architecture

MEET ME UNDER THE CEDARS OF THE LEBANON HOTEL

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

What was the largest home built in Santa Rosa? It wasn’t Mableton, the McDonald mansion; the elephant in our living room was the Riley house at 426 Mendocino Avenue, with its stately house and gardens that filled most of the block between Fifth Street and (what’s now) Seventh Street.* At about 16,000 square feet, it was so big that when it was remodeled into a hotel there were thirty guest rooms.

 (TOP: The Mendocino Ave. entrance walkway to the Lebanon Hotel, c. 1908 
 MIDDLE: Tinted postcard, c. 1909 
 BELOW: The view from Riley street, c. 1935, when it was I.O.O.F. Lodge no. 53. Photo courtesy Sonoma County Library) 

 The size of the house was difficult to judge from the street because the building was secluded by mature trees, as footpaths wound around bushes and flower beds. A postcard was sold of the Weeping Lebanon Cedar, and photos from the early Twentieth Century of blooming cherry trees and roses can still be found. Whomever gardened these grounds had the greenest of thumbs (having a 600 sq. ft. greenhouse at the back of the property didn’t hurt, either).

It’s been guesstimated that the house was built in the 1870s, based upon its Second Empire style with mansard roof and elaborate dormer windows. But it’s also possible that this was an exterior remodel of an older and much simpler house. The 1876 Bird’s eye view of Santa Rosa – which is pretty reliable in showing approximate sizes and shapes of buildings – has a two-story house with about the same footprint in that location. The late 1870s was also an era when there was a fad for slapping a modern Victorian facade over simple, classic designs, and adding a mansard roof was a popular way to simultaneously update the look and gain another story. Many such examples can be found in the contemporary how-to book, “Old Homes Made New,” which has before-and-after drawings – although most of the “improved” homes look like they were designed for the Munsters.

We also don’t know who first owned the house (someone with title search skills could probably answer that), but the 1880 census shows an extended family of eight living there with two servants. At home were Mr. and Mrs. Riley and their two children as well as Mrs. Riley’s parents and their two other children. This was probably a confusing family to meet for the first time; Mr. Riley was older than his mother-in-law by about three years, and Mrs. Riley was young enough to be his daughter by a quarter century.

The in-laws were Alonzo and America Thomas, he being a lawyer who moved to Santa Rosa during the Civil War. Alonzo wasn’t in the house very long before he died in late 1880 after a  prolonged illness. America Lillard Thomas lived until she was 77 and was one of the sad footnotes to the 1906 earthquake. She died at her home about ten weeks after the disaster, from “general disability following general neurosis caused by shock.”

Mr. Riley was Amos W. Riley, a businessman of great success. He and his partner founded a chain of mercantile stores from Sonoma to Humboldt counties, then concentrated on raising livestock with large ranches in Nevada and Oregon. Amos Riley died in 1908 at age 83 and like everyone else mentioned here, is buried at the Rural Cemetery.

After the earthquake and the death of mother-in-law America, Amos moved in with his daughter, a block away at 565 Mendocino Av (currently a parking lot), and the Riley family leased their old home to developers who remodeled it into the Hotel Lebanon. The public had its first chance to get an eyeful of the gardens – which, I suspect, had been created and always under the care of the late America Thomas – and it’s easy to imagine that the beautiful, fragrant hideaways immediately became a favorite haven of young people in love.

Then came 1909, when we find Ernest Finley, editor of the Press Democrat and president of the Chamber of Commerce, doing backflips of joy over the proposal that the old house could become the town’s city hall and the beautiful grounds be declared Santa Rosa’s first public park.

In the first decade of the Twentieth Century, Santa Rosa was a place where grand ambitions rose and just as quickly died, mostly because of a lack of political will to raise money to pay for public improvements. New post-quake federal and county buildings (the post office and courthouse) were in the finishing stages in 1909, but there was no city building even planned. An architect-designed city hall and firehouse was abandoned because the local banks didn’t want to loan money to the city. Plans for a city water park were thrown out after the quake, and the current mayor didn’t even try to make good on election promises to transform the tenderloin district into a park that families could enjoy.

The Press Democrat backed the idea of buying the Riley property enthusiastically, given that it would provide an instant solution to both park and city hall needs. Acknowledging that a 30-room joint complete with dining hall might be a trifle too roomy for the administrators of a small farm town, the PD mused that the mansion could be later torn down or moved and a smaller office built on the corner of the property. The paper was so gung-ho on the concept that it did something unusual: It reprinted a condensed version of a story that had appeared the previous week, this time accompanied by the photo at top that filled a third of the page.

And predictably, the grand ambition fizzled. No bond measure was placed before the voters.

After its time as a family home and hotel/restaurant, a third act awaited the grand old place. The Odd Fellows Lodge no. 53 bought the building in 1920 and remained there until 1955, when its new building was dedicated on Pacific Avenue. The Lodge has a few exterior photographs from its tenure, but alas, no interior pictures are known to exist.

As the Riley Mansion began in mystery, so it ended; the year of its demolition is not known. Farewell, majestic old manse; too bad we didn’t at least have the decency to save the trees, which can live for more than a thousand years.

* The 1967 Seventh Street Realignment Project merged the old 7th street (west of Mendocino Av.) with Johnson St. (east of Mendocino Avenue). A couple of odd twists and turns were added where no road had existed previously to make everything connect. properly, and the Johnson name was abandoned.



RILEY PROPERTY FOR CITY HALL AND PUBLIC PARK
Citizens Discussing an Interesting Project Now

The acquisition by Santa Rosa of the beautiful grounds about the Hotel Lebanon on Mendocino avenue for a public park. together with the big building, which could be used as a City Hall, has been a subject of discussion on the part of a number of citizens, particularly since it was learned that the property could be purchased for the same figure as that contemplated in the bond issue for the erection of a municipal building, $40,000.

For a long time the acquiring of a park for the City of Roses has been the fond dream of the Woman’s Improvement Club and advocated by scores of the men of the city as well. Already the suggestion made for the purchase by the city of the Hotel Lebanon property, owned by the estate of the late A. W. Riley, for the purposes mentioned, has enthusiastic supporters, and now that the Press Democrat gives it publicity it is expected that the plan will be discussed freely.

For years the Riley property, with the spacious residence and picturesque surroundings, has been one of the show places of Santa Rosa, and in times past it has often been coveted for park purposes. In the grounds are trees and shrubs gathered from many climes, and when the family vacated the place and after the big disaster it became the “Hotel Lebanon,” it was so named from the beautiful Cedar of Lebanon which was brought from the Holy Land many years ago and planted in front of the mansion where it has grown and developed ever since.

Recently several thousand dollars was spent on the building prior to its reopening and for some time to come it could be used for municipal purposes, there being many spacious rooms available for meeting places and offices. Later on, it is suggested, the building could be sold, and a city hall built, either back against the Native Sons’ building, or else in the center of the park.

Another important consideration in the connection with the purchase of the Riley place for a public park is that it is centrally and ideally located and the park is already there–the grounds are laid out and the trees, shrubs, and flowers are already growing luxuriantly.

– Press Democrat, July 23, 1909
LEBANON WILL CLOSE

The hotel Lebanon will close its doors at the end of July, and its manager, B. C. Cosgrove, will retire temporarily from business. This is being done on account of the state of his health. All the furniture and fixtures are for sale.

The Lebanon was built by the late A. W. Riley and occupied by him and his family for many years as a private residence. After the fire of 1906 it was made a hotel and for a considerable time it was the only hostelry in Santa Rosa and had a big run. When Mr. Cosgrove too charge he had it completely renovated and made many changes in its arrangement.

The hotel is situatied almost in the business section of the city and the garden and grounds surrounding it are hardly equaled in this section. It has been equipped more for a tourist than a commercial hotel.

– Santa Rosa Republican, July 15, 1909

CITIZENS DISCUSS THE PUBLIC PARK PROJECT
Many Want to See the Plan Carried Out

The publicity given the project to buy the Hotel Lebanon and grounds for a public park in the Press Democrat on Thursday morning excited much interest and the matter was much discussed pro and con during the day. It was expected that the suggestion would give rise to considerable talk. To many people it was a hearing of the matter for the first time; others had hoped that just such a plan as put forward would some day become a realization.

Citizens Interviewed

Thursday a Press Democrat representative interviewed a number of well know citizens on the subject and found that a majority looked with favor on the scheme. Others desired a little more time for consideration. Still others favored the acquisition of the beautiful grounds as a park but opposed the use of the building as a city hall. In regard to the latter idea it was not the intention of the citizens who first suggested the purchase of the property by the city that the building should be a permanent City Hall, the plan being that it could be used temporarily.

Would Move Building

“By all means I am in favor of the city purchasing the Hotel Lebanon property for a public park; lets have it all park, however, and sell the building and move it away,” was the reply of one citizen asked for an expression.

“It is a splendid idea,” said another. “I think that the bonds would be more likely to carry for the purchase of the Riley property for a park than for the erection of a city hall on the old lot,” he added.

“I read about the plan this morning, but I must have a little more time to look into the matter. O, yes, of course Santa Rosa wants a park, we all admit that.”

There are a few of the replies to queries put by the interviewer to men of affairs in Santa Rosa.

Ladies Are Interviewed

A number of women were also seen. They are all in favor of a park and for several years the securing of a park has been the fond hope of the Woman’s Improvement Club. There is no doubt that the entire club membership will endorse the suggested acquisition of the Riley property.

Then, of course, among the number discussing the matter Thursday were men who did not see the wisdom of taking a hasty step in the matter. Then there were those, you could count them on your fingers, happily, who raised their voice in protest against the idea of a park or city hall at all, men who are nearly always in the front rank of the “knockers” and to whom a city’s progress means naught.

But the concensus [sic] of opinion gained Thursday is heartily in favor of the public park, particularly such an ideal place as can now be secured in the purchase of the Riley property. Many people passing along Mendocino avenue Thursday stopped to look and admire and talk about the delights of the trees and shrubs, the lawns and walks. Others brought visitors to the place to show them. It was a day of additional admiration for the beautiful place on Mendocino avenue which public spirited citizens suggest should be acquired by Santa Rosa as a public park and city hall.

Director Alfred Trembley of the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce was very enthusiastic over the project. “I consider it a fine thing and it would undoubtedly make a beautiful park. Later on if the city desired, it could build a city hall adjoining the Native Sons building, or else in the center of the park.”

Professor A. C. McMeans said: “I like the idea of purchasing the Riley place for a park. I was very much in doubt if I would vote bonds for a city hall on the other site, but I would vote for this project.”

– Press Democrat, July 23, 1909

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WHO DESIGNED THE SONOMA COUNTY MUSEUM?

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

There’s a plaque at the Sonoma County Museum noting the building was “designed by James Knox Taylor.” Perhaps that line should be taped over, or at least a question mark added. A bright red question mark.

The magnificent old place was once Santa Rosa’s post office. Even before the 1906 earthquake, the town’s Congressman requested funds for a new federal building because the post office had outgrown its 19th century rooms in the old Athenaeum, Santa Rosa’s opera house. When that building collapsed in the quake, the post office temporarily relocated to the tent city on a Mendocino street vacant lot (along with almost every downtown business). After that, postal workers operated a window at a grocery store as they waited for a new home to be built by the government. And waited. 1906 turned into 1907, then 1908, when the Squeedunk parade mocked the endless delays with a float portraying a vacant lot surrounded by a worn fence. Finally, the blueprints arrived from Washington (now available online via the Library of Congress). On each page was stamped the signature and title of “James Knox Taylor Supervising Architect Treasury Department”.

(TOP: Santa Rosa received its first glimpse of its new post office in an unsigned architect’s rendering that appeared in the Republican January 14, 1909. CLICK or TAP any image to enlarge

MIDDLE: Construction progress was delayed by water continually filling the excavated site, probably because of an underground tributary to Santa Rosa creek. Photo courtesy Sonoma County Library

BOTTOM: Postcard c. 1910. Note the bicycles strewn on the curb and steps. Photo courtesy Bancroft Library/University of California)

James Knox Taylor was in charge of the Office of the Supervising Architect, a Treasury subdepartment that designed and commissioned federal buildings as well as awarding construction contracts. It was a job of tremendous responsibility; he managed an annual budget and inventory worth around $25 million, which would be closer to a billion dollars today. In FY 1909, when work was underway in Santa Rosa, he had 134 new buildings under construction or recently completed, additions or major repairs on dozens of others, and a further 263 projects somewhere in the pipeline, clamoring for attention.

Taylor’s appointment in 1897 to this post surprised many. It was usually a political patronage job and the designs produced by the Office were generally considered lackluster (one critic at the time called the work “excretable”). But Taylor had worked as an architect himself – albeit one who couldn’t make a living at it. Although he wasn’t the Treasury Department’s first choice, he was selected because he had been a draftsman there for three years and knew how the large Office functioned, and also because he wrote a convincing essay that outlined his philosophy: That public buildings shoud have a dignified style, be beautiful, and be pleasant to work in. Taylor quickly transformed the Office into a true architectural studio that turned out designs that might not have been the best of the day, but were certainly nothing to be ashamed of. He also awarded commissions to top architects for prominent buildings in major cities, which earned him high praise from top architects. Alas, that policy proved his undoing, and he resigned in 1912 amid a scandal that he gave one of these valuable contracts to his former partner from their failed architectural firm.

But did James Knox Taylor design the building that’s now the Sonoma County Museum? Unless unpublished correspondence turns up that proves authorship, assume the answer is no. The primary reference book on the Supervising Architect’s Office, “Architects to the Nation” (my source for background on Taylor) explains that during his tenure, “…modest government buildings, usually post offices, located in small communities…were designed by the Office staff.” Architectural database archINFORM similarly notes, “As the head of a sizable government office, Taylor’s direct involvement with any of these projects is open to question.” And then there was Taylor’s own essay that won him the position, where he stated that he believed the Supervising Architect should be a manager and leave designing to others, so “…[the Supervising Architect] could devote his attention to seeing personally that the three general considerations stated in the beginning of this thesis were studied, and that the actual work of construction was honestly done.”

In sum: It can be claimed James Knox Taylor was the designer of hundreds of public buildings in the same sense that hundreds of cartoons were “made by Walt Disney.” The man with his name on the title signed off on the final product, but likely didn’t do much of anything to shape the work; it was his talented employees who were the real creators.

So who does deserve our thanks for that beautiful building? The only full name on the blueprints is Taylor’s Supervising Architect stamp, and the actual draftsman is anonymous draftsman’s name can be read as “Smith” on some pages of the blueprints. The only other name associated with the building’s creation is one William N. Collier, and he was an engineer sent to oversee construction, not an architect.

Perhaps the true architect’s name might be found somewhere in the cavernous National Archives, but it’s useful to compare Santa Rosa’s old post office to other California post office/federal buildings that were in the works at the same time: Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and Stockton. I was unable to find any image of the historic Stockton building, but photos of the others reveal they share Santa Rosa’s Beaux Arts-Neoclassical-Spanish Colonial mashup. All have a low-pitched hipped roof with red tile; strong cornices under the eaves; masonry walls; a portico with a colonnade; an entryway filled with windows. Each building has slightly different tweaks. Santa Rosa’s Corinthian columns became Doric columns in Santa Cruz, then arches with pilasters in Santa Barbara. The post office in Santa Cruz is a single story, but has a larger footprint than the other two. (Only Santa Rosa is well proportioned, in my opinion, and the steps on the other buildings are not an integral  part  of the design, looking more like afterthoughts.)

Does that mean the same unknown architect designed all of the 1909-1910 California post offices? Possibly, but if they look enough alike to be a set of fraternal triplets, the East Coast federal buildings of the same vintage can be recognized as their first cousins. You’ll spot the same Beaux Arts-Neoclassical look – particularly in the shape of the oversized windows and doorways – at Saratoga Springs, NY, Selma, Alabama and Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, among others. Slap a hipped tile roof and a portico-colonnade on any of these buildings and they’d fit right in with the “California” style of architecture coming from Taylor’s office. (UPDATE: On further study, even the hipped tile roof can be found on post offices in the South and Southwest from this period – one example is Bessemer, Alabama.) I think the best conclusion is that the designer/architects were following the Office pattern book and not their muse.

Our treasure of a federal building was officially completed on March 1, 1910 for a total cost about $60,000. And so everything remained for 55 years, until the current post office was built in 1965 on Second street. The government sold the old building to Sonoma County, which used it as a data processing center. In 1977 it was sold again to the Santa Rosa Urban Renewal Agency, which was itching to get rid of it to make room for a shiny new mall that guaranteed lotsa’ renewing would follow. The building was slowwwwly moved from its original location at 405 Fifth street (on the corner of A street, an address now obliterated by the mall parking structure) about 750 feet to Seventh street. We should be very grateful that Santa Rosa didn’t just rip it down, as it recklessly demolished most of the rest of its history.

The old post office deserves to be better appreciated. If a drama were written about the history of Santa Rosa (R-rated, for sure), the first act would be set in a downtown saloon, sweaty, dank and thick with the grit of the Old West. But the scene for act two would be on the sunshined steps of the post office, because that’s where you bumped into everyone every day during the decades when Santa Rosa bloomed. This was the heart of the charming place that Alfred Hitchcock loved and immortalized. Venerate today that quiet lobby, which remains a perfect time capsule of memories not your own.

Contrast that with our present underwhelming main post office, which is notable for having a complete set of walls, floor and ceiling. Every time I’m in there – waiting at the back of a mile-long line – I think back to my aunt Ethelyn, who in the 1960s had a repulsive “modern” sofa with plastic upholstery. When anyone in the family teased that it was remarkably ugly even for the low standards of the day, she’d huff defensively, “well, it’s very easy to keep clean.”

HANDSOME NEW BUILDING FOR THE POSTOFFICE FOR THE CITY OF SANTA ROSA

The new Santa Rosa postoffice building, which is to be erected on the corner of Fifth and A streets in this city, has been admirably designed to harmonize with our history, climate, and natural surroundings. The building will be of Spanish design and will present a pleasing contrast to our other public buildings in the city. The building proper has a frontage on Fifth street of eighty-two feet, and a depth on A street of fifty-two feet. In addition to this main building there is a portico across the front fifty-one feet wide by thirteen feet deep. The general construction of the building is brick masonry, laid in pure cement mortar, no lime whatever. To the height of the first floor the building will be faced with cut stone laid as “coursed ashlar.” This stone will probably be “Indiana Buff Bedford Limestone,” the finest building stone now obtainable in the United States. From the cut stone line to the rafter extensions, the plain brick work will be stuccoed in a rough cast “stipled” surface and nicely paneled and ornamented in mouldings. The roof of the building will be covered with the best grade of Spanish terra cotta tile, including ornamented tile hips and ridges. All of the lintels over the portico and door and window openings will be of cast reinforced concrete, and all sills will be cut stone of same as base course. The portico floor is reached by a set of massive solid granite steps forty-six feet wide. The roof of the portico is also Spanish tile, and is held up by two heavy masonry corners, and four stone columns, twenty inches in diameter, with heavy base and carved caps.

The cornice of the entire building is overhanging with darkened beams and huge rafters. In all, the effect is one of massiveness and solidity. Each buttress on either side of the granite steps is surmounted by a heavy cast iron lamp standard, of highly ornamented design, and with five large opalescent glass globes to each standard. These lamps stand about ten feet high.

The first floor is given over entirely to the use of the postoffice, the public lobby extends across the entire front of the building and is thirteen feet deep, with high ceiling and heavy plastered arches and cornices. At the left end of the lobby is a fine solid oak stairway leading to the internal revenue offices on the second floor. Another passageway at the left leads to the private offices of the postmaster and assistant postmaster.

The workroom occupies all the central portion of the first floor and is practically two stories in height, as is the public lobby. The money order and registry department is at the right of the double entrance, and is separated somewhat from the general workroom. Large roomy vaults of reinforced concrete and steel are provided for all purposes. The floor of the portico and public lobby is of marble terrazzo laid off in panels. All of the base and plinths of the lobby will also be of marble. The second story at the left is arranged into a suite of offices for internal revenue officers with private vaults, toilet, etc. On the right of the second story are arranged a store room, “swing room,” and toilet room.

All of the toilet rooms have terazzo floors and marble wainscoting. The large toilet rooms on the second floor have exceptionally fine facilities, including shower baths for employees of the postoffice. There will be a basement with ten-foot ceiling under the whole building given over to the heating plant and fuel storage, etc. The mechanical equipment of the building, including heating, plumbing, and electric installation, is superb and of the latest types throughout. The heating will have an automatic oil burning plant to operate a hot water heating apparatus.

The plumbing embraces some of the finest fixtures made, most of which will be the John Douglas manufacture. All heating and plumbing pipes and fittings will be jacketed with asbestos pipe coverings. There will be four distinct electric installations, one for lighting, one for power, one for vault protection service and one for telephone service within the building. All electric work will be run in metal conduits.

The inside finish of the building will be almost entirely of quarter sawed whiteoak for all doors, trim, fixtures, counters, desks, etc. All glass will be plate or ornamental opalascent glass. Wood floors will be of white maple. Artistic metal grilles at all screen openings and front doors.

As a whole our new Federal Building compares favorably with other like [illegible microfilm] and while not so large and pretentious as some, it is fully adequate to serve its purpose.

The building was designed by James Knox Taylor, supervising architect of the treasury, and its construction will be under the personal supervision of Mr. William N. Collier, superintendent of construction of public buildings, who is now in Santa Rosa. Hoyt Brothers have the contract to erect the building.

– Santa Rosa Republican January 14, 1909

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IS IT HOOD MANSION OR HOOD HOUSE?

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

About 15 minutes from downtown Santa Rosa is a mansion that’s not a mansion, and a treasure that’s hasn’t been particularly treasured at times. It’s the William Hood House (AKA Hood Mansion).

Now tucked behind the county’s Juvenile Justice Center, the old house has lost the commanding view of northern Sonoma Valley that it possessed when it was built in 1858. The talking points (PDF) prepared for an open house a few years ago provide the best overview of the history of the building: Hood, a house builder and grape grower, bought a half interest in the nearly 19,000 acre Rancho Los Guilicos in 1850, obtaining complete ownership a few years later. In 1858 he married and began construction.

(ABOVE: The William Hood House c. 1898, courtesy the Sonoma County Library/Sherman Boivin Collection

BELOW: Hood Mansion today, from approximately the same viewpoint)

Most of Hood’s original house is architecturally unremarkable; it’s a nice Victorian-era farmhouse, as seen in the historic photo. Most notable is that it’s made of brick, even including the downstairs interior walls, which are finished with plaster. The talking points explain why this was unusual:


At the time, brick was a very expensive building material. Very few manufacturing kilns had been established in the area, and their weight made them costly to transport. Therefore, most brick buildings from this period were made from clay deposits found nearby and fired on site. The somewhat uneven appearance of the bricks on Hood Mansion are a testament to the handiwork of the local craftsmen. In all likelihood, the bricks were manufactured on site by Native American workers.

The Hood family lost the property through foreclosure, as also happened to the wine-making family that followed. In 1905 the lender sold it to Thomas Kearns, a Utah silver tycoon and former U.S. Senator. Kearns had an opulent home in Salt Lake City and hobnobbed with the rich and powerful, including President Teddy Roosevelt. For him, a simple farmhouse would not do, so he hired someone to enlarge and modernize the building. Thanks to a small item in the Press Democrat, we now know that someone was architect William H. Willcox.(Another article with greater depth about Kearns and his years of ownership is available here.)

Willcox has been mentioned several times in this journal (read an introduction here) and had been an nationally-esteemed architect since the 1880s. In Santa Rosa, he was planning to build a auditorium large enough to host state and national conventions, as well as providing a civic center; he also proposed creating a water park between Main and E street, which would have transformed the town’s focus. Alas, the 1906 earthquake struck when he was apparently just weeks away from having enough funding to begin the big pavilion, and in the disaster’s aftermath, the money men were interested in rebuilding what they had personally lost, not investing in their mutual future.

Willcox was really the only logical man for Kearns to hire. The scope of the project went beyond what could be entrusted to a carpenter-builder, and Willcox was about the only experienced architect who could keep an eye on the construction. Other qualified architects working around Santa Rosa at that time lived farther away. Brainerd Jones was busy in Petaluma, John Galen Howard (who designed the Empire Building) was in Berkeley, and J. W. Doliver (the new county courthouse) and Victor Dunkerly (a Frank Lloyd Wright collaborator who built the Overton Hotel) were in San Francisco. While Willcox mainly lived and worked in San Francisco, he kept an office in Santa Rosa that he shared with a civil engineer (another bonus, considering that the project involved a unreinforced brick building in the Santa Rosa Plain, where the occasional aftershock still made people twitchy).

Sadly, the Hood House modifications are the only works of Willcox (currently known) to survive in Sonoma County. (UPDATE) Some of the additions were quite modern; other work blended so well with the pre-Civil War building that there are questions about what details were part of the original construction. Thanks to the county Facilities Department, myself and a handful of architects and historians were given a chance to examine the building. Here’s my guess on what Willcox completed in 1908:

Viewing the front (Hood House faces west) it’s immediately apparent that the building was widened by about 30 feet, as seen by comparing the historic and current photos above. (CLICK or TAP on any photo to enlarge.) The seams between old and new brickwork are easily noticed in person. To expand the house on the north side, Willcox had to only add a second floor to the original one-story extension of the main house, which might have been Hood’s dining room.


LEFT: North view, with the original roof line visible above the ground floor windows. The single story section with the three doors was likely a utility room (a boiler for the heating system, a boiler for hot faucets, and probably a backup electric generator) added by Willcox

MIDDLE: East view, with the Kearns-era kitchen at the south (green door), directly behind the new dining room. The northern section of the utility building with the door closest to the camera was added, and its proximity to the boiler room suggests it was a laundry room

RIGHT: South view, with the new formal entrance into the dining room

Willcox gets credit for the entire south side of the house, which he turned into the new formal entrance. The roof of the portico is supported by the same cornice brackets as found on the front of the house. Thankfully the county left its original brown shingle when a new roof was put on the rest of the house; these shingles were a favorite material of the Bay Area Arts & Craft movement, and serve to introduce visitors to the spectacular dining room behind the door.

Nearly everything in the dining room is oak: The enormous table, floor, beamed ceiling, paneled walls, and the huge sideboard that nearly fills the inside wall. Above the table, an array of lights illuminate the room as well as the ceiling beams, all fixtures in the Craftsman style. In 1908, this room would have been considered ultra-modern design.


LEFT: Upper shades of the elaborate center fixture point towards the simple ceiling rose

MIDDLE: Along the sides of the room are pendant lanterns, suspended from an ornamental post and chain

RIGHT: The underside of a lantern reveals that each could hold four candles on the exterior, plus one inside. Only very narrow candles could be used in these holders, suggesting they were used only for decoration

The dining room commands half of Willcox’s addition on the southern ground floor; the southwest side is an equally large reception room. The modern touch here is the cove ceiling; the rest of the room is unadorned, except for a nice fireplace with a Roman-themed break front portraying a woman’s head and grape leaves. Willcox also placed fireplaces in each pair of upstairs bedrooms on the north and south walls as well as in the dining room, giving the house a total of eight fireplaces (I think).


LEFT: Fireplace in the reception room

MIDDLE: Fireplace in the northeast bedroom

RIGHT: One of the fireplaces in the original part of the house

Where else did Willcox leave his fingerprints on the William Hood House? An architect on our tour proposed that fancy moldings in some of the old rooms were too opulent for a mid-19th century farmhouse, and suggested that Willcox made a pass through the entire home to update details and unify the design. I disagree; the trim work upstairs is modest, particularly in the rooms Willcox created. But I agree that these downstairs moldings probably were not part of the original construction and were added sometime during the late Victorian era. Perhaps the investor who owned the property between the 1893 Hood foreclosure and the 1905 purchase by Kearns brought in a contractor to put some lipstick on his white elephant.


LEFT: Several of the rooms in the original house have extremely elaborate crown molding-picture rail

MIDDLE: Many downstairs door jambs, unusually thick because of the interior brick walls, have moldings on all sides

RIGHT: Multipart crown moldings are even found on storage cabinets

The history of the house after the Willcox changes is detailed in the talking points linked above. Briefly: Kearns sold it after WWI, and the property was subdivided. The home became part of a compound owned by a men’s organization, then the state, then finally Sonoma County. The house is lucky to have enjoyed good stewardship: Had the Fates been unkind, the bricks of Hood Mansion could just as easily be melting back into the local mud from which they came (see: Carrillo Adobe). The county deserves full props for its earthquake retrofit and stabilization of the building in recent years.

(RIGHT: Something awful lurks in the dark rooms of Hood House)

The county does, however, deserve shame for the darkest moment of Hood House: Turning the place over to a clique of interior decorators for a Bicentennial Decorators’ Showcase (“a display of more than 20 historic rooms decorated by leading designers!”) that left many interiors in the esteemed old building defaced – and possibly, damaged – with mid-1970s crap-ola. Woodwork was painted in trendy colors; avocado green linoleum was glued to antique counter tops and cabinets; room after room has wallpaper competing for the most frenetic design and clashing colors, some of which can be glimpsed in the photos above. One interior room has a wall covered in wood shingles, with other walls (and ceiling!) papered in a cartoon-y floral orgy that looks a plea for help from someone who’s watched way too many episodes of the Partridge Family.

Most of the damage done by the showcase can be undone, but that The Ugly is still around more than three decades later attests that the work won’t be easy or cheap – it’s another big project in a house that has a list of big projects crying for attention. There’s a measure of irony that Willcox was available to accept the Hood House project because post-quake Santa Rosa was too distracted to see the best interests for its future. Then exactly 70 years later, his work there was defaced because the county likewise failed to weigh the long-term impacts of a poor decision.

Architect William H. Willcox is at the Overton from San Francisco. Mr. Wilcox says the new residence on Senator Kearns’ place at Los Guilocos [sic] is about completed.

– “Around the Corridors”, Press Democrat, June 5, 1908

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