combination of these three buildings through his innovative design of two of them. By far the
most imaginative of McKinney’s surviving buildings, and with a higher degree of integrity
compared to his other three Landmarked ones, the Alma and Rose Giovanotti Bungalows are
deserving of the greater attention and protection that Landmarking of the Alma Giovanotti
Bungalow will bring.
Page 44 of 76
CULTURAL HERITAGE COMMITTEE AGENDA REPORT
SUBJECT: REVIEW OF THE REQUEST TO DESIGNATE THE PROPERTY AT 1811
CHORRO STREET AS A LANDMARK HISTORIC RESOURCE ON THE CITY’S
INVENTORY OF HISTORIC RESOURCES, REFERRED TO AS THE CHARLES AND
IDA PALMER HOUSE.
BY: Eva Wynn, Assistant Planner FROM: Brian Leveille, Principal Planner
Phone Number: (805) 781-7172 Phone Number: (805) 781-7166
Email: ewynn@slocity.org Email: bleveille@slocity.org
APPLICATION NUMBER(S): HIST-0339-2026
PROJECT ADDRESS(ES): 1811 Chorro Street
APPLICANT: Jennifer and Lucas Pierce REPRESENTATIVE: James Papp, PhD
RECOMMENDATION
Recommend the City Council designate the property at 1811 Chorro Street as a
Landmark in the City’s Inventory of Historic Resources, in accordance with the City’s
Historic Preservation Ordinance.
1.0 BACKGROUND
The property owner(s) have requested
that the property at 1811 Chorro Street
be designated as a Landmark in the
City’s Inventory of Historic Resources,
as the Charles and Ida Palmer House
(Palmer House). The applicant has
provided a historic evaluation
documenting the property’s eligibility
for Landmark designation (Attachment
A), prepared by James Papp, PhD,
Historian and Architectural Historian.
2.0 DISCUSSION
2.1 Site and Setting
The property at 1811 Chorro Street is located at the southern end of Chorro Street,
between Church Street and Upham Street. The property is located outside any historic
district, and the surrounding neighborhood is characterized by medium density residential
properties.
Meeting Date: 8/24/2026
Item Number: 4b
Time Estimate: 30 minutes
Figure 1 - 1811 Chorro Street
Page 45 of 76
Item 4b
HIST-0339-2026 (1811 Chorro Street)
Cultural Heritage Committee Report – August 24, 2026
2.2 The Charles and Ida Palmer House
According to the submitted evaluation (Attachment
A), the Palmer House was constructed in 1903 for
County District Attorney Charles A. Palmer and his
wife, Ida Louise Blodgett Palmer. The property is
noted as significant for its embodiment of the San
Francisco Bay Area Dutch Colonial style, as well as
its association with Charles and Ida Palmer during
an important period in their respective careers and
civic activities.
The period of significance identified in Attachment A
extends from 1903 through 1921, encompassing the
Palmers' occupation of the residence, including
Charles Palmer's service as District Attorney and
Ida Palmer's leadership during the 1911 women's
suffrage campaign.
3.0 EVALUATION
Pursuant to §14.01.030 of the City’s Historic Preservation Ordinance (HPO), the Cultural
Heritage Committee makes recommendations to the City Council on applications for
designation of Landmarks. A Landmark, as defined in §14.01.020.28 of the HPO, is the
highest level of individual local designation and may be applied to a historic resource that
has been found significant at the local, state, or national level . In order to be eligible for
designation, a Landmark shall be at least fifty years old, demonstrate signifi cance under
at least one of the criteria outlined in §14.01.060, and retain a high degree of integrity.
The HPO indicates that the National Register Bulletin No. 15: How to Apply the National
Register Criteria for Evaluation should be consulted when evaluating and determining
significance. Additionally, the designation of Landmark is reserved to those properties
that are of the greatest importance at the local, regional, state, or national level in terms
of age, architectural or historical significance, rarity, or association with important persons
or events in the City’s past that meet the eligibility criteria.
3.1 Significance Criteria
The submitted evaluation (Attachment A) requests that the residence at 1811 Chorro
Street be designated as a Landmark for its rare architecture and association with
important persons. Designation of the Palmer House is not requested for its association
with Events or Information Potential. Staff has reviewed the information provided in the
evaluation and under the applicable HPO criteria:
Figure 2 - Location of 1811
Chorro Street
Page 46 of 76
Item 4b
HIST-0339-2026 (1811 Chorro Street)
Cultural Heritage Committee Report – August 24, 2026
Significance Criteria - Architecture
The analysis of architectural significance (pgs. 19 -21) in Attachment A provides that the
Palmer House is one of only two known houses in San Luis Obispo to embody the
characteristics of the San Francisco Bay Area -specific Dutch Colonial Style, also
described as High-Peaked Colonial Style. The style was invented in the East Bay in 1898
and is distinguished by extending the roof to a high peak, generally reaching an almost
unused third-story height and allowing the second half -story to contain normally
proportioned rooms rather than spaces constrained by a low roof slope. The later of t he
two San Luis Obispo examples is the Landmark 1906 LeRoy Smith House at 1306 Mill
Street, in the Mill Street Historic District. The architectural significance of the Palmer
House is expressed through distinctive and well-preserved character-defining features,
including:
The high roof peak and acute gable angle characteristic of the High -Peaked
Colonial (Dutch Colonial) form;
Dormers and rare, possibly unique, closet accent windows adapted to the high -
peaked design;
The rare and well-preserved tea or living hall, expressed externally through
stained-glass and diamond-paned fenestration and a Colonial Revival door;
Additional original fenestration;
The Tuscan-columned, high-peaked entry porch;
Novelty wall siding and shingle siding at the gables;
Eave modillions; and
The rare Bishop Peak granite foundation.
These documented characteristics represent a distinctive architectural type and
demonstrate the property's architectural significance and rarity under §14.01.060. The
property's identification as one of only two known local examples, as supported by the
evaluation, further establishes its rarity within San Luis Obispo. Based on the submitted
documentation, staff finds that the Palmer House meets the Architecture criterion.
Significance Criteria - Persons
Attachment A identifies the Palmer House as significant for its association with Charles
A. Palmer, a local elected official, and Ida Louise Blodgett Palmer, a local women’s
suffrage leader. Charles and Ida Palmer occupied the residence while Charles served as
a County District Attorney during three four-year terms, including terms from 1903–1907
and 1911–1919. His association with the property therefore encompasses a significant
portion of his public career. Meanwhile, Ida Palmer served as president of the Women’s
Political Equality League during the 1911 campaign for women's suffrage. California
women obtained the right to vote in 1911, making Ida Palmer's role in the local suffrage
campaign an important aspect of the property's historical significance. The association is
particularly noteworthy because properties associated with historically significant women,
and especially first-wave feminists and suffrage activists, are extremely rare (Attachment
A, pgs. 1, 16-18).
Page 47 of 76
Item 4b
HIST-0339-2026 (1811 Chorro Street)
Cultural Heritage Committee Report – August 24, 2026
The National Register Bulletin No. 15: How to Apply the National Register Criteria for
Evaluation, cited by the HPO, explains that properties considered under the Persons
criterion should be associated with individuals whose specific contributions can be
identified and documented and should illustrate those accomplishments (pg. 14-15). In
this case, the submitted evaluation identifies the Palmer House as the residence occupied
by Charles and Ida Palmer during the period associated with their documented civic and
professional activities. Staff concurs that the association is sufficiently direct to support
consideration of the property under the Persons criterion. The evaluation also states that
historic properties associated with significant women, particularly first-wave feminists and
suffrage activists, as extremely rare (Attachment A, pg. 2). Staff considers this rarity,
together with the documented association with Ida Palmer's leadership in the 1911
suffrage campaign, to strengthen the property's local historical significance. Based on the
submitted documentation and the applicable HPO criterion, staff finds that the Palmer
House meets the Persons criterion.
3.2 Integrity
According to the HPO and consistent with the National Register Bulletin No. 15, integrity
is defined as “the ability of a historic resource to convey its significance, typically
evidenced by the retention of attributes that existed during a resource’s period of
significance and including location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and
association” (HPO 14.01.020 (26)). To be included in the City’s Inventory as a Landmark,
1811 Chorro Street must meet at least one significance criteria, be among the resources
with the greatest importance at the local, regional, state, or national level, and retain a
high degree of integrity to communicate its significance.
Attachment A provides that some additions and alterations have occurred at the Palmer
House but concludes that the Palmer House retains a high degree of integrity. The
property retains its original location, high-peaked design, materials, workmanship, turn-
of-the-century suburban setting, feeling, and association with Charles and Ida Palmer.
The surrounding residential context continues to include early twentieth -century Colonial
Bungalows, Eastlake cottages, and later low-built California Bungalows. The property
also retains many of the features and materials that characterized it during its 1903 –1921
period of significance, including the original foundation of Bishop Peak granite. The
evaluation notes that some additions obscure portions of the original design, particularly
at the sides and rear and at the porch. However, these additions (some later removed)
did not destroy the character-defining features. The survival of the high-peaked
architectural form and its associated character-defining features is particularly important
because the property's architectural significance depends substantially on its ability to
convey the distinctive Bay Area Dutch Colonial design (pgs. 22-25).
Overall, the submitted evaluation documents that the Palmer House retains integrity as
demonstrated by retention of the essential physical features and materials necessary to
convey its significance. Although additions have altered portions of the building (primarily
in the rear), they have not substantially compromised the pro perty's dominant high-
peaked form, principal character-defining features, or ability to communicate its
architectural and historical associations. Staff concurs that the integrity of the resource is
sufficient for the property’s inclusion in the Inventory of Historic Resources.
Page 48 of 76
Item 4b
HIST-0339-2026 (1811 Chorro Street)
Cultural Heritage Committee Report – August 24, 2026
3.3 Conclusion
The submitted application requests designation of the Charles and Ida Palmer House at
1811 Chorro Street as a Landmark in the City's Inventory of Historic Resources. The
submitted evaluation identifies the property as significant for its architectural character
and rarity and for its association with Charles A. Palmer and Ida Louise Blodgett Palmer,
and provides an analysis of the integrity of the Palmer House.
Based on the submitted evaluation, staff's analysis, and the applicable criteria established
by the Historic Preservation Ordinance, staff recommends that the Cultural Heritage
Committee deliberate and forward a recommendation to the City Council on the property’s
eligibility for Landmark designation as a resource among those of the greatest importance
to the City, State, or Nation with a high degree of integrity. Staff has prepared the following
findings for the Committee’s consideration:
The Palmer House is eligible for historic designation for its architect ural
significance and rarity because it represents one of only two known San Luis
Obispo examples of the San Francisco Bay Area Dutch Colonial (or High -Peaked
Colonial) style. Furthermore, the property is significant for its association with
Charles A. Palmer, an early county official who served multiple terms as County
District Attorney, and Ida Louise Blodgett Palmer, who the submitted evaluation
identifies as president of the Women's Political Equality League during the 1911
campaign for women's suffrage. The association with Ida Palmer is particularly
notable in light of the documented rarity of properties associated with historically
significant women and suffrage activists. Finally, the Palmer House retains
sufficient integrity to convey its architectural and historical significance.
4.0 ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINATION
This project is categorically exempt from the provisions of the California Environmental
Quality Act (CEQA). Inclusion of the subject property on the Landmark list of 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.
5.0 ACTION ALTERNATIVES
1. Staff Recommendation: Recommend the City Council designate the property at
1811 Chorro Street as a Landmark in the City’s Inventory of Historic Resources,
including Staff’s findings and noted elements of the property which satisfy
Evaluation Criteria for Landmark listing as a resource of the greatest level of
importance at the local, regional, state, or national level and that the property
retains a high degree of integrity.
Page 49 of 76
Item 4b
HIST-0339-2026 (1811 Chorro Street)
Cultural Heritage Committee Report – August 24, 2026
2. Recommend to the City Council that the property not be designated as a Landmark
in the City’s Inventory of Historic Resources, based on the finding that the property
does not satisfy Evaluation Criteria to be a Landmark Historic Resource as there
is not sufficient information to support that the property is of the greatest
importance at the local, regional, state, or national level, and/or does not retain a
high degree of integrity.
3. Continue consideration of the request with direction to the applicant and staff on
any needed information or analysis in order to reach a recommendation.
6.0 ATTACHMENTS
A - Historic Resource Evaluation - 1811 Chorro Street
Page 50 of 76
1
The Charles and Ida Palmer House
1811 Chorro Street
Historic Resource Evaluation and Master List Application
Summary Conclusion
The 1903 Charles A. Palmer House at 1811 Chorro is “of the greatest importance at the local level
… in terms of architectural … significance, rarity … and association with important persons in the
City’s past.” It retains the high degree of integrity to convey its significance. As such it is eligible as a
San Luis Obispo Landmark.
Architectural significance The Palmer House is of the greatest importance in terms of
architectural significance and rarity for being the first of only two houses in San Luis Obispo to
embody the characteristics of the San Francisco Bay Area–specific Dutch Colonial Style, more
recently known as High-Peaked Colonial. (The later of the two houses is the Landmark 1906
LeRoy Smith House at 1306 Mill in the Mill Street Historic District.) The style, innovated in the
East Bay in 1898, extended the roof to a high peak at an almost always unused third-story height,
allowing the second half story to contain normal rooms rather than ones cramped by a low slope.
Page 51 of 76
2
Association with important persons in the City’s past The Palmer House is of the greatest
importance locally for being for being built for, and occupied by, County District Attorney Charles
A. Palmer, a reforming early county official, during the period of his significance—including his
three four-year terms as DA—and his wife Ida Louise Blodgett Palmer, president of the Women’s
Political Equality League during the 1911 campaign for women’s suffrage, when California women
finally gained the right to vote. Houses associated with historically significant women, particularly
first-wave feminists, are extremely rare.
Period of Significance The period of significance extends through C. A. Palmer and Ida
Palmer’s occupation, 1903–1921, while he served as District Attorney in 1903–1907 and 1911–
1919 and while she led the local women’s suffrage campaign in 1911.
Character-Defining Features The architectural significance of the Palmer House resides in its
high peak and acute gable angle; dormers and rare —possibly unique—closet accent windows that
adapt to this design; the rare and well preserved tea or living hall, expressed externally in stained-
glass and diamond-paned fenestration and Colonial Revival door; additional original fenestration;
Tuscan-columned and high-peaked entry porch; novelty wall siding and shingle gable siding; eave
modillions; and rare Bishop Peak granite foundation.
The historic significance is expressed through the association of these features with Charles and
Ida Palmer.
High Degree of Integrity The Palmer House “possesses […] most if not all seven aspects of
integrity, … retains nearly all of those features and materials that would have characterized it during
its period of significance, [… and] still possess[es] those essential physical features necessary to tell
[its] story,” as “high degree of integrity” is defined by the Secretary of the Interio r for the National
Historic Landmarks Program since 2023—though the secretary adds that these are not to be taken
as “one-size-fits-all” or “rigid” standards.
The Palmer House retains its location, high-peaked design, materials, workmanship, turn-of-the-
century suburban setting, and feeling and association with Charles and Ida Palmer, who would
clearly recognize it if they returned from their well earned rest .
James Papp, PhD • Historian & Architectural Historian, City & County of San Luis Obispo
964 Chorro St, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 • 805 -470-0983 •
papp.architectural.history@gmail.com
Research assistance by N. Y. North.
Submitted 1 June 2026 on behalf of Jennifer and Lucas Pierce
Page 52 of 76
3
Contents
Summary Conclusion 1
Timeline: Occupancy 4
Timeline: Alterations 5
A Brief Historiographic Context for Evaluating Landmark Applications 9
Palmer House Construction and Preservation History 14
Historic Significance 16
Historic Association: Event 16
Historic Association: Persons, Charles and Ida Palmer 11
Architectural Significance 19
Embodiment of Distinctive Characteristics of a Type 12
Work of a Master 21
High Artistic Standards 21
Information Potential 21
Integrity to Convey Significance 22
Conclusion 26
Page 53 of 76
4
Timeline: Occupancy
1903 Feb. 28 The house of District Attorney C. A. Palmer (1862–1926) is “well along toward
completion” (“Rubble Stone Foundations,” San Luis Obispo Tribune, p. 4).
1909 C. A. Palmer’s house is advertised for rent (“For Rent—C. A. Palmer’s house,”
Daily Telegram, 6 July–10 Sep., pp. 4, 7, and 16).
1913–1921 Charles A. Palmer, his wife Ida, and family continue to be located at 1811 Chorro
in news items by the Telegram (“Entertaining Guest,” 14 June 1913, p. 5; “March
11—WCTU at Mrs. C. A. Palmer’s Home,” 10 Mar. 1921, p. 5). They
subsequently move to 1134 Palm Street.
1922 Frederick and Mary Willut are living at 1811 Chorro when Mary dies in hospital
and Frederick dies at home (“Frederick Willut and Wife Die in Same Hour
Sunday,” Telegram, 9 Oct. 1922, p. 8).
1923 Ewell and Ida Cox transfer a house on High Street to George P. Kegel in exchange
for the Palmer House at 1811 Chorro (“Property Transferred,” Telegram, 7 Apr.
1923, p. 5).
1924–1958 Ewell Cox (1885–1956), Southern Pacific signalman, is living at 1811 Chorro (“To
Share in Patent Money,” Telegram, 12 Feb. 1924, p. 1). Despite rumors of
accession to a large oil fortune from his brother, he continues to live at 1811 with
his wife Ida through 1954 (Polk’s San Luis Obispo City Directory) and presumably
to his 1956 death (tombstone, San Luis Cemetery, findagrave.com), renting
furnished rooms and a furnished apartment, with two to three lodgers appearing in
each of the 1930, 1940, and 1950 censuses (and the Coxes’ son and daughter in
1930). Ida Cox continues in residence through 1958 (Polk’s) as a widow.
1960–1976 Residents recorded at 1811 Chorro in Polk’s change too often to establish
association.
Page 54 of 76
5
Timeline: Alterations
1903 Construction of the Palmer House at 1811 Chorro on a Bishop Peak granite
foundation.
1905 The 1905 Sanborn Map reveals a one-story, three-space lean-to attached to the rear
of the house and most of its width. The two side spaces are likely porches; the
dotted lines signifying this are clearer on the 1909 map. The rear lean -to with
porches was presumably added between 1903 and 1905, as the Bishop Peak granite
perimeter foundation ends with the 1½-story house. The front entry porch has not
yet been added in 1905.
Orientation: 1811 Chorro in 1905, 1909, 1926, and today, showing lot changes
1905 Sanborn Map
1926 Sanborn Map
1909 Sanborn Map
Current Google Satellite view
1906 An anonymous 1906 panoramic three-part photograph taken from Terrace Hill
(Special Collections and Archives, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo; detail on page 1)
shows the columned entry porch and south porch of the rear lean-to. The entry
Page 55 of 76
6
Top left to right: 1905 Sanborn
Map, showing rear lean-to with
side porches; 1909 Sanborn,
showing entry porch and canted
bay; and 1926 Sanborn,
showing extended but open
front porch, southeast nearly
full-length lean-to and the
removal of the original rear
lean-to and its replacement by
the current extension and side-
porch. Bottom left to right:
1963 aerial photo, showing an
entry extension to the southeast
addition extending to the right;
and current Google Satellite
image, showing the 1998 rear
glass extension. The glass
extension has since been
removed, along with its
neighboring bedroom
extension to the left.
Page 56 of 76
7
porch does not yet have its Chinese Chippendale railing. The photograph also
shows the southeast dormer, which currently accommodates a bathroom (and likely
did then) and is probably original. The northwest dormer is necessary to
accommodate the stairs to the second story so is certainly original
1909 The 1909 Sanborn Map shows a canted bay has been added to the northwest side.
It currently has no center window. This was a common form in the era, though not
the most typical form, and is likely original. This is the last documented addition of
the Palmer era, though the family continued to live there for another 12 years.
1923 During 9–13 February, furnished rooms and a furnished apartment are being
offered at 1811 Chorro, which suggests that the house has been expanded at the
ground level either to the side or rear (or both) (“For Rent,” p. 4). No such ads
appear in the Palmer era, and Ida and Charles Palmer, according to the 1920 US
Census, were living only with their two daughters, which suggests the house was
expanded soon after sale. By 7 Apr., Ewell and Ida Cox have acquired the
property. By 9 Apr., they begin to advertise bedrooms with bath; Apr. 14, furnished
rooms with bath (“For Rent,” Telegram, p. 4); and 28 Apr.–5 May, “Lot, corner of
Church and Chorro,” the undeveloped half of the property (“For Sale,” Telegram,
p. 4).
1926 The 1926–1956 Sanborn Map book (History Center of San Luis Obispo County)
shows an open porch extended south from the entry porch on the front of the
house and lean-to on the south side almost the length of the house. The original
lean-to on the rear appears to have been removed and replaced with a longer,
narrower extension with an open side porch. This appears to be the same
dimensions as the current extension, including a bedroom and bath. The side lean -
to currently holds three rooms divided by two walls: a front kitchen and bedroom
as part of the same suite (with a wall between them, the connection being a room in
the main house with a side door on the now-enclosed front entry porch for ingress)
and a rear kitchen connected to the main part of the house (with another
interposing wall in the lean-to).
1929 Ewell Cox applies for a four-stall garage permit and in 1930 begins to advertise
“Bedroom with bath; garage” (16 Sep. 1929, San Luis Obispo Building Permits
Collection, 1906–1937, Special Collections and Archives, Cal Poly San Luis
Obispo; “For Rent Rooms,” Telegram, 20 Feb. 1930, p. 5).
1930 Ewell Cox applies for a permit for “frame remodel to convert to 3 rm. Apt” (14
Apr. 1930, collection cited). On 13 July 1931 he begins to advertise, “Cool
downstairs 4 rm unfur apt” (“Apartments for Rent, Telegram, p. 7). This is likely
the southeast side addition, possibly including enclosure of the front porch.
1932 Ewell Cox applies on 11 February for an “8’ by 8’ sun-rm addition of siding and
glass” (collection cited). This is likely a rear addition on the southeast lean-to, which
is eight feet deep. It goes unrecorded on the Sanborn Map.
1940 “Cosy 3 room apartment with fireplace, garage” is being advertised at 1811 Chorro,
suggesting the entry hall is included in this configuration or has been walled in. The
Cox children are no longer living in the house, according to the US Census for that
year.
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1954 Ewell Cox receives a permit to repair and remodel front porch at 1811 Chorro
(“City Permits $30,000; Two New Homes,” Telegram-Tribune, 26 Mar. p. 5).
1963 Aerial photo shows the addition of an entry porch (6’ x 6.5’) on the southeast
addition extending toward the southeast (Flight IMC-349, frame 17-122B, 20–24
July 1963, Blaine Thompson Aerial Photography, UCSB Aerial Photography
Collection)
1998 The next permit for an addition appears to be for the glass “patio room at rear
deck, permitted 17 Feb. 1998.
2026 The 1998 glass extension, a fire hazard from reflection, and the circa 1923 rear
bedroom extension are removed.
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9
A Brief Historiographic Context for Evaluating Landmark Applications
At the dawn of the formally organized preservation movement, the federal government, through
the National Register of Historic Places, created a set of criteria that would allow any small
community to document and celebrate its local built history, through
• association with the community’s important events or historic trends;
• association with leaders of their profession, industry, or community, or with significant
artists of inventors; or
• as displaying the characteristics of particular architectural types or construction methods or
periods, as examples of the work of master builders or architects, or examples of high
artistic values.
Integrity of location, design, materials, workmanship, setting, feeling, and association had to be
sufficient to convey the resource’s significance: as a rule of thumb, it had to retain “the features
without which a property can no longer be identified as, for instance, a late-nineteenth-century
dairy barn or an early-twentieth-century commercial district” (How To Apply the National Register
Criteria for Evaluation, p. 46).
These criteria gave wide leeway for communities to landmark their historic buildings and districts
in terms of their local significance, including resources that had suffered considerable decay or had
undergone (or could ideally undergo) considerable adaptive reuse—for the historic preservation
movement went hand in hand, for federal purposes, with the urban renewal movement.
Nonetheless, San Luis Obispo’s Historic Preservation Program began in the 1980s with such an
acute inferiority complex that it established guidelines of significance even more lenient than those
of the National Register and never mentioned integrity at all. Where the NRHP defined a
historically significant person as a community leader or someone significant in their professional
field, San Luis Obispo’s 1987 guidelines included as a significant person anyone who had made
“[c]ontributions which, though minor, directly or indirectly, had a beneficial effect on the
community (i.e., firemen, law enforcement officers, postal workers, businessmen/shopkeepers, city
employees, etc.).” Clearly, the Historic Resource Evaluation’s researchers were relieved to find any
past occupants of buildings they wanted to save, and any occupant would have to do. Where past
occupants were found, however, the vast majority of DPR [California Department of Parks and
Recreation form] 523 evaluations from the 1980s gave no clue as to whether it was the occupant,
historic trend, architecture, or construction method that was the source of significance.
Historic Preservation in San Luis Obispo (and America in general) does not exist in an idealized
vacuum but has always been a function of social , political, and economic goals confronting
practical realities. Preservation—whether in the sense of the maintenance of older properties or the
idea that older properties are important to our sense of community history —has often been the
preserve of the wealthy. The federal push for historic preservation in the late 1960s and early
1970s was, conversely, justified with the goal of urban renewal of once grand, by then decayed,
even ghettoized areas. Conversely again, such preserved and restored areas usually then became
gentrified and unaffordable to their then occupants. San Luis Obispo’s historic properties, once
available unrestored for a few tens of thousands of dollars, now go for multiple millions.
The City of San Luis Obispo first identified potential historic properties and districts in the 1970s
as part of federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grants. The criteria used for inclusion
and ranking have not been preserved.
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San Luis Obispo’s Historic Resources Survey followed in 1982 –1983, with the establishment in
1987 of the Master List of 151 historic resources and 130 “Contributing Properties within
Historical Preservation Districts.” The grandly named Master List was not a list of masterworks but
merely a master list of resources of five degrees: properties on the National Register, “determined
to be eligible” for the National Register, “eligible” for the National Register, “potentially eligible”
for the National Register, and “not eligible” for the National Register.
It is not clear how these ratings were made and why properties were put on or left off the list. For
instance, of the city’s four Double -Bay-Front Eastlake cottages, all in historic districts, the Goldtree -
McCaffrey Building, converted into as building and the least integrity, was rated potentially eligible
for the National Register and the Lewin House not eligible; while the McCabe House was not
included on the Master List and Dana-Barneberg House (with the highest degree of integrity) not
even on the Contributing List. The 1987 Historic Preservation Program Guidelines that
established the Master List never mentioned integrity, and it was rarely cited in the state DPR 523
form that was filled out for each resource on the Master List.
The Master List reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the National Register as a national
register of locally significant resources. In reality, most Contributing List properties—which San
Luis considered not even eligible to be “not eligible for the National Register”—would qualify.
The one statistical difference between the Master List and the Contributing List were that those
buildings on the former were bigger and those on the latter were smaller. I have discerned no
other consistent difference over a decade of comparing the two lists.
In 2010 San Luis seems to have engaged in bout o f reactive pearl-clutching, as, with the passage of
Historic Preservation Ordinance in 2010, it caromed to the opposite extreme of exclusivity,
imposing integrity standards that bizarrely matched those of National Historic Landmarks (the
highest standard of federal designation) and significance standards of rarity and uniqueness , which
are absent, for good reason, from any criteria at the national level. NRHP and National Landmark
resources are supposed to be representative, not eccentric one-offs.
The result was an unsustainably bifurcated system torn between old-lax and new-rigid—and an
instantaneous return to earth. The first Master Listing after passage of the 2010 ordinance was the
1874 Norcross House, the significance of which was attributed to its construction and occupation
by then–county sheriff D. C. Norcross (1872–1876), clearly a leader of his law enforcement
profession and community but scarcely a rare or unique one: in fact, little is known of him. The
integrity of the Norcross House had been severely compromised by the replacement of its original
two-over-two 1870s street façade windows with early-twentieth-century Colonial Revival diamond
pane and plate glass windows, the replacement of its original balcony French window with a
Colonial Revival window, and the replacement of its balcony and supporting front porch with a
pergola-style porch sometime after the 1930s. Subsequently, the CHC further compromised its
integrity by allowing demolition of the original rear wing, documented in Carleton Watkins’ iconic
1876 panoramic photograph of San Luis Obispo from the west , two years after the house was built
and during Norcross’s occupation. (The present author voted against this inexplicable act of
vandalism, passed to suit a developer who has since fled the state under threat of indictment.)
Through the 2010s and early 2020s, CHC practice and precedent accepted that a property’s
association with an early official or other professional leader (in line with NRHP Criteria) or status
as a unique, earliest, or best exemplification of an architectural style within a historic district
justified Master Listing.
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11
Master Listings from this period include the
• 1876 Robert Pollard House, whose significance was shared by Pollard’s service as County
Coroner, daughter Frances Pollard’s involvement as the only woman in the founding of the
local of the International Typographical Union, and later resident Pauline Bray Martin’s work
as the first woman bank clerk in San Luis Obispo
• 1874 Lozelle and Katie Flickinger Graham House, as the oldest documented house in its
original condition and location in the Railroad District and an embodiment of Italianate
architecture at cottage scale
• 1936 Edla Muir House and Garage for their design by leading California woman architect Edla
Muir, rare San Luis construction by F. C. Stolte (the contractor for Hearst Castle), and
embodiment the distinctive characteristics of Lutyensesque Late Georgian Revival
• Circa 1888 Virginia Levering Latimer House, as the surviving Italianate house with the best
integrity in the Mill Street Historic District
• 1907 Thomas and May Brecheen House, for embodying the distinctive characteristics of
Colonial Bungalow form with a unique attention to simplicity and geometry
• 1931–1932 E. E. Christopher House, embodying the transition from revival to abstract
aesthetics in the Minimal Traditional, with high artistic standards shown in its rhythmic gables,
rare barrel-vaulted living room, and extremely rare tower -room swagged ceiling
• 1962 Ken and Martha Schwartz, 1962 Pimentel -Orth, and 1966 Page-Selkirk Houses, for their
Modernist and Futurist design by local master architect Ken Schwartz, FAIA, and the first for
its association with Ken Schwartz as a professional and community leader .
• 1926 Tiny Mart (now High Street Deli), as the first Black-owned business in San Luis Obispo
where the owners (Frank and Alberta Bell) were also allowed, in 1966, to purchase the
premises
• circa 1880s D. M. and Carrie Proper Meredith House for D. M. Meredith’s early roles in
education and finance and for its Swiss Revival architecture
• Theresa Torres True House (between 1891 and 1905), for being the only Queen Anne cottage
in the Mill Street Historic District (though it is, in fact, Eastlake, and there are other Eastlake
and Queen Anne cottages in the district)
• Leonard Hill House, despite a half-story addition to the roof, judged significant as John
Chapek’s first project as a professional contractor (not true: Chapek’s surviving John T.
Anderson House at 1946 Chorro [Tribune: “Proceedings in County Offices,” 24 Oct. 1902, p.
3, and 25 Dec. 1902, p. 2; “John T. Anderson Buys,” 19 Feb. 1903, p. 4], Chapek Cottage at
1041 Leff [Tribune: 25 Feb. 1903, “Will Build Two Houses,” p. 1; “Recorder’s Office: Wm
Duff to John Chapek,” 25 Feb. 1903, p. 4], and William Alberts House at 865 Buchon [“Buys
to Build,” Tribune, 23 Apr. 1904, p. 4], all unlisted, and Landmark Hourihan House at 860
Buchon [“Work to Begin,” Tribune, 15 Sep. 1904, p. 1] predate the Hill House, as well as
several since demolished)
• Dana-Barneberg House (between 1886 and 1891) for its “Victorian vernacular” (in fact Eastlake
double-bay-front) architecture and association with early county clerk Charles William Dana,
businessman John Wesley Barneberg, and social activist Grace Barneberg (though the house
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12
was constructed years after Dana sold the property, and Grace Barneberg did not inhabit it
during the period of her significance )
As for the high level of integrity demanded by the 2010 HPO, the US Department of the Interior
helpfully defined “integrity” for National Register nominations and “high degree of integrity” for
National Landmark nominations in 1997 and 1999, respectively, as seen below:
How to Apply the National Register Criteria for
Evaluation (Washington, DC: Department of
the Interior, 1997)
Assessing Integrity in Properties (pp. 45–49)
A property that is significant for its historic
association is eligible if it retains the essential
physical features that made up its character or
appearance during the period of its association
with the important event, historical pattern, or
person(s). If the property is a site (such as a
treaty site) where there are no material cultural
remains, the setting must be intact. (p. 46)
A property important for illustrating a particular
architectural style or construction technique
must retain most of the physical features that
constitute that style or technique. A property
that has lost some historic materials or details
can be eligible if it retains the majority of the
features that illustrate its style [my italics] in
terms of the massing, spatial relationships,
proportion, pattern of windows and doors,
texture of materials, and ornamentation. The
property is not eligible, however, if it retains
some basic features conveying massing but has
lost the majority of the features that once
characterized its style. (p. 46)
How to Prepare National Historic Landmark
Nominations (Washington, DC: US
Department of the Interior, 1999)
Defining a High Degree of Integrity (pp. 36–37)
A property that is significant for its historical
association should retain the essential physical
features that made up its character or
appearance during the period of its association
with the important event, historical pattern, or
person(s). If the property is a site where there
are no material cultural remains, such as a
battlefield, the setting must be intact. If the
historic building associated with the event,
pattern, or person no longer exists, the property
has lost its historical integrity. (p. 37)
A property important for illustrating a particular
architectural style or construction technique
must retain the physical features that constitute
that style or technique. A property that has lost
some historic materials or details can be
considered if it retains the majority of the
features that illustrate its style [my italics] in
terms of the massing, spatial relationships,
proportion, pattern of windows and doors,
texture of materials, and ornamentation. A
property should not be considered if it retains
some basic features conveying massing but has
lost the majority of the features that once
characterized its style. (p. 37)
If these two definitions look the same, it is because they are. In 2023 “High degree of integrity” was
loosened with a “qualitative framework” to allow more nontraditional (non -White) resources as
National Landmarks. Yet Manzanar has long been a National Landmark with only three of its 830
original buildings surviving, while the Theodore Roosevelt is a reconstruction built after his death ,
and as someone who has visited and been moved by both, I would argue for the expulsion of
neither.
The reality is that what is chosen to be historically preserved rarely replicates a great chain of being
of significance and integrity. Historic preservation is motivated sometimes by the cultural interest,
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sometimes the economic interests, and sometimes by the emotions of property owners, sometimes
by the interests of NIMBYs (i.e., nearby property owners), most rarely by professional or amateur
preservationists or government officials when they see important and irreplaceable resources
threatened with irreversible destruction. As well, historic resource surveys and historic resource
evaluations are imperfect documents, often subsequently contradicted by newly available data and
more rigorous analysis.
There are currently about 15,000 structures in the City of San Luis Obispo. Around 200 of these
are Landmarks, or about 1.3 percent, and 500 are Local Register Resources, or about 3.3 percent ,
concentrated in the roughly one square mile that was originally historically surveyed in our now-
thirteen-square-mile city. Add Landmarks, Local Register Resources, and a few dozen overlooked
unlisted resources together, and they still comprise less than 5 percent of the city’s building stock—
hence are “of the greatest importance” locally, if “greatest importance” is understood in its
technical, grammatical sense as a comparative rather than its rhetorical, Barnumesque sense as a
superlative phrase. Old buildings, let alone architecturally or historically significant buildings,
represent a tiny sliver of our resources.
Most Local Register Resources already fulfill the significance and integrity criteria of the National
Register of Historic Places and California Register of Historical Resources (and, under the new
SLO HPO, if placed on either of these registers, they would automatically become City
Landmarks). Probably only one or two dozen resources in the city fulfill the significance and
integrity standards of National Historic Landmarks for “exceptional value in illustrating or
interpreting the heritage of the United States” or California Historical Landmarks for being th e
first, last, only, or most significant of its type in the state; associated with profound influence on
California history; or prototypes or outstanding examples of architecture or construction or of
master architects or builders. But in the City of San Luis Obispo there are currently no National
Historic Landmarks and only three California Historical Landmarks (the Mission, Dallidet Adobe,
and Ah Louis Store, the most recent designated in 1965). It would be a useful CHC discussion to
identify additional candidates and plan their nomination.
Nevertheless, for the most part, it is our local events, locally prominent figures, and locally
significant architecture and building methods that tell our story—explain our meaning—as a
community. With fewer than 5 percent of our structures protected, and the state legislature
parroting the YIMBY/developer thesis that the cause of the housing crisis is not accelerating
polarization of wealth and poverty but too many old buildings —with their already-embodied
carbon, cost, and culture—standing in the way of unaffordable new ones, San Luis Obispo seems in
little danger of over-preserving. Yes, the CHC’s job is to police preservation, but its founding
purpose is also to promote preservation, the stories it sustains, and the meaning it enhances.
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Palmer House Construction and Preservation History
The primary residence at 1811 Chorro Street was constructed in 1903 on a foundation of Bishop
Peak granite for then–District Attorney Charles A. Palmer and suffragist Ida Palmer by John
Horton, assisted by Albert and Harry Lyman—the first documented construction project of Harry
Lyman, who would go on to be a master San Luis Obispo builder-architect.
Left: The San Luis Obispo Tribune, 28 February 1903, p. 4, on
the use of Bishop Peak granite in the construction of the
Palmer House and documenting for the first time Harry
Lyman’s involvement in a construction project. Above: The
Palmer House in 1906 (detail from a panorama from Terrace
Hill, Cal Poly Special Collections). Below: The Palmer House
in 1982, photographed for the Historic Resources Survey,
showing a front porch added and enclosed.
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In the city’s 1983 Historic Resources Survey it was identified as the “‘old’ Cox home,” referencing
its long occupation (1923–1958) by Southern Pacific signalman Ewell Cox and his wife, also Ida.
Its Bishop Peak granite foundation was noted and its style denominated “Eastern Shingle.”
“Eastern Shingle” is not a category that occurs in 1970s or
1980s historic architecture guides, and it is puzzling why San
Luis’s surveyors should have used it for buildings in the West,
but they did for Eastlake and Colonial Revival buildings that
were fully shingled (the LeRoy Smith House), gable shingled
(the Aston House), or even minimally shingled in the gable
peak (the Brooks House). “Shingle Style” (neither Eastern nor
Western) is a term invented by Yale architectural historian for
his 1955 book The Shingle Style: Architectural Theory and
Design from Richardson to the Origins of Wright.
The phrase took hold of the public imagination (or the
imaginations of authors of American architectural guidebooks)
in the early preservation era, though it was never how architects
and builders of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
thought of their own work. For them, Queen Anne, Eastlake,
Elizabethan, Colonial, etc. were styles, whereas shingle,
clapboard, brick, stone, stucco, etc., were cladding. What Scully
suggested, which is that America’s predominant wood
construction materials influenced our popular architecture, is a
reasonable conclusion, but what his less careful readers
concluded, which is that every building with shingle-clad walls is
a style distinct from other styles, falls apart as soon as you
replace the shingles with clapboard or novelty siding—or
remove the shingles to find (as with the aforementioned Aston
House) original clapboard beneath—yet realize that it’s as Swiss,
Queen Anne, Colonial, Eastlake, or Prairie as it ever was.
In fact, the Palmer House is an example of a style at the time
called Dutch Colonial in the Bay Area (article at right),
consisting of houses with a usually street-facing gable of
extremely acute angle and drawn up to a third story in height
(though only the first and the second half story were generally
habitable). It may well have evolved from the gambrel roofs
commonly considered characteristic of wood Dutch Colonial
Revival in the rest of the United States.
Oakland Enquirer, 12 June
1899, p. 3
Conservation Area #1 from the city’s 1979 Historical and Architectural Conservation Element was
originally drawn to include 1811 Chorro, but when it ultimately became the Old Town Historic
District, it looped, for unknown reasons, away that section of Chorro and Garden. Hence 1811
Chorro was never Contributing or (unlike the cater-corner Aston House) Master Listed.
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Historic Significance
Historic Association: Event Contemporary newspapers report no significant event at 1811
Chorro Street.
Historic Association: Person The house is “of the greatest importance at the local level” for
its association with C. A. Palmer, an early local official, who lived there from 1903 to 1921, during
his three terms as county district attorney: 1903–1907, 1911–1915, and 1915–1919, and for its
association with Ida Palmer, who was a local women’s suffrage leader during the successful
campaign to extend the vote to women in California in 1911. Ida Palmer also lived in the house
from 1903 to 1921, including the period of her significance as a suffragist
The subsequent long-term residents, Southern Pacific signalman Ewell Cox and his wife Ida, from
1923 to (respectively) 1956 and 1958, do not rise to the level of historic significance, as neither had
a leadership role in profession or community.
Charles A. Palmer (right, from 28 May 1910 p. 1 Telegram
article, “Mr. Palmer to Make the Race Against Nelson”) was
born in 1862 in Nevada County, graduated from the University
of Michigan law school in 1890, came to San Luis Obispo to
practice law in 1894, and was nominated on the Republican
ticket for county district attorney in 1898 and elected in 1902,
1910, and 1914 to four-year terms. He ran again in 1918 and
1922 and was not elected but served as assistant district attorney
1924–1926, dying 25 January 1926 at age 63. He also served 15
years on the city school board, including as president
(“Attorney Charles A. Palmer Expires Here: Pioneer in County
Law Dies at Noon,” Morning Tribune, 26 Jan. 1926, p. 1). The
Herald-Recorder noted his reputation for mercy and leniency
(“C. A. Palmer Passes to Last Rest,” 28 Jan. 1926, p. 1 ). As an
early local official who resided at 1811 Chorro during his
period of significance, he lends historical significance to the
property under the terms of the city’s Historic Preservation
Ordinance.
In the new age of the automobile, and at the beginning of his second term, Palmer called for
enforcement of the state’s new legislation making intoxicated driving a misdemeanor: “District
Attorney Urges Enforcement of New Law” (Telegram, 26 Sep. 1911, p. 2). He criticized the laxity
of police in enforcement and urged the law’s universal benefit. At the beginning of his third term,
he started an investigation of local reckless driving in concert with the Highway Commission and
again promised prosecutions. He followed up by spending a day with the sheriff at Templeton and
Paso Robles investigating a drunk driving incident and made front page news by prosecuting the
driver, ranch hand Glenn Heaton, who pleaded guilty and apparently had no subsequent run -ins
with the law (“Glenn Heaton to Be Prosecuted,” Telegram, 7 Mar. 1917, p.1).
Hands-on and hard-charging, Palmer pursued investigations for illegal gambling and bootlegging,
accompanying officers on nighttime raids in remote sections of the county and charging prominent
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17
citizens, such as Jake See, a candidate for sheriff.1 He even charged a peace officer with murder,
though the jury quickly acquitted (“Frank Bardin Not Guilty Says Jury after Thirty Minutes
Deliberation,” Telegram, 8 Sep. 1913, p. 1).
Scrupulous about the law, Palmer could also show up to city council meetings to support aggrieved
citizens, suggesting ways to keep steam laundries and creameries out of residential districts
(“Doings of City Trustees,” 8 Aug. 1905, p. 4), and he repeatedl y consulted the state attorney
general on local legal dilemmas. On one occasion, he prosecuted a couple on a motorcycle trip
from Los Angeles to Marysville for setting a grassfire, then helped pay their $25 judgment when
the woman burst into tears (“Secures Conviction; Chips in on Fine,” Telegram, 10 Aug. 1912, p.
1).
Meanwhile, Ida Palmer became an organizer for women’s suffrage. Having come to California as
an infant by covered wagon, she worked as a teacher in Yolo and San Joaquin Counties and, after
marrying Charles Palmer and arriving here in 1894, also taught in the one -room schools of rural
San Luis as late as 1907, well after her husband became district attorney, so it was clearly a labor of
love or duty, as with other privileged women teaching in our one-room schools, like Grace
Barneberg (“School Notes,” Telegram, 11 Feb. 1908, p. 6).
Ida Palmer was documentably a competent committeewoman. For instance, 1904 saw her become
secretary of the Southside Improvement Club, during a meeting held in the Palmer House, while
she was also serving as president of the Ladies Aid Society of the Congregational Church.2 But it
was as a local suffrage leader, when votes for women was finally to pass in California, that she
became documentably historically significant, a community leader intersecting with a historic trend.
Fifteen years earlier, in 1896, California had voted on women’s suffrage. Susan B. Anthony
tirelessly canvassed the state and stayed a night in San Luis with the wife of the Southern Pacific
stationmaster (address unknown; the family did not preserve the s ite but built a new house the next
year). She spoke at the Männerchorhalle at 742 Marsh (more recently the site of the Bluebird and
LS Co. hair salons). Rural areas, dominated by the sexually egalitarian Grange, ended up voting for
women’s suffrage, while the big cities (San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles), dominated by
the political machines that had the most to lose, voted against. San Luis Obispo County voted for,
the city very slightly against. In the end, Idaho passed votes for women that year, and California’s
campaign went down to defeat. Ida Palmer had just moved to San Luis two years before, but we
have no documentation of her involvement.
Fifteen years later, however, Ida Palmer was appointed chair of the first meeting of “the ladies who
are actively interested in the progress of the movement for the enfranchisement of women,” held at
the Congregational Church August 23, 1911, which made front page news above the fold in the
Telegram, which supported the movement. She soon became the league’s founding president.3
The Women’s Political Equality League was a San Luis–based group that was affiliated with the
1. “50 Years Ago,” Telegram-Tribune, 16 July 1962, p. 6; “Charges Jake See with Complicity,” 22 July
1918, p. 1
2. (“Organized for Business,” Tribune, 16 Apr. 1904, p. 4; “Aid Society’s Report,” Tribune, 3 Feb. 1904, p.
1.
3. Telegram: “Organize League of Suffrage,” 24 Aug. 1911, p. 1; “Notice,” 28 Sep. 1911, p. 5.
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Central Equality League in Los Angeles, bringing guest speakers from that city. It made news for
large attendance, and soon spread to Paso Robles.4
This time, the referendum in October passed, in San Luis County, San Luis City, and California as
a whole, changing the political landscape not only for women but also for men and their political
parties. Not content with leading the local women’s suffrage movement, the following year Ida
Palmer was representing the Congregational Church in women’s effort to educate new voters
(“Women to Study Political Needs through New Class,” Telegram, 23 Feb. 1912, p. 8).
4. Telegram:; “Political Equality League Has Meeting,” 26 Aug. 1911, p. 4; “Political Equality League Has
Meeting This Afternoon," Sep 14, 1911, p. 8; “Political Equality League Organized in Paso Robles,” 11
Sep. 1911, p. 1.
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Architectural Significance
Embodiment of Type The Charles and Ida Palmer House
is one of two in San Luis Obispo that embody the popular San
Francisco Bay Area style known, at the turn of the twentieth
century, when it was being built, as Dutch Colonial but, since
the turn of the twenty-first century, as High-Peaked Colonial
(see p. 15, “Realty and Building: Remarkable Popularity of the
Dutch Colonial Style,” from the Oakland Enquirer, 12 June
1899). Absent some compelling reason, using the historic rather
than a modern term for an architectural style should be the
default, as this communicates the contemporary content and
understanding. The Oakland Enquirer records J. H. Simpson
introducing Dutch Colonial in the East Bay and putting up 10
houses, with A. W. Smith building 27 from the beginning of
1898 through mid 1899. Berkeley has some 200 survivors,
according to berkeleyheritage.com; they also populate Oakland
and San Francisco.
The 1½-story Dutch Colonial Bungalow was known elsewhere
in the United States but was much more likely to be gambrel
roofed. Below, a plain peaked roof—squatter than the Bay Area
version—is sandwiched between gambrels in Tonawanda, NY,
all three with later roof lines expanding their cubic footage in
strikingly inelegant fashion.
J. H. Simpson House by A. W.
Smith, Oakland, 1898 (Daniella
Thompson, “High-Peaked
Colonial, a Bay Area
Phenomenon,” 14 Mar. 2006,
berkeleyheritage.com)
Bay Area Dutch Colonials
almost always occupy narrow
suburban lots with street-facing
gables. San Luis’s other example,
however—the LeRoy Smith
House (architect William H.
Weeks, 1906), above—occupies a
corner, where its long side on
Mill becomes its entrance façade.
(Its shed dormers are original.)
San Luis has a non–Bay Area–style, gambrel-roofed Dutch Colonial with street-facing gable (the
circa 1908–1912 Landmark Bullard House, 1624 Morro); two Colonial Revival corner houses,
with both gambrel and plain gables in cruciform (the 1903º1904 Landmark Aston House [1746
Chorro, and 1903–1904 Landmark Judge Unangst House [1720 Johnson {both built designed and
by R. S. Aston, newly arrived Bakersfield builder, the latter with changes by Unangst, according to
his daughter}]); and a cruciform plain-gable corner house (the 1902 Charles Porter House, 844
Upham, unlisted) near the Palmer House. Yet none of these has the high-peaked effect of the
Smith and Palmer Houses, with their three-story height, acute gable angles, and single roof ridge
echoing Bay Area examples. The architect of the Smith House, William Weeks, was based in
Watsonville, did much work in the Bay Area, and would have been familiar with its Dutch
Colonial style, as would his client LeRoy Smith, who had worked in San Francisco. I have been
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able to find no information on John Horton, the Palmer House contractor, other than the 1903
article so do not know if he had Bay Area connections that would have led to this design, or if it
was the Palmers’ initiative.
Top: Bullard, Aston, and
Porter Houses. Bottom: 3
“High-Peaked Colonials” of
estimated 200 in Berkeley
(Thompson, op. cit.)
Note the steep pitches and (non-functioning) second partial story of the Berkeley examples above—
emphasized even with multi-level dormers (whose upper levels appear also to have been non-
functioning). 2709 Dana and 2716 Telegraph, the Berkeley examples at left and right above, have
acute gable peak angles of 65° and 60°, respectively. The two photographs below show the Palmer
and Smith Houses with peak angles of 75°. In contrast, the Aston House, with crossed peaked and
gambrel roofs, and the Porter House, with crossed peaked roofs, each with their simple gables 90°,
are Colonial Bungalows but outside the realm of the higher, more acute, and single -axis aesthetic
that is specific to the turn-of-the-century Bay Area Dutch Colonial.
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The Smith House (previous page, right) adds a jetty and window on the narrow third level, but it
was built with nearly full-length shed dormers to make the half-story space function as nearly like a
full story as possible. The smaller peaked dormers of the Palmer House (above left) are more in
line with Bay Area models, which reflect the exterior structure on the interior. It does not have a
gable-peak window or decoration, but it does have closet windows (previous page, center) in both
corners of the gable base, front and back, a delightful and practical touch I have not seen
elsewhere. The one in the right rear was originally incorporated in an ell bedroom but later
separated. The Pierces are restoring the original configuration.
Below: Dutch Colonial houses in San Francisco. Note the double peaks at left and right, as well as
the center example with Tuscan columns characteristic of Colonial Bungalows, Ionic pilasters
typical of Queen Anne, an Eastlake-style square bay, and an oversized Eastlake sunburst pattern in
the gable.
Work of a Master Though Harry Lyman would go on to be a master of the California
Bungalow form, in 1903 he was just beginning his career in house building as an assistant
carpenter, having passed his medical exam to enter the Southern Pacific machine shops two years
before (“Harry Lyman,” San Luis Obispo Tribune, 8 Feb. 1901, p. 2). Thus the Palmer House
would not qualify as the work of a master through Lyman. There is no other contemporary
documentation on John Horton as a builder and none of an architect other than Horton, hence
the building would not appear to be significant as the work of a master.
High Artistic Standards The Palmer House has some admirable design touches, such as the
closet windows in the gable base corners, but does not hav e unusually high artistic standards for
Colonial Bungalows of the era.
Information Potential
There is no indication of potential for information important in history or prehistory in the
property, though the owners continue to discover details on such features as single -sided pocket
doors, paint, and wallpaper of interest to an architectural historian.
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Integrity to Convey Significance
NHL Bulletin: Guidelines for for Preparing National Historic Landmark Nominations
(Washington, DC: National Parks Service, 2023 ), p. 64:
The process of evaluating high integrity is not a matter of meeting or failing to meet a one-size-
fits-all threshold, and should not be interpreted as, in the language of the federal regulations,
establishing “a rigid standard for quality.” […]
A property retaining a sufficiently high degree of overall integrity […] will possess most if not all
seven aspects of integrity. Broadly speaking, having a high degree of integrity means that a
property retains nearly all of those features and materials that would have characterized it
during its period of significance. It is reasonable to expect that properties recognized for their
[…] significant stories would still possess those essential physical features necessary to tell these
stories […]. Nevertheless, the qualitative framework provides some flexibility in how integrity is
interpreted for a particular property.
This replaces the definition that, for decades, made “high degree of integrity” for National
Landmarks absolutely identical to “integrity” for the many -times-larger National Register (about
1,500 properties versus about 100,000) and was much ignored in practice, just as San Luis’s first
admission to the Master List after imposing National Landmark standards, the Norcross House,
had lost porch and fenestration and would go on to lose an original wing. Even the National Parks
Service 2023 definition imposes three conflicting standards:
• “most … aspects of integrity”
• “nearly all of those features and materials that would have characterized it during its period of
significance,” and
• “those essential physical features necessary to tell these stories”
As well, it hedges all three with “not … a one -size-fits-all threshold … [or] ‘a rigid standard for
quality.’”
With these varying definitions—and San Luis Obispo Landmarks’ and National Historic
Landmarks’ varying precedents—in mind, the Palmer House retains those essential physical
features necessary to tell its stories, nearly all of those features and materials that would have
characterized it during its period of significance, and all seven aspects of integrity.
Location The Palmer House occupies its original location.
Design The original Bay Area Dutch Colonial Palmer House rises on two and a half sides
(rear, southeast side, and partial street) somewhat like an ocean liner from the waves of low-pitch-
roofed, one-story additions. The street view from the north corner (next page left) is exactly as the
Palmers left it in 1921 and would be instantly recognizable to them, including the entry porch
added by 1906 and dining-room canted bay by 1909. The 1982 photograph (next page, right, the
same configuration as today but useful for the lack of obscuring shrubbery) reveals the extension
and subsequent enclosure of the porch. The porch may well have been extended after the 1909
Sanborn Map and before the Palmers sold in 1921 but can only be documented by 1926. These
additions tell the story of twentieth-century housing in San Luis, when three households occupied a
building built for one, but they are not the story of the house’s significance related to its Dutch
Colonial design and construction and occupation by District Attorney Charles and suffragist Ida
Palmer.
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That said, the Dutch Colonial profile still dominates, details like the dormers, Tuscan columns,
diamond panes, and unique closet windows have been retained, and the design clearly retains its
ability to convey its architectural and historical significance, particularly given that it has
experienced addition rather than destruction. Jennifer and Lucas Pierce have, in fact already
removed two anachronistic additions from the rear, one from the 1920s and one from the 1990s,
and there is the restoration potential to remove more additions in the future, which is not the case
(as in the Norcross House) with destruction of character-defining features.
Materials The main house’s materials—
including its novelty siding, casement windows
on the second floor street facade, modillions,
diamond-pane closet windows, Tuscan columns,
etc.—have largely been retained. New sash
windows have been installed on the second
floor, but the ground floor original walls appear
to have their original windows, as well as the
original Colonial Revival front door.
Above: The northwest façade’s original
diamond-pane casement windows lighting the
sitting hall (a revival of the baronial hall and
intended exclusively for serving tea). Left: the
hall’s original stained glass window.
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Some of their diamond-pane-topped sash windows, characteristically Colonial Revival , may be
originals that were reused on the additions; the 1906 photo is too distant to tell other than that they
had similar dimensions and crown molding. The long rear addition also uses the se windows,
however, which suggests they were still available in the 1920s and may not be original.
The additions have covered original materials
but have been clad in matching novelty siding.
With the exception of a Streamline Moderne –
style window in the front porch enclosure , the
additions would all appear to the observer as
original to the Colonial Revival era (and
Colonial Revival in modified forms continued
into the 1920s and 1930s). This would follow
modern SOI Standards of compatibility of
materials, features, size, scale, and massing but
not of differentiation. (The 1983 surveyor did
not note so probably did not notice the
additions as such.)
Above left: The shrunken baronial hall for tea-taking next to the fireplace, whose extant stained
glass and diamond-pane casement windows beautifully express its function to the exterior. A
similar room—borrowed from late-nineteenth-century nostalgic English country houses—exists in
the 1906 Page House, 1344 Mill.
The Bishop Peak granite perimeter foundation is in good shape, while the foundation of the rear
bedroom addition—characteristically of early-twentieth-century San Luis concrete—crumbled to the
touch. This is one of the additions removed by the Pierces.
In order to restore the shingled gables to their original unfinished appearance, the old painted
redwood shingles will have to be replaced by new cedar ones, as was the case with the entire wall
surface of the LeRoy Smith House some years ago, which had been painted white by previous
owners.
Workmanship Like materials, much of the detailed original workmanship is retained , and
much has been covered up on the ground floor by additions . In both cases, the effect is somewhat
lenticular: original from some views, nonoriginal from others. In aggregate, however, there is
clearly enough of the original materials and workmanship to convey the building’s significance.
Setting The early-twentieth-century suburban setting has largely been retained, including
Colonial Bungalows like the Aston and Porter Houses, Eastlake cottages like 1703 Chorro, and
later low-built California Bungalows. The Palmer House originally occupied a corner lot, but it was
built in narrow configuration on the interior half, presumably with the expectation that the lot
would be subdivided (as it was after the Palmers sold it).
Feeling As a combination of the previous five aspects of physical integrity, the feeling of the
Palmer House remains intact. Despite the additions on the side and porch, its profile and details
communicate its Colonial and high-peaked architectural significance.
Association There is no question that, if District Attorney C. A. Palmer and his suffragist wife
Ida Blodgett Palmer were dropped through time on the street in front of 1811 Chorro Street, they
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would instantly recognize their house, though they might look askance at one side. The exterior
and interior, through form and decorative detail, strongly convey their association with the Palmers
and their activities.
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Conclusion
The Charles and Ida Palmer House is significant and rare as the earlier of two Bay Area Dutch
Colonial houses in San Luis Obispo and as the residence of three-term County District Attorney
C. A. Palmer and suffragist Ida Blodgett Palmer during their period of significance. Landmarkings
for association with historically significant women have been exceedingly rare.
Changes to integrity of design, workmanship, and materials outside its 1903–1921 period of
significance are not substantial enough to prevent it from conveying its historical and architectural
significance, and by the latest National Landmark definition it retains the high degree of integrity to
convey its significance.
As such, it is eligible for the Landmark status that will, for the future, preserve and tell its stories of
early-twentieth-century progressive law enforcement, California’s successful 1911 women’s suffrage
campaign, and the innovation of high-peaked Bay Area Dutch Colonial architecture.
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