ANTA (Archives of New Traditional Architecture) - Fall 2022

New Spanish Colonial Revival Architecture

in Santa Barbara: A Continuing Tradition

MARC APPLETON

Spanish Colonial Revival architecture in Southern California had its beginning at the dawn of the twentieth century and quickly grew to become a major trend by the 1920s. It was a unique phenomenon, as the late historian David Gebhard observed:

In the twentieth century American architectural scene, there has been only one brief period of time and only one restricted geographic area in which there existed anything approaching a unanimity of architectural form. This was the period, from approximately 1920 through the early 1930s, when the Spanish Colonial or Mediterranean Revival was virtually the accepted norm in Southern California.1

The reasons for the appeal of this development are several, but they can perhaps be best explained by looking at the social, economic, political, and cultural context of Southern California’s rapidly increasing population and

or Rebirth?

phenomenal entrepreneurial growth at the time. Inventing the Dream by the late Kevin Starr, California’s state librarian, is a good primer for understanding the period.2

In the quote above, Gebhard doesn’t differentiate between “Spanish Colonial“ and “Mediterranean.” For current purposes it is important to distinguish Spanish Colonial Revival architecture from both “Mission” style architecture and “Mediterranean Revival” architecture. The Mission style obviously referenced architectural elements that were typical of the California mission buildings of the Spanish Conquest and Mexico that inspired it (Fig. 1). Mediterranean Revival architecture, although it included Spanish Colonial Revival, was a broader category that included influences from many regions bordering the Mediterranean Sea, including not just Spain but Southern France, Italy, Sicily, Majorca, Morocco, and Greece. Examples based on the Renaissance-era Italian villas are perhaps the most notable (Fig. 2). Spanish Colonial Revival architecture more specifically references the architecture of Andalusia in southern Spain and can also exhibit Islamic characteristics influenced by the Moorish culture that was dominant there prior to the sixteenth century and the Christian reconquest. Also worth mentioning is that Gebhard’s “Southern California” is a very large territory, even for a topic as specific as Spanish Colonial Revival architecture. For this reason it seems appropriate to focus on one of its epicenters, the City of Santa Barbara, California, which also coincidentally has had a significantly greater number of Spanish Colonial than Mediterranean Revival or Mission buildings. Doing so also dovetails nicely with Professor Dennis

ESSAY: CALIFORNIA NEW SPANISH COLONIAL REVIVAL ARCHITECTURE IN SANTA BARBARA

Doordan’s essay for this same publication.3 Doordan gives a fairly comprehensive explanation of why Santa Barbara became such a rich repository of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture and how a group of local concerned citizens was formed in the wake of the disastrous 1925 earthquake to not only inspire the rebuilding of the city as a Spanish town but institute a bureaucratic process to enforce it. They formed the Plans and Planning Committee, which eventually evolved into the city’s Board of Architectural Review.

The push to rebuild Santa Barbara as a Spanish town was actually underway before 1925; the quake simply provided a cleaner slate for it be

realized. Family residential architecture at the time had tended to follow many Spanish Colonial Revival houses that in fact predated the earthquake and its subsequent bureaucracy. Much of the work of local architects such as Reginald Johnson, George Washington Smith, Carlton Winslow Sr., and Soule, Hastings and Murphy was actually designed well before 1925, not by civic mandate but by their aesthetic choice and that of their clients. Even in the downtown commercial area, buildings such as James Osborn Craig’s El Paseo Arcade (1922–1923) (Fig. 3), and Smith’s Meridian Studios (1923) (Fig. 4), along with many of the early nineteenth-century adobes that survived the quake, were undoubtedly important touch-

Opposite page: Figure 1. Mission style architecture. This page, top: Figure 2. Mediterranean Revival architecture. Below left: Figure 3. El Paseo Arcade 1922–23). Below right: Figure 4. Meridian Studios (1923).

stones for the city’s rebuilding. To a significant degree, these earlier buildings provided the examples that the newly formed Plans and Planning Committee turned to, and many of them were memorialized in Phillip Staats’ California Architecture in Santa Barbara (1929).4 The book, which was commissioned by the Committee, essentially served as a community guidebook for the Spanish style and even included floor plans to aid architects and their clients.

As a practicing architect who has been acquainted with Santa Barbara’s architectural developments for the last fifty-plus years and appreciates the city enough to have now lived there for the last twenty, I would like to begin where Professor Doordan leaves off and look at what seems to have happened over the last half of the twentieth century and into the first quarter of the twenty-first.

The bureaucratic process which was developed following the earthquake of 1925 initially proved to have a beneficial impact on much of the rebuilding. Buildings such as the Santa Barbara County Courthouse (1925–1929) (Fig. 5) and Fox Arlington Theater (1929–1931) (Fig. 6) are worthy testaments to this. Some buildings, such as the Granada Theater Building (1922–1924), the only exception in the city to have been yearning for skyscraper stardom (Fig. 7), had earlier escaped their purview, but for the most part civic and commercial buildings towed the line with the Spanish Colonial Revival guidelines well into the 1930s and ’40s.

Doordan concludes his essay by saying “Santa Barbara evolved a regulatory framework to ensure that the past, present, and future remain aligned in a coherent and commodious manner.” The intentions were certainly there from

the beginning, but it would not be accurate to assume that the alignment has always been ensured. By mid-century the city’s Board of Architectural Review was increasingly challenged by the growing influence of modern architecture. The evolution in taste and thinking of some of the Board’s members, which included contemporary professional designers and architects, may also have posed an internal conflict of interest. Increasingly, clients and their architects who had modern aesthetic tendencies —and sometimes limited budgets—started fighting against the now established traditional Spanish urban environment, wanting to realize more original or iconoclastic buildings that would stand out from the historic fabric. This tug-of-war between historic and more modern tendencies was not specific to Santa Barbara. It was happening nationally, even worldwide, in cities that were trying to protect their more traditional identities.

Some of the buildings that were eventually approved and built during the last half of the twentieth century are indicative of this struggle. Many of these projects are compromised modern buildings forced to accommodate clay tile roofs or other token gestures toward the Spanish agenda; there are many examples, but the 900 Chapala Bank Building (1968) (Fig. 8) or the Santa Barbara County Administration Building (1966) (Fig. 9) are representative.

Some, like this building on an important corner of State Street (Fig. 10) didn’t even bother with a token gesture. When it comes to miscellaneous modern-age structures like gas stations (Fig. 11), these too did not easily take on Spanish characteristics. There were examples of Spanish gas stations, but the bureaucracy did not seem to insist on it, relenting to modern functionality and technology. It seems that the Board of Architectural Review often didn’t know how to deal with applicants who pushed for a more modern or stripped-down aesthetic, and design compromises in the end often made the buildings worse, as if putting feathers on a fish was somehow going to make it fly. Despite increased efforts by the city to strengthen regulations through new zoning regulations and designated historic districts, results during the latter half of the twentieth century remained less than satisfactory. Even when there were stylistic nods towards the Spanish vocabulary, new projects could be inappropriate in massing and scale. Paseo Nuevo (1990) was a case in point (Fig. 12). Conceived as an across-the-street counterpart to Craig’s more intimate El Paseo Arcade of 1922–23 ( Fig. 3),

Opposite page, top, from left: Figure 5. Santa Barbara County Courthouse (1925–1929); Figure 6. Fox Arlington Theater (1929–1931); Figure 7. Granada Theater Building (1922–1924). Below: Figure 8. The 900 Chapala Bank Building (1968); Figure 9. Santa Barbara County Administration Building (1966). This page, top left: Figure 10. Building on State Street. Bottom left: Figure 11. Gas station. Top right: Figure 12. Paseo Nuevo (1990); Bottom right: Figure 13. Paseo Bonito, Cearnal Collective.

Paseo Nuevo was essentially a massively overscaled modern shopping center despite the superficial Spanish flourishes. The bureaucratic process, though well intentioned, often proved inadequate to hold developers, architects, and builders to account when it came to design. This, combined with a local government that had, and has to this day, lost sight of its visionary urban idealism and obligations, and economic challenges that have turned more toward the commerce of tourism than that of the resident citizenry, changed Santa Barbara for the worse.

With the twenty-first century, however, there are signs that things may be gradually improving, at least architecturally. Part of the reason is that some developers and local architects have taken the city’s historic Spanish core more to heart. Instead of battling for iconoclastic contemporary architecture, they have not only been more inclined to accept the city’s Spanish aesthetic, but have a renewed appreciation for the scale, materials, and details of some of the city’s earlier buildings. Recent buildings by these newcomers are often substantially large projects, but with varying degrees of success, they are by design clearly intending to be part of—rather than distinct from—the city’s Spanish identity.

Paseo Bonito by the Cearnal Collective (Fig. 13) is a multifamily housing project that uses an appropriately scaled informal pedestrian “street” reminiscent of some of the older, more intimate passages in Santa Barbara. So too does Chapala One by DesignARC (Fig. 14) with more adventurously varied massing and with the street here leading to a courtyard. Landscape courtyards were integral to many of Santa Barbara’s earlier buildings, but they seem to have become harder and smaller if not largely forgotten in late twentieth-century ones. The Hotel Californian (2014), also by DesignARC, is an example of a larger building which, because of its varied massing and judi-

cious use of familiar Spanish forms and details, seems quite at home with smaller-scale neighboring buildings (Fig. 15).

Jeff Shelton’s work (Fig. 16 & 17) has for the last two decades been enriching Santa Barbara’s downtown neighborhoods. Much of it has been accomplished for the same developing client, and it exhibits a dedication to hands-on craftsmanship that is rare in today’s construction industry. His buildings are considered by some critics to be overly playful, mannerist or “Gaudiesque,” and they do stand out, like oddly-dressed, out-of-town cousins come to visit, but they are clearly related to Santa Barbara’s local Spanish family. Closer examination shows a richly detailed array of softened but colorful references to historic Spanish and Moorish forms, and an almost invariably human scale commensurate with some of the city’s best historic architecture.

There are even more promising examples of this recent return in the city to its architectural heritage, but it’s also clear that the impulse of most contemporary architects to be original, to get noticed, and even at times to shout, is still alive and well. Regrettably, it is also clear that the only language in which most of us know how to speak (or shout!) is some variant of the modern movement, however

constructed or deconstructed. Isn’t the current appeal of “mid-century modern” surely indicative of our continued fascination with the modern language?

When it comes to cities, however—especially cities like Savannah, Santa Fe, or Santa Barbara that have a strong traditional urban identity defined by architecture of an earlier yet consistent language—it behooves architects to put at least some of their ego aside, learn to speak in more than the modern language, and design their buildings to be part of that identity. Although the unfortunate exceptions may continue to happen, it has been very encouraging lately to see a number of Santa Barbara’s architects speaking again the language in which this city’s story has been told for more than a century.

MARC APPLETON is the founding principal of Appleton Partners LLP—Architects, with offices in Santa Monica and Santa Barbara, California. A graduate of Harvard College who also received a master of architecture degree from the Yale School of Architecture, Marc has won numerous awards and has written, published, and contributed to many books, including Rexford Newcomb’s Mediterranean Domestic Architecture in the United States (1999), George Washington Smith: An Architect’s Scrapbook (2001), and California Mediterranean (2007).

Opposite page, top: Figure 14. Chapala One by DesignARC, Jim Bartsch. Bottom: Figure 15. The Hotel Californian by DesignARC.

This page: Figures 16 and 17. Jeff Shelton’s work.

1 David Gebhard, Santa Barbara: The Creation of a New Spain in America Exhibition catalog Santa Barbara, CA: University Art Museum, 1982

2 Kevin Starr, Inventing the Dream New York: Oxford University Press, 1986

3 Dennis Doordan, “The Culture of Spanish Revival Architecture in Santa Barbara, California ” ANTA 4 (2022): 221-227

4 H Philip Staats, ed California Architecture in California New York: Architectural Book Publishing Co , 1929, rep 1990

Appleton Partners LLP

SANTA MONICA AND SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA

Willow Creek Horse Ranch

San Diego, California

This seventy-acre property was assembled from several existing residential estate properties, and our clients, who raise cutting horses, were not enamored by the late twentiethcentury suburban Mediterranean and Spanish Colonial Revival architecture typical of the area. They wanted something more unique that would still be in the Spanish tradition, but reminiscent of a rural ranch.

The solution took inspiration from the Spanish hacienda or finca, similar to those in Andalusia, Spain, and later colonized as “estancias” or “ranchos” in California and Latin America. Spanish hacienda architecture occasionally inspired the work of early twentieth-century California architects like John Byers and Wallace Neff, particularly for ranch and equestrian clients in more remote settings. The challenge here, in the context of surrounding suburban houses, however, was to create a sense of separation and rural wilderness.

As there was the acreage to accomplish it, the answer was to create a layered landscape of meadows and trees at the perimeter to successfully screen the adjacent suburban development and create a sense of depth with a forest edge. The meadows were moved to create a series of riding trails and paths.

High courtyard walls were designed around the main ranch house, reminiscent of the cortile of Andalusian and Mexican haciendas, which served as an entry court from the long, gated

driveway lined with California pepper trees. A water trough for horses extends from the house entry porch cross axially to connect the house with outbuildings and pastures.

The development of the ranch (begun in 2004 and completed in 2009) included multiple accessory structures to appear as if they were built over the life of the ranch, with some showing their age more than others. In some cases pre-existing buildings, such as a horse barn, were repurposed but with architectural changes to make them more compatible with the hacienda vocabulary.

The overall planning of the ranch included defined exterior spaces ranging from an entry grove, tree-lined allee, courtyards, and walled gardens, which helped to knit together the sprawling ranch structures. The total building area was approximately 18,000 square feet (main house complex) with additional accessory structures. The main residence was oriented to engage as much of the ranch as possible, with extensive covered porches surrounding the building perimeter, allowing spaces to extend outside. The plan of the main ranch house had a linear configuration; a formal gallery connected the two private ends with the more public rooms in the middle. The second story was devoted to a primary bedroom suite facing the rear, with a study “tower” on the front side. A simple materials palette of white painted plaster, wood, and terra-cotta tile created a consistent and harmonious whole.

Opposite page, top: Site plan of the Willow Creek Ranch House and surroundings.

Bottom: Full site plan.

Photos by Matt Walla. Renderings by Domiane Forte.