Category: Blog

Imagine picking up the morning paper and reading your own obituary! That’s what happened to E.J. Peterson, the home’s first owner. The obit used his name but described the life and death of another S.B. resident named E.J. Hayward, a well-known photographer. 

I suppose that the good news about reading his own obituary notice is that he was able to contact the paper and get a correction printed the next day. The paper called it “an unfortunate mix-up,” and added that “Mr. Peterson … is very much alive and the mix-up in names kept Mr. Peterson denying that he was even ill.”

One of the home’s most interesting owners was Henry Augustus Adrian and his wife, Phila, who owned the home in the early 1920s. Adrian had served as the superintendent of schools and was the mayor of Santa Barbara in 1926 and 1927. In addition to these careers, Adrian often traveled the country as a speaker in Chautauqua assemblies. The Chautauquas were a sort of continuing education for adults that traveled from town to town. The practice began in Chautauqua (chuh-TAW-kwah), New York, in 1874. Generally, the group would set up a tent in a town and present a weeklong series of educational lectures and performances. Adrian was a friend of the botanist Luther Burbank and spoke about his plant research.

Another interesting owner was F.H. Kimball and his wife, Charlotte. Kimball was the president of the Veronica Medicinal Springs Water Company. This was a mineral spring located near Veronica Springs and Las Positas roads.

The home was originally located on Anapamu Street. Around 1910, the Snells moved it to the back of their property and turned it to face Bath Street. There is no building permit on file for moving the house, but perhaps permitting wasn’t necessary if you were moving a house from one part of your property to another at that time. 

How many houses have been moved in Santa Barbara? Who knows, but a 1922 article that I found in the local paper stated that 33 homes had been moved that year. Occasionally, people even moved homes that did not belong to them. In 1915, a man moved a home from one side of Milpas to the other — without the owner’s permission.

Homes and buildings were moved in a couple of ways. Generally, several holes were punched in the foundation in either side of the home, and beams or logs were put through the holes under the subfloor. The remainder of the foundation was then removed. For a simple move, the house was dragged along on the logs by oxen, horses, or mules.

For a more high-tech house move, the beams under the house were raised up with gigantic jackscrews, and a truck bed was placed under the house. Draft animals or motorized vehicles pulled the house. It was a slow process and might take days. 

In 1906, a house moving here outraged multiple citizens, “Before this house reaches its destination [30 blocks away] the injury it has wrought on the shade trees, the inconvenience it has caused, and the property rights it has outraged” caused people to petition the city council to place a limit on the size of homes moved around.

Naylor was a jack-of-all-trades: deliveryman, grocery store owner, and an active member of the East Side Improvement Club. The family sold hay and ducks and chickens at the home, which shows the rural nature of the area at that time. They also rented out some of their rooms.

The Naylors’ daughter Edith married Frank B. Reily in 1890, and they raised their family here. Two of their sons served in the armed forces during World War I. The family probably hung a flag with two large stars in the front window of the home to represent their sons in the military.

Fortunately, both sons survived the war and the 1918-1919 flu pandemic. One of the sons — Claude Reily — the author of the postcard, later opened an ironwork shop at 423 North Salsipuedes. His father managed the shop.

Oscar William Massee and his wife, Emma, built the home in 1912 for $1,000. Their property included a barn with a hayloft. E.J. Moody was the contractor. 

Massee was a respected plumber. “Fully cognizant of conditions in the modern commercial world and possessing the energy and resourcefulness necessary to cope with them, Oscar William Massee has become one of the successful businessmen of Santa Barbara … [together with his wife,] their attractive home has been the scene of many enjoyable social events.” —History of Santa Barbara County, California, Michael James Phillips, 1927. The local paper added, “Mr. Massee’s shop at 9 East Cota Street has a complete stock and all equipment for doing plumbing and fitting with dispatch.”

The home probably contained top-of-the-line plumbing fixtures. A 1912 book about plumbing lists the five most popular materials used at that time: porcelain, enameled iron, vitreous ware, marble, and soapstone. Surprisingly, porcelain was considered the most expensive.

In the 1940s, Ellen M. Erving, a nurse with the Visiting Nurses Association, was the owner of the home. In 2010, her grandson and his wife knocked on the front door and explained that he had lived in the house as a boy. The McKinneys showed the couple around the home and gave them some ceramic knobs from the attic as souvenirs.

The McKinneys and Steve Dowty are founding members of Santa Barbara’s Bungalow Haven Neighborhood Association, located between the Santa Barbara Bowl and Alameda Park. The McKinneys are keen to preserve their home’s character. Cheri said, “We did a lot of research in bungalow books and magazines and finally settled on the warm complementary accent colors [on the exterior] to add a little historic feel and emphasis to the interesting detailing and features of the house.” Their goal is to avoid the “bungled bungalow.”

When I research old houses, I always look for vintage photos, but they’re not easy to find. This time, I got lucky. I managed to find the grandson of Leland Morris Crawford, who sent me some photos of his grandparents.

The relatives and descendants of former owners of your home are some of the best sources of old photos. One way to find them is by checking genealogy websites. In fact, one chapter in my book Discovering the History of Your House is titled, “Take a Genealogist to Lunch.”

Most current owners of older homes love to find old photos of their home or the families who lived there years ago. If you have old family photos of a former home, why not send a copy to the current homeowner? You could make someone very happy. 

Leland Morris Crawford was a successful attorney and also served as deputy coroner. Mae was active in local groups such as the American Association of University Women and was a charter member of the Assistance League. The Crawfords had three children when they lived in the home. To accommodate their growing family, they built a large addition on the back of the home in 1929. They lived in the home until about 1934, when they moved to a home on Junipero Plaza.

After the Crawfords moved out, a series of families occupied the home until the mid-1960s when Neil and Dorothy J. Pier bought the home. They stayed here for 10 years. In the mid-1970s, Whitney Newland bought the home as an investment, and it was occupied by renters for about 25 years. Finally, in 2001, he and his wife, Judy, moved in. They like that the home is close to town, and they are especially happy with the home’s three fireplaces. “We feel spoiled,” Judy told me.

The home was built about 1911 by Edward A. and Nellie Diehl. Edward was from Missouri and Nellie (Elizalda) had grown up in Santa Barbara. When they married in 1905, the local paper described Edward as “one of the city’s most promising young businessmen” and noted that Nellie was “a descendant of one of the oldest Spanish families in California.” They later had a son named Frederick, who is believed to be the one who carved the initials “FD” on a shingle at the back of the house.

Edward’s father, John Frederick Diehl, started a gourmet grocery store in 1891 when the family arrived here. Diehl’s Grocery was located at several different locations on State Street in the half century that it was in business. The store sold imported delicacies from Europe, as well as local produce, and was famous for its elaborate sidewalk displays. The store sold its own baked goods, homemade mayonnaise, and candy and had a soda fountain that served oyster cocktails! In 1905, the grocery’s ad in the local paper boasted that the store sold a “new health food — toasted corn flakes.” Both Edward and his brother William worked at the store.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, before many families had automobiles, Diehl’s Grocery had its own horse-drawn delivery wagon. That wagon now belongs to the Santa Barbara Carriage and Western Art Museum. You may have seen this vehicle in Fiesta parades.

The Diehl family left Santa Barbara in the 1940s, and the home was occupied by several owners until 1965 when George and Shigeko Nishihara bought the home. George was a cabinetmaker and made the intricate shoji screens in the house. Members of that family have owned and lived in the home ever since. Brian and Vicki (Nishihara) Woolford have lived in the house since 2010. Vicki spent her formative years in the home before she settled in Hawai‘i for some 40 years, where she and Brian met.

The first occupant was an older widow named Julie Matthews Hinsdale, whose daughter — Corinne Hinsdale Whitelaw — lived across the street. When Julie passed away in 1918, the local paper mentioned that her home was named Rosemary Cottage. Presumably, there were rosemary bushes in the yard. The only references to the home’s name date to 1918, so it’s not surprising that the name has remained a mystery for more than 100 years. The home’s owner was not aware of the home’s name. That was the first discovery. The second discovery came later.

Adobe bricks usually measure 20 x 12 x 4 inches, are made of mud, water, and plant materials, and then dried in the sun. But by the 1920s, the traditional method of mixing the ingredients was no longer used. “The time-honored method of working the binder into the mud … is for the workmen to divest themselves of shoes and socks and work the mud with their bare feet. This method is not employed in the present instance, however … the earth is full of pieces of glass and other sharp objects which would play havoc with unprotected soles.” (Santa Barbara Morning Press, January 19, 1922)

The home’s first owners were Thomas G. and Frances E. Ross. Thomas was in the car business, and he also owned a couple of the nearby oil wells. At first, I was shocked by the proximity of the oil well in the old photo. But I suppose if you are pumping money out of the ground, those oil derricks can start to look attractive.

       Before the oil derricks sprouted up on the Mesa in the 1920s, the area was mostly farmland punctuated by a picturesque lighthouse (near today’s La Mesa Park), and the Dibblee mansion (near present-day Santa Barbara City College). The area where the 1528 Cliff Drive home sits today was a 50-acre farm that George and Emma Gaylord bought for $1,000 in 1868. At the time, Cliff Drive was simply called Mesa Road, and was the only access to the Mesa. An article in the local paper stated, “Mr. Geo. Gaylord’s farm … yields abundantly barley, corn and squashes.” (Santa Barbara Weekly Press, June 4, 1881) The Gaylord’s neighbor on the west was Peveril Meigs. George Gaylord died in 1923, and that’s about when Fred Roskop bought the property along Cliff Drive.

The family of James Augustus Blood built the home. Blood and his wife, Mary Josephine Hall Blood, had traveled from Illinois by covered wagon in 1870 and settled in Santa Barbara. The Blood family came here because a relative, also named James A. Blood, had settled on a farm in Carpinteria in 1867. (My research was made especially challenging because both men shared the same name and died within a year of each other. The James A. Blood who built this home was referred to as James A. Blood Junior to distinguish him from the Carpinteria farmer, although the farmer was his uncle, not his father.)

The Bloods raised six children in Santa Barbara — several of whom spent their adult lives in this home. The most prominent was Alice Mabel Blood, who was an accomplished painter and had been Saint Barbara and the Festival Queen in the Flower Festival parades of the 1890s.

James A. Blood was in the real estate business and was co-owner with Francis H. Knight of the House-Furnishing Emporium on State Street near Ortega. The store sold furniture — everything from baby carriages to coffins. The company once caused a controversy, according to Walker A. Tompkins. In his newspaper column in 1971, he wrote that in the 1880s, the firm of Blood and Knight put a huge sign on the side of a building facing Stearns Wharf that read: “BLOOD AND KNIGHT, UNDERTAKERS. COFFINS AT LOW PRICES.” “Since many of Santa Barbara’s winter visitors in the 1880s were in their terminal illnesses, the advertising of Blood and Knight — not too euphonious a name in itself — was enough to chill the marrow. So vociferous were the civic protests, that the controversial sign was finally removed.”