Seen Around Town
Casa del Herrero Loggia in the distance (photo by Matt Walla)
by Lynda Millner
A National Historic Landmark
S
anta Barbara has five National Historic Landmarks – the Courthouse, the Mission, the Raphael Gonzales Adobe, the Santa Barbara Club, and Casa del Herrero. The Casa is a great tourist attraction and I have been lucky enough to be a docent there for twenty years. I would like to tell you about the origins of the estate based on an article that Medora Bass, the daughter of the owners, Carrie and George Steedman, wrote for a garden magazine, The American Woman’s Garden. According to Medora the eleven-acre site was an old Spanish land grant, halfway between the mountains and the sea. “My mother was concerned
14 MONTECITO JOURNAL
Ms Millner is the author of The Magic Makeover, Tricks for Looking Thinner, Younger and More Confident – Instantly. If you have an event that belongs in this column, you are invited to call Lynda at 969-6164.
because the garden would slope downhill instead of uphill as a proper garden should. Casa del Herrero means the House of the Blacksmith. Our place got its name because manufacturing metal products was my father’s business in St. Louis, Missouri and he jokingly referred to himself as a blacksmith.” Medora loved the house and gardens and inherited it from her folks. Her sister Catherine didn’t care about it and continued to live back east. Medora’s folks, Carrie and George Steedman, had come to Santa Barbara with his diabetic brother to get insulin from Dr. Sansum, the only insulin in the United States at the time. They fell in love with Santa Barbara and bought the property in Montecito at 1387 East Valley Road in the early ‘20s to build a second home. They moved in in 1925, the day of the earthquake because there was no damage to their house. By 1930 they had moved from St. Louis to Santa Barbara full time. Mr. Steedman had heart trouble and retired here. As Medora said, her perfectionist father began the house and gardens in 1922 and wanted them both to be purely Spanish. In connection with the garden she remembered the names of Ralph Stevens, Peter Riedel, and Lockwood de Forest and over and over the name of the architect George Washington Smith. Her father worked constantly on the blueprints. He made a trip to Spain accompanied by Arthur Byne and his wife Mildred Stapley who knew all about Spanish gardens and antiques. It only took Steedman five weeks to gather everything he needed from Spain: a fifteenth-century ceiling from a monastery, Moorish doors, furniture, tapestries, tiles, grilles, flower pots, and wrought iron gates. He photographed and made sketches in Seville, Granada, Ronda, and Majorca. Then he incorporated all this with his plans. All of these ancient things remain in the house today for our enjoyment. According to Medora, “The gardens went through many changes; the sound of the tile setters’ hammers was almost constant even after we moved in during the summer of the earthquake. If a pergola was to be added
Casa del Herrero (photo by Matt Walla)
Original Banksia Alba Rose in the side garden (photo by Matt Walla)
or a tree moved, a mock-up was built to ensure that the perspective and the proportions satisfied my mother and father. The project was my father’s dream, but he always respected my mother’s advice.” The Steedmans spent the next 20 years developing the house and gardens. Medora said her father had so many ideas that he had apprentices working full time with him in his well equipped shop. We still have the aluminum garden furniture, unusual for the time when garden furniture
“All right everyone, line up alphabetically according to your height.” – Casey Stengel
was wicker. Dad also made lion finials for the terrace railings. Silversmithing then became his main hobby after the garden. In eleven years Steedman smithed over 100 silver pieces, especially his sculptured vases for Carrie’s camellias inscribed “To hold God’s gifts for your delight.” Medora’s father died in 1940 and her mother was devastated. Medora thought gardening restored her mom to her cheerful, gracious self. Carrie
SEEN Page 284 14 – 21 May 2020
