The Santa Barbara of Peter J. Barber (Part 2)

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Vol. XXI, No. 3

Foil, 1975

THE SANTA BARBARA OF P. J. BARBER

By Herbert W. Andree (Conclusion) CATALOG>« 1.

The Second Santa Barbara County Courthouse (Fig. 3).

Built between 1872 and 1875, this neoclassic brick courthouse was the

most prominent structure in a landscape of one-story buildings consisting of houses, barns, corrals, and shops along a couple of blocks of State Street, the town’s main street. It stood for fifty years as a civic landmark until the present Spanish Revival building replaced it after the 1925 earthquake. The earlier building, with its striking classical facade, was one corner of a triangle of tall buildings (the Cook Clock Building at the lower end of town, the Arlington Hotel and Courthouse at the other) to which people in town related.

The style, one used almost exclusively for official architecture in Cali fornia, is a classic revival mode derived ultimately from Renaissance sources.

However, the building’s main pediment is Baroque with its overabundance of eave brackets and simulated beam ends. The tall hooded windows, neat, upright Corinthian pilasters, articulated dome and latern, as well as the ritualistic avenues of approach, indicate that the building’s decorative wood elements, Greek cross plan, and total image were derived from Italian sources in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, which Barber found in his books and in the buildings he knew in Cleveland and San Francisco.

Barber’s severe handling of the motifs and details—a little unusual— becomes evident if compared with a sister structure of jewel-box quality, the Merced County Building (A. A. Bennett, 1872). His conservative use of decoration can be seen throughout his work. Striking is his use over the entrance of a medieval, two-light window incorporated into a tightly organized classical frame.

One can imagine the excitement and feeling of pride on the day the cornerstone was laid, in a time when dedications were crowd-pleasing events.

The townspeople had pulled hard together to make the event happen; it spoke for their future and of a rural people’s hope to keep cultural and economic pace with Los Angeles and San Diego.

2.

Hall of Records, c. 1891 (Fig. 4).

These tightly composed, strongly articulated little l)uildings were used so often for archival buildings because of the influence of Richardson. Versions of Richardson Romanesque, popular in California by the later 1880s, were pushed by the editors of California Architect ami Building News, and one article (May 15, 1887, p. 63) compares it to the Greek Temple style, empha sizing the heaviness of the new style as an advantage over current “light and flimsy” building types.

The steep, falling roof planes, the soft and hard curves of the brick walls.

anchored by the tower with its inviting entrance arches and second-story rectangles, make of the building a dynamic visual experience. The Hall of Records, attributed to Barber, shows his ability in the third decade of his Santa Barbara career to incorporate a new style into his work. The detailed decorative panels above the perforated articulation of the crenelated windows, the rhythm set up under tlie eaves by brackets, and the vertical roof crowns, lend strength and diversity to Barber’s interpretation of the style.

3.

Cabrillo Boulevard

2).

The majestic avenue of palms along Santa Barbara’s ocean front was Barber’s idea and demonstrates his clarity in the area of planning. The avenue is a “European” tree-lined boulevard without the European density of build ings. The plan was inspired, according to remarks in Barber’s papers, from the Geneva boulevards he had seen on his European trip in 1887. Implemented during his 1891-1892 administration, the avenue, with a public bathhouse and plaza at one end (since demolished), had by the turn of the century given Santa Barbara a memorable dimension of sophisticated beauty.

A pleasant adventure during the nineties was a trip from the Arlington Hotel on upper State Street to the public bathhouse on the Plaza del Mar. One boarded an oj>en streetcar and traveled the length of Stale Street to Cabrillo Boulevard and the end of the line at the Plaza.

As Barber planned it, the broad, palm-lined avenue was a showpiece which encouraged resort hotels on its land side and presented to the visitor arriving by ship a beautiful, unified fagade. The street established a clear, continuous relationship between itself and the town’s main street running perpendicular to it. A natural “T” was formed by this simple yet effective organization, unfortunately disrupted and cut through in the 19.50s by a cross-town freeway.

4.

The Cook Clock Building (Fig. 5).

Placed squarely on a corner of State Street, this business block, the Cook Clock Building (the lower corner of the triangle referred to above), stood for fifty years until its destruction by earthquake. Santa Barbara’s commercial and civic buildings—practically its entire downtown section—were suddenly leveled one summer morning in 1925 and rebuilt in the Spanish Revival 17 mode, the theatrical yet comfortably sophisticated image that prevails today.

Mortimer Cook, adventurer and financier, came to town in the early 1870s, built a large Italianate house (Fig. 6), opened a bank whose building Barber later designed *Fig. 7), and financed this, the town’s first business block. The height of the tower, a town landmark, visually holds the structure together. The horizontal rhvlhms of cornice, fenestration, crenelation and balustrade, together with the strong verticals of the pilasters, window mold ing, eave brackets and balustrade posts, relate well to the stationary yet dynamic tower which is the focal point, the kingpin for all elements.

Large, overbearing, yet visually diverse buildings engage the participant: a mason on his way to a lodge meeting, customers for the photographer’s studio on the third floor, people entering to use the ground floor shops and offices, all those approaching this massive structure probably experienced a pleasant, perhaps even exciting sensation. One can still gain such an experience from the Old St. Vincent’s Orphanage (presently the Knights of Columbus Hall), the only Barber masonry structure in town rebuilt after the earthquake, although slightly altered. Like the Cook Building, it is part of an eclectic commercial style using a vccabulary of French and Ilalianalc forms.

The tall severity of St. Vincent’s may emphasize at first a naked quality, since it is without an urban setting, but as an object it is compositionally well defined with multi-punctured walls, giving us, as with the Cook Buildin a feeling that the building’s interior is both open and closed.

5.

The Lincoln house (Uphani Hotel), Fiji. 8.

On one of the town’s side streets is a neat, austere yet charming Italianate

building, the Upham Hotel. Looking much as it did in 1871, the Upham is a stately clapboard structure with strong lines and details. Built as a boarding house and hotel, it existed for four years before the building of the mag nificent Arlington. Simple, w'ilh restrained use of detail, yet strong in some respects, the Upham creates a memorable image. The clapboard veneer con trasts subtly with the vertical direction of the window pediment tops and oversized eave brackets. The strongly articulated windows and heavy hori zontal roof line catch the eye, and the building’s crown, in the form of a cupola, also adds to its balanced esthetic. The individuality of elements and their simple contrasting relationships help the passerby relate to the structure.

The Upham is closely akin to cube-like domestic Italianate, especially the early one-story versions of the 1850s (Fig. 9).

The plan of the Upham, essentially the same today, was organized around a central hall with ten rooms, dining room and bathrooms in the main build ing and a small utility wing in the rear. 'Phe simple plan reflected the rush to meet the demand for rentable rooms in a growing small town.

The Italianate style (c. 1835-1885) found ready acceptance in the East after 1840, and in the second half of the century it spread rapidly across the continent as settlers pushed west. This adaptable style, with its versatile form and historic detail, was designed in many versions as it moved westward; its simple wood form and detail were easily built in rural areas, and it seemed a style made for, as well as helped along by, balloon frame construction and the mass produced nail. The style, labeled Italianate because of innumerable 15th and 16th century Italian details applied to a vertical form, became, with most of the mode, a decorated cube. The mode moved with the gold seekers to California after 1849 and spread in the state with the population. Com mercial “false front” Italianate can be documented in San Francisco by 1852, as can small two-room shacks with Italianate decoration. These neat, charm-

ing cottages laden with heavy decoration still exist, some dating from the 1850s. San Francisco became an “Italianate” tow'n, and the style dominated the 1880s. Shortly after the style’s establishment in California in the mid1850s came the domestic apex of the mode, the supremely elaborate and ornate Tuscan villa (see below), as well as more sophisticated commercial versions of wood and stone. Barber employed all of these in such buildings as the Dibblee mansion, Morris House, and Third Ward School.

The transition of domestic forms proceeded from simple cubes to tall cubes, ending w'ith tw’o-story, squarish, irregular buildings such as Barber’s design for Mortimer Cook’s house (Fig. 6). One of the fascinating aspects of domestic Italianate was the imaginative use of decoration; with extremely ornate buildings, the decoration practically fused with the building’s form.

The Casebolt house (San Francisco, 1865, F'ig. 10) illustrates the extra ordinary possibilities when a designer’s imagination has free rein and un limited financial support. The strong central portion of the house, with cornice, roof pediment and oversized brackets, almost extinguishes the basic form of the structure. It explodes with overbusyness into a Baroque master piece. Painted entirely white, it reminds one of a theater set. Rural versions of these cube-like buildings, handsome in their solidity, decoralively ranged from simple to moderately ornate, money and imagination determining the result.

If we could again experience a neighborhood of the mid-1880s with its diverse Italianate forms, the visual complexity would surprise us (Fig.ll), being analogous to the combined real and unreal qualities projected by a Disneyland or Knott’s Berry Farm.

During the 1880s the Italianate lost its purity and dissolved into mixtures with the Second Empire mode, the exuberant and decorative Eastlake, and the constructivist qualities of the Stick style. The formal purity of the Ital ianate died, but its decorative elements were applied indiscriminately to all new styles, even to that apogee of late-19th century eclecticism, the Queen Anne. However, at its height, the diverse mid-century Italianate continued the vertical strength of the Greek Revival in its decoration, and—importantly —the style marked the beginning of a new direction in free handling of interior space.

6.

The Arlington House aiid Annex (Fig. 12).

A financial gamble for its backers, this magnificent building, constructed

of wood, fought an uphill struggle until the spectacular boom of the mid1880s, when Barber designed the Annex in a restrained version of the Queen Anne style. The Arlington welcomed many people over its veranda for thirtyfour years, mostly the Eastern rich, among them the Vanderbilts and the Astors. The hotel remained the center of Santa Barbara’s social life until its destruction by fire in 1909. It was replaced soon after by Arthur Benton’s second Arlington Hotel, a Mission Revival monument lasting until the earth-

quake, followed by today's Spanish Revival landmark, the Fox-Arlington Theater. Could Barber liave wondered in 1875 whether that large plot of land at the far end of town was to be the site of great architectural monu ments for a hundred years and more?

The first and second Arlingtons were among a number of extraordinary hotel buildings executed in California during the last quarter of the 19th century and early years of the 20th. These include the Palace and Grand Hotels in San Francisco, the Arlington, and all those built during the boom of the 1880s: the Raymond in Pasadena, the Mission Inn in Riverside, the Arcadia in Santa Monica, and (ho still standing Del Coronado near San

Diego.

Plans for the Arlington were solicited from a number of offices besides Barber’s. One set came from the noted San Francisco firm of Samuel and Joseph Newsom. Later the Newsoms designed a number of hotels and other buildings in Southern California, such as the Glendale Hotel (1888). How ever, Barber was finally chosen as architect. He was accessible and his fees were a percentage less than those in San Francisco.

Barber used a form of the adaj)lable Italianate for the Arlington. It seems from its photographs a building extracted from an urban setting because of its narrow (juality. protruding bay windows and curtly emphasized French details so popular in San Francisco. As was Barber’s habit, there is a restrained use of decorative details, each one answered visually by a simi lar or corresponding version of the same, such as the square window hoods of the third story and the pointed ones of the second. The main building is low but still vertical, with the traditional Italianate roof, like a lid, in obvious contrast to the Annex, built ten years later; a building soaring in its verticality, a recognizable characteristic of commercial hotel Queen Anne. Barber, however, again employed Italianate elements in the decoration of the Annex.

The hotel had the full range of services for its guests fitted into a central hall plan with the main dining room and kitchen in separate buildings to the rear. The two upper stories contained seventy rooms with the tower used for observation. Some of its advertised features included gas and water in each room, most rooms with fireplaces and marble mantels, closets and separate baggage rooms, some with private balconies, and the “special feature” of having each room connected w'ilh the main office by a “patent annunciator and speaking tube.”

7.

The Morris House and First National Cold Bank (Figs. 13 <fe 7).

By the end of the seventies a density of commercial structures had formed on the lower portion of the town’s main street. Two of these were a travelers’ hotel (the Morris House) and the chic. Renaissance-style First National Gold Bank in which Barber had his office for a short time. Both buildings illustrate Barber’s use of distinctive types of commercial Italianate.

The Morris, less sophisticated than the bank, was a simpler type of business

block. Strong and square, it was neatly designed with most of the emphasis on window and eave dressing. The cost of brick was high and its use in the Morris indicates that tlie unknown promoter wanted permanence in his estab lishment. Barber’s strict interprelalion of the style follows that of earlier wood versions popular in other downtown areas of the fifties and sixties: the Dawson Hotel (Sacramento, c. 1857) is executed in commercial Italianate, as is the attractive extant Odd Fellows Hall (Marysville, 1860, Fig. 14), a slightly more decorated brick version of the style.

The board members of the First National Cold Bank (1873), which Mortimer Cook helped organize as the first chartered bank south of San Francisco, decided by 1876 to erect a suitable building for their prospering banking business. This “high architecture” brick- and stone-veneered version of commercial Italianate, a step beyond the Morris House, looks in most of the pictures of the era like an overdressed prince at a beggar’s opera. Many times removed, the style is based on Renaissance and Baroque sources, and the strongly articulated lines of the form and the emphasis on window/door areas establish the (}uality of design as equal to those of the Pico House and Merced Theatre complex in Los Angeles (attributed to Ezra Keyson, 18691870), or the Bank of California building in San Francisco (David Farquharson 1866-1867).

Both the Morris House and the bank added significantly to the growing urban environment that State Street was becoming. The Morris was a victim of the earthquake and the bank was replaced in 1913.

8.

IN

Santa Barbara College and Third Ward School (Figs. 15 <fe 16).

Barber began his significant career in Santa Barbara by designing a grammar school and a college. The need for school buildings, one of the results of Santa Barbara’s growth, coincided with Barber’s resettlement, and a number of schools were completed by him during the seventies. The highly stylized Santa Barbara College building, a sophisticated combination of Italianate and Second Empire styles, was the most dynamic of these, the others being the commonly used ornamented Italianate box for school build ings, in this case the Third Ward School.

Colonel W. W. Hollister must have spoken loud and long to convince the other stockholders to support the building of such a large and expensive boarding high school as Santa Barbara College, but after ail he was the primary backer, a man of ample means and property, and he was listened to as powerful men are. Hollister and Barber must have become friends im mediately—Hollister apparently saw in Barber’s experience a means of realiz ing his dream of building a series of somewhat speculative but nonetheless necessary projects which would establish Santa Barbara as a cultural, touristic and commercial town of pivotal importance on the Southern California coast.

Santa Barbara owes to Hollister’s influence and energy the College building, the Courthouse, and the Arlington House. The movement of new wealth into

Fig. 3. Second Santa Barbara County Courthouse, 1872-75. Santa Barbara Historical Society photo.

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Fig. 4. Santa Barbara County Hall of Records, c. 1891. Santa Barbara Historical Society photo.

Fig. 5. Cook Clock Building, Santa Barbara, 1875. Santa Barbara Historical Society photo.

Fig. 6. Mortimer Cook house, Santa Barbara, 1875. Photo courtesy of University of California at Santa Barbara Art Galleries.

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Fig. 7. First National Gold Bank, Santa Barbara, 1876, looking north on State Street. Cook Clock Building, San Marcos Building, and Arlington Hotel are other prominent buildings. Sanla Barbara Historical Society photo.

Fig. 8. photo.

Lincoln house (Upham Hotel), Santa Barbara, 1871-72. Author’s

Fig. 9. Abbey Street house, San Francisco, c. 1860, designer unknown.

Author’s photo.

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Fig. 10.

Caseboll house, San Francisco, 1865-66, designer

Author’s photo.

unknown.

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Los Angeles neighborhood, c. 1885. Photo courtesy of Bancroft

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Fig. 12.

Arlington Hotel & Annex. Santa Barbara Historical Society photo.

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Morris House, Santa Barbara, c. 1875. Santa Barbara Historical

Society photo.

Fig. 14. Odd Fellows Hall, Marysville, California, 1860, designer unknown.

Author’s photo.

Fig. 15. photo.

Santa Barbara College, 1871. Santa Barbara Historical Society

Fig. 16.

Third Ward School (Lincoln School), Santa Barbara, 1871. Santa

Barbara Historical Society photo.

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Fig. 17.

North Hall, University of California at Berkeley, 1873, David

Farquharson, architect. Photo courtesy of Oakland Museum, History Division.

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Fig. 18. Odd Fellows Hall, Santa Barbara, 1894. Santa Barbara Historical Society photo.

Fig. 19. Hunt-Stambach house, Santa Barbara, 1879. Santa Barbara Histori cal Society photo.

Fig. 20. Thomas Dibblee house, Santa Barbara, I878-C.1883. Santa Barbara Historical Society photo.

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Fig. 21.

Cameron-Stanjord house, Oakland, 1876 and later, designer un-

known. Author’s photo.

Fig. 22. BidweU mansion, Chico, California, 1865-68, Henry W. Cleaveland, architect. Author’s photo.

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Fig. 23. Plan of the Dibblee house. Photo courtesy of Mrs. Virginia Hoyt.

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Fig. 24.

Harrison Gray Otis cottage, Santa Barbara, c. 1878. Author’s photo.

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Fig. 25.

Caspar Orena house, Santa Barbara, 1878. Photo courtesy of Walker

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rural areas was a commojt occurrence in small-town America, and Santa Barbara was no exception: Cook, Hollister, Stearns, Canfield, Heath and Dibblee, to name only some, had come with the resources that were essential to the town’s growth from village to city, and many teamed up with Barber to realize their building schemes.

Barber’s first-rate College building (1871) compares favorably with North Hall on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley (Fig. 17), completed two years later. The Itaiianate-Second Empire was a pompous, plumed style, one crowned with alternating French curves and iron work supported on Italianatc brackets with strong horizontal emphasis formed by the fascia band, and buildings of this kind have an organic quality deriving from their exposed roots, trunks, branches and leaves. The comfortable looking veranda was added to the College in the mid-1880s when the school failed and the building became the San Marcos Hotel. The mystique regard ing verandas, part of the romanticism—propagated throughout the century— of relating outdoors to indoors, surely helped make the hotel a favorite meeting, sitting, and talking place for business and idleness.

The popular square Italianate school building dominated the design of small schools in the United States during the last half of the century. The two-room buildThird Ward School (18711, the Fourth Ward School, and ing in Lompoc (40 miles north of Santa Barbara) were all Barber designs of this type done during the seventies. 'I'hey have sister buildings in every town, like the Horace Mann School in San Francisco or the Nipomo School in San Luis Obispo (90 miles north of Santa Barbara). Barber’s Third Ward School, built for .157000, had two stories with single hall plan. The entries of these buildings, single or double depending on the |)lun, became the focal points of the buildings’ forward thrust, usually with pediment crowning that portion of roof and entry porch. The vertical extent capped with cu[)ola, large overbearing hoods on long narrow windows, a securely placed roof supported by sculptural brackets placed in rhythmic sequence, ail characterize the jewel-box qualities of this and all Italianate school buildings.

9.

Odd Fellows Lodge Hall (Fig. 18).

The Odd Fellows Hall is a hybrid of early nineties decoration integrated with strong fundamental form. The decorative elements are not applied but are part of the form, a development which heralds the 20th century, The Lodge Hall, a cross between Homanesque and Mission Revival, is indicative of what Barber did a number of limes in the nineties by creating extremely bizarre combinations of form and detail. I’he James W. Calkins house U891) is another odd combination of elements from various style sources.

With oval entries, as if they were tunnel openings, the Lodge building’s face is presented and defined by two, low-to-the-ground towers standing guard beside a central portion of the faq;ade, forms reminiscent of the

missions. This vocabulary is partially repeated on the side. The building’s variously sized rectilinear windows, inset at depths creating different rhythms, are similar in their block-like quality to the first concrete buildings of this century’s early years. The Mission motif and the cleaned-up, somewhat anti septic stuccoed surface, also part of the Mission Revival, bring the building into line with the style trends of those years and demonstrate Barber’s ability to incorporate them.

The stylistic versatility of 19th century designers should never be under estimated. Barber, extremely partial to the Italianate, was nevertheless able number of buildings reflecting qualities of the Mission Revival, to design the most successful of which was the Plaza del Mar bathhouse, the weaker being the Lodge Hall and the Calkins house.

10.

The Mortimer Cook house (Fig. 6).

The handsome, squarish Italianate wood house that Mortimer Cook

built in the early seventies as a sign of his affluence is here today for us to appreciate.

The development of urban row houses perhaps gave impetus to these irregular Italianate houses, whose facades had a large bay window on one side with entrance and single window above on the other. In sparsely populated areas where land costs were lower, the plan of a narrow San Francisco row house could be enlarged and a free, rambling plan used with roughly the same front design.

These heavy, masculine houses of irregular plan were popular

versions

in demand by the upper middle class. Barber designed a number of them, including the Russel Heath house in Carpinteria (c. 1876) and the wellpreserved Hunt-Stambach house (1879) in town (fig. 19). The most beau tiful and engaging of irregular Italianate still standing, although fighting for its life, is the Cameron-Stanford house (1876, Fig. 21) beside Lake Merritt in Oakland.

Barber seldom missed the chance in the seventies and eighties to add a cupola. Here the crown of the Cook house is larger than usual but handsome, and reflects the window forms and decorative elements of the proud parent below. The rhythm if the facade is diverse, almost Baroque in its movement from the front bay pushing toward us, the drop back in the en trance and porch areas, and the smooth crossing to the opposite corner end ing with an outward thrust of the side bay window. The obvious horizontal movement of the clapboard veneer and the heavy lid of the roof dominate the building’s direction, and the rhythm of heavy-heavy-light pounded out by the vertical brackets does little to offset this effect. The brackets work as convincing support. This is not to say that the buildin O’ like all Italianate, does not rise abruptly from its site. It does. But here it pushes slowly upward and, like some odd variety of plant, sits there demanding attention.

11.

The Thomas Dibblee house (Fig. 20).

The first Thomas Dibblee mansion stood like a sentry on the Mesa over looking Santa Barbara and was Barber’s finest effort in domestic architec ture. From the early 1880s until the earthquake it stood magnificently on its hilltop, and is comparable to the spectacular Bidwell mansion in Chico (H. W. Cleaveland, 1865-1868) and the beautiful Meek villa in Hayward.

Dibblee—self-made man, pioneer, rancher, business executive—built a house befitting his wealth and station. Taking seven years to complete, it was pointed to by all as a landmark, the house of one of the town’s important families.

Transmitted from the 1/th and 18th centuries through romantic paintmgs, the Tuscan form became a popular country house in England by the early 19th century. Probably introduced in America by Alexander Jackson Davis, who first used it in the mid-lSSOs,"' and popularized by A. J. Downing during the 1840s, all pattern books throughout the eighties contained numerous wood and masonr)' versions. It was made to order as a suitable way for the rich to display their wealth and came West when the means were available to spend on houses of this nature.

Barber completed two versions of the Tuscan villa, a wooden structure for John Edwards in 1874 and the far more successful masonry version for Dibblee—more successful because this virile mode worked better with harder materials. The Dibblee house was a vast structure in the best tradition of these romantic buildings. The strong vertical tower, well articulated in in line and decoration, with balanced placement of windows, served as a peg holding the sprawling blocks of the house together. One inherent quality of a villa’s character was the massing of numerous blocks, and each designer’s challenge lay in the way he coordinated these into a cohesive whole. The Dibblee house was also tied together by the slashing horizontal line of the veranda and the up-and-down, polka-dotted rhythms of the eave/fascia line.

There was an impressive use of contrast between light and dark, e.g. the corner pilasters and wall surfaces and especially the contrasts of void and mass in the veranda area.

A necessary comparison needs to be made between the heavy, masculine quality of the Dibblee house and the lighter, more feminine Bidwell mansion (Fig. 22). The Bidwell house, a spectacular piece of design and decoration, was done by Henry Cleaveland, who created this highly powdered lady in the mid-1860s, using as models the best villa designs of Eastern architects such as Upjohn, Austin, and Davis, and the house speaks of that tradition of delicate structures which seem almost like book illustrations. Comparison with Barber’s building demonstrates the different direction of the Dibblee house, its gutsy, straightforward manner, not at all dreamlike but solid and heavy upon the earth.

The Dibblee house was Barber at his best. There is a pleasing quality of flow expressed in the house plan (Fig. 23) and an organic quality is

evident as we see one room area growing into another.- Barber’s ability to conceive, plan, and execute on this unusual scale, and to render the building convincingly as an entire unit of diverse elements, is noteworthy.

12.

The Harrison Gray Otis cottage (Fig. 24).

This neat, compact cottage on a corner plot had ample room for a small

family or for one person, and housed for a few years Harrison Gray Otis, the ambitious adventurer who moved to Los Angeles and helped found the Los Angeles Times. It is small, typical, common, one of thousands like it, and was overrepresented in every pattern book. Henry Cleaveland’s Village and farm Architecture (11356) devoted two chapters to it. The overused term “cottage” was immensely flexible in its application and was used to describe buildings of all shapes, sizes and styles, but in truth an Italianate cottage is litle different from an English or Swiss cottage in form, only the decorative elements justifying the style label. Undoubtedly Barber designed many of these, as would any busy designer.

The flat, decoratively squat Otis cottage is related, in its secretive, un obtrusive way, to a 20th century bungalow. The design has a few visually gripping passages such as the side bay window area and the punctuating rhythm of the eave and porch-post brackets. The clapboard siding reinforces the building’s low, horizontal (juality, and the visual dominance of the hipped roof enhances this effect.

These comfortable little houses dotted American towns in great pro fusion from one end of the country to the other, and many exist today, helping to preserve a certain 19th century atmosphere.

13.

The Caspar Oreha house, 1878 (Fig. 25).

The tall, narrovf, fairyland house of Caspar Orena stood near the Santa Barbara Mission, an oversized object with two towers, one Queen Anne, one

Italianate, announcing itself to the world. The design was an intense combina tion of Italianate and Second Empire styles, but the overdecorated quality, the stacking of elements, the spectacular soaring effect, the eclectic gathering together and use of detail (Classical, Gothic, etc.), place the building within the Queen Anne style, then growing in popularity. It remains a mystery why Barber designed this eclectic type so early, but we do know that he was given the job following one J. C. Cebrian because of extant plans with Cebrian’s name on them. However, by comparing plans and photograph it can be seen that Barber employed a number of uncharacteristic elements such as the addition of a corner tower, the cluttered castle-like quality of the center tower, the complexity of the entire facade. These are not out of character for the style, but are unusual for Barber until the later 1880s.

—o— These, then, are most of the buildings Barber saw that day of the Har rison parade. He was a man who believed in his city, indeed he dedicated his life to it, and Santa Barbara returned that devotion. The staggering imprint

he made on the town, a mark that lasted until the 1925 earthquake, was rare, for few architects of that time—or of any other—have had such an opportunity. The ideal Victorian architecture, with its highly imaginative variety and diversity, is to be found in Barber’s work: the classical Court house, the essentially Italianate Arlington House, the Tuscan villa exemplified in the Dibblee house.

Barber served as a bridge between the Jacksonian and the Laissez Faire eras—the movement from an agrarian to an industrial, from a rural to an urban society. Born in 1830 in a rural midwestern town. Barber died in 1905 in a California that was making strides toward urbanism. Santa Barbara’s rise from small village to fair-sized town by 1900 serves as a microcosm of the larger movement taking place in the entire slate.

NOTES 16. All buildings shown, unless otherwise noted, are Barber’s.

17. Many California communities in the early decades of this century planned to redesign in the Spanish style, but seldom were they able to realize their dream. Santa Barbara, however, because of the 1925 earthquake, was one which turned in its 19th century cloak for an updated version. The architectural unity of State Street, it stage-set character, made possible by disaster, supports the idea that catastrophe is one of the few things that permit immediate, about-face change in architectural style.

Because lime mortar, used in Santa Barbara until the later 1880s, lias only a frac tion of the strength of hydraulic cement, the existing masonry buildings fell like cracker boxes.

18. Santa Barbara College became the San Marcos Hotel and later the San Marcos Block. The Third Ward School was also called the Lincoln School.

19. See Figure 23 in Roger Hall’s Town and Davis Architects (New York, 1943).

20. We are fortunate to have the plans of the Dibblee house, thanks to Thomas Dibblee’s preservation-minded great-granddaughter, Mrs. Virginia Dibblee Hoyt.

ERRATUM We wish to correct an error in Note 9 to the first part of the article on Barber in the previous issue: Jose de la Guerra was the fifth but not the last comandanie of the Presidio. The last was Cumesindo Flores.

Mr. Andree, until recently Registrar of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, holds an M.A. in architectural history from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is co-author with Noel Young of the forthcoming book. Santa Barbara Architecture from Spanish Colonial to Modern.

SANTA BARBARA HISTORICAL SOCIETY OFFICERS Mr. Francis Price

President First Vice-President Second Vice-President ....

Mr. Patrick Lloyd-Bulier Col. Henry deB. Forbes, Jr. Miss Lilian Fish

Secretary Treasurer

Mr. John D. Gill

Museum Director

Mrs. Henry Griffiths Mr. Robert Gates

Acting Editor of Noticias DIRECTORS Mrs. William Azbell

Mr. J. V. Crawford Mrs. Albert de L’Arbre Mrs. Edwin Deuter

Mrs. Elizabeth Hay Bechtel Mrs. Roger Brewster Mrs. Charles Cannon

Mr. Gene Harris

Mrs. E. G. Chambers Mrs. M. Cameron Conkey

Mr. William W. Murfey Miss Frederica D. Poett

Rev. Virgil Cordano, O.F.M.

Mr. Russell Ruiz

Dr. Hilmar 0. Koefod*

HONORARY DIRECTORS Mr. Thomas More Storke*

Mr. E. Selden Spaulding

Mrs. W. Edwin Gledhiil

Mr. Hugh J. Weldon Mr. Paul G. Sweelser

Mr. Edwin Gledlnll Director Emeritus

Sir John Galvin LIFE MEMBERS Mrs. Cliarles Deere Wiimin Mr. and Mrs. William W. ^^l^●foyMr. Don Killjounu .Mrs. Elizalielli Bechtel Dr. and Mrs. Melvi lle Saliyiin Mr. .Spencer Murfey Mrs, Alfred Millard Mr. M. Cameron (.'onkey Mr. J. V. Crawford ●Deceased

NEW MEMBERS STUDENT Mr. Herlicrl I’earcc

ACTIVE Mrs. I.eola Daniel.s .Mr. Robert H, Finch .Mrs. H. Alexander Hill .Mr. & Mrs.Chester Holcombe

Mr. Si Mrs. Edwin A. L<-inik Mr. & Mrs. Ross Wilson Mr. Rene'A. Wormser Mrs. .M. R. Medhery Dr. Fred A. Zannon .Mr. & Mrs. Roljerl ^ .\ioi>e .Mrs. Fred Zannon Mr. Lloyd W. Swift

SUSTAINING Mrs. Paul Bundy

.Mrs. Doris W. Manix

Mr. & Mr^, Cbarle-F. Oti

Mrs. Emily Wilcox

CONTRIBUTING Musgrove Pest Control

IN MEMORIAM Mrs. Dwight Murphy Mrs. Adline R. Ogram

Mr. Roger Cildersleeve Miss Mary Meeker Mr. Douglas Woodhouse

Non-Prof{f Org. QUARTERLY BULLETIN OF THE SANTA BARBARA HISTORICAL SOCIETY 136 EAST DE LA GUERRA STREET SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA 93101

U. 5. Pottage PAID Sonta Barbara, Calif.

Permit No. 534