2019 Actions Taken
SHRC Registration Actions Taken 2019
The nominations below were reviewed by the State Historical Resources Commission during the year 2019. Scroll down to view subsequent actions by quarter. New actions are added to the end of this page after each quarterly State Historical Resources Commission meeting. Agendas from past meetings are downloadable in PDF format below on the right sidebar.
February 1, 2019 SHRC Meeting
The following nominations were scheduled for the February 1, 2019 SHRC quarterly meeting at the State Resources Building Auditorium, 1416 9th Street, Sacramento, California. Eight nominations the National Register of Historic Places were heard by the Commission, including one Multiple Property Document.
Properties nominated to the National Register of Historic Places
Mirlo Gate Lodge Tower is a two story rustic circular stone masonry tower located at the entrance to Palos Verdes Estates, designed by Clarence E. Howard and built in 1925. The tower is prominently located at the top of a hill, originally intended as a gate tower and lodging for a gatekeeper, but today it is the symbolic east entrance to Palos Verdes Estates.
Housing Tracts of Joseph Eichler in San Jose, California, 1952-1963 is a Multiple Property Document covering the modern mass-produced housing built by pioneering merchant builder Joseph Eichler in the Santa Clara Valley, specifically within the modern city limits of San Jose. Eichler's ideas about housing were inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian homes, and became enormously popular in many California cities in the 1950s, featuring broad, horizontal homes, contemporary architecture, and innovative indoor/outdoor designs.
Fairglen Additions is a district of 218 homes in the San Jose neighborhood of Willow Glen, constructed between 1959 and 1961, produced by merchant builder Joseph Eichler and designed by the architectural firms of Anshen & Allen, Jones Emmons & Associates, and Claude Oakland Architect & Associates. Thirteen distinct home plans were constructed on the approximately 6,000 square foot lots. The open floor plans emphasize privacy and the relationship of indoor/outdoor living, typical of Eichler homes and subdivisions. The property is nominated under cover of th Housing Tracts of Joseph Eichler in San Jose, California, 1952-1963, Multiple Property Document. Photos 1 Photos 2
San Diego Gas & Electric Capistrano Substation Building, located in San Juan Capistrano, was constructed in 1917 as a key element of Southern California Edison's (SCE) electrical distribution system, the point where SCE's 50 Hertz power was converted to San Diego Gas & Electric's 60 Hz. The property is an example of SCE's "Monumental" substations, a subtype of the company's architectural program intended to visually enhance SCE buildings via the use of formal architectural design, coupled with the durable, fire-resistant reinforced concrete buildings. The building was later sold from SCE to SDG&E. The rear portion of the building was demolished in 2018, but the surviving portion retains eligibility, as it is both the architecturally significant portion of the building and the space that once held the conversion equipment that converted SCE's 50 Hz power to SDG&E's 60 Hz power.
Weilheimer House is a one-story residence located in downtown Mountain View. The property is associated with town trustee and mayor Julius Weilheimer, and is a locally significant example of Queen Anne residential architecture. The property has been converted to restaurant use but retains its historic characteristics.
Air Base Laundry is a one-story concrete Spanish Eclectic commercial building, originally used as a commercial laundry, built in 1931 by the Carl Lindholm Company. It is a locally significant example of Spanish Eclectic architecture, reflecting the architectural styles of nearby Air Base Sunnyvale (previously known as Moffett Field.)
Santa Barbara Club is the headquarters for a private club that played an influential role in the political, social, cultural, and business life of Santa Barbara between 1904 and 1965. Designed by Francis Wilson with 1925 alterations by Soule and Murphy, the building is an outstanding and rare example of Beaux Arts architecture in Santa Barbara, where Spanish Colonial Revival style predominated after the 1925 earthquake.
Security Trust and Savings Bank Building is a thirteen-story high-rise designed in the Italian Renaissance Revival style. When completed in 1925, the building featured a large banking hall on the ground floor with speculative office space on the upper floors. The property is a distinctive feature in the downtown Long Beach cityscape due to its exceptional attention to detail and use of material, and an outstanding local example of the work of architectural firm Curlett and Beelman.
Hunt Center and Library in Fullerton includes the International Style Hunt-Wesson, Inc. Headquarters building and branch public library in a campus-like setting. The work of architect William L. Pereira and landscape architects R. Dudley Trudgett and Robert Herrick Carter, the property is significant for its association with Hunt-Wesson, Inc., one of the most long-lived and important companies in Fullerton’s history, and with industrialist Norton Simon, a self-made titan of American business.
May 8, 2019 SHRC Meeting
The followng nominations were scheduled for the February 1, 2019 SHRC quarterly meeting at the Plaza Ballroom, Hilton Palm Springs, 400 East Tahquitz Canyon Way, Palm Springs, California, 92262. Eight nominations for the National Register of Historic Places and one nomination for the California Register of Historical Resources were heard by the Commission.
Bay Street Beach Historic District, approximately 53 seaside and nearshore acres in the City of Santa Monica, includes a grass open space, a beach area, a nearshore area (i.e., below mean high tide), and a pergola. The district served as a primary beach recreation and leisure site for African American Angelenos during the Jim Crow era. While Los Angeles beaches were not legally segregated, the area was proximate to an important African American civic institution and historical local neighborhood. The beach was a primary seaside public resource where its visitors, including prominent African Americans from Santa Monica and the wider Los Angeles area, felt comparatively safe from harassment.
Commercial Exchange Building is located in downtown Los Angeles at the southern end of the principal business district. The 1924 Beaux Arts building is thirteen stories—rectangular in plan with a classical, tripartite composition conveyed by a horizontal division of base, shaft, and cornice—the typical format for downtown Los Angeles architecture in the 1920s. To accommodate a street-widening project in 1935, a portion of the building was cut out and removed, and the western half of the building moved to reconnect it to the eastern half. The unprecedented move was specifically designed by the engineer to accomplish this project. It has been said that not a single window was broken and the building tenants were not impacted. At the time, it was claimed that the Commercial Exchange Building was the tallest building in the world to be moved.
Hunt House embodies the distinctive characteristics of Mid-Century Modern residential architecture designed by the renowned Los Angeles architecture firm of Craig Ellwood Design, under chief designer Jerrold Lomax. Completed in 1957, three one-story, wood-framed buildings are arranged on a north-south axis—the garage and guesthouse fronting Malibu Road, and the house downslope from the others overlooking the ocean.
Bank of Italy Building is a twelve story commercial building located in downtown Los Angeles. Designed in the Beaux Arts style by the firm Morgan, Walls and Clements, this building was the Los Angeles headquarters for the Bank of Italy, later known as Bank of America. The building is significant for its role in the economics of the motion picture industry, lending money for Hollywood film production, for its association with Grace Stoermer, a pioneer in the field of women's banking, and for its Beaux Arts architecture.
Gilroy Southern Pacific Depot is a Mediterranean Revival style passenger/freight depot located in Gilroy, Santa Clara County. Built in 1918, it replaced an earlier depot dating from 1869. It is significant for its association with transportation, from the year of its construction until the end of Southern Pacific's passenger service to the depot in 1971.
MacGregor Building is a two story office building located in downtown Albany, Alameda County. Built in 1934, this building combined elements of Spanish Colonial Revival and Mediterranean Revival in a style representatve of its designer and builder, master builder Charles MacGregor. The property was the prinicpal office for MacGregor Homes, a prolific builder of residential housing in the East Bay during Albany's most prolific period of residential building, from its construction until 1944. It is eligible for the role of MacGregor Homes as a significant business, for its direct association with the working life of Charles MacGregor, and for its architecture.
Mission Creek Bridge is an 1891 masonry arch bridge located in Santa Barbara. In addition to the bridge itself, this nomination includes two attached stone masonry walls: the South Wall (including a fragment of the Mission Santa Barbara aqueduct and the Oliver Trough-Fountain), and the North Wall, also known as the Stegosaurus Wall due to its unique stone coping. The property is also significant in the area of landscape architecture, as its naturalistic landscape design elements integrate into the adjacent Mission Historical Park and Rocky Nook Parks, transitioning to the natural landscape of Mission Canyon. A cantilevered wooden walkway, added in 1929 and expanded in 1930, was the latest addition to the bridge and its landscape.
Mountain House is located in Butte County, and is associated with the development of a route over the Sierra Nevada originally called the Beckwourth Trail, then the Oroville-Quincy Highway and finally California State Route 162. Mountain House served as an emigrant trail and stagecoach stop, and developed into a small community with a diversified economy of commerce, mining, agriculture, and lumber. The community's population ranged between 10 and 100 persons. The period of significance ends in 1945, after the opening of a gas station in 1944. The only extant resources remaining of the community of Mountain House are a hotel, a grocery store/post office, barn, service station, a 5-acre orchard and a few minuor landscape features, including a surviving macadamized segment of the Oroville-Quincy Highway.
Properties nominated to the California Register of Historical Resources
Belmont Square is a distinctive garden courtyard residential complex located in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, one of the earliest suburbs that developed in Los Angeles with the advent of the streetcar. The buildings have a design similar to East Coast row houses and were constructed as connected parcels in three rows. Rows 1 and 2 face each other along Columbia Place, a narrow footpath that opens to West 2nd Street and Miramar Avenue. Row 3 faces Columbia Avenue. The flanking gardens and the double row of homes along Columbia Place create an enclosed space with vegetation and trees that provides relief from the hardscape of the Los Angeles’ thoroughfares.
August 1, 2019 SHRC Meeting
The following nominations were scheduled for the August 1, 2019 SHRC quarterly meeting at the State Resources Building Auditorium, 1416 9th Street, Sacramento, California. Nine nominations to the National Register of Historic Places and one California Historical Landmark nomination were heard by the Commission. One item, To-Kalon Vineyard, was rescheduled for a future meeting.
Properties nominated to the National Register of Historic Places
Barr, George and Mabel, House is a 1923 Tudor Revival home located in the Curtis Park neighborhood of Sacramento. Designed by the locally significant architectural firm of Dean & Dean, this house is an important example of the Tudor Revival style and part of the South Curtis Oaks housing tract, developed by builder J.C. Carly, associated ith the Better Homes in America movement.
Hathaway, Anne, Cottage is a 1923 Tudor Revival home located in the Curtis Park neighborhood of Sacramento. Designed by the locally significant architectural firm of Dean & Dean, this house is an important example of the Tudor Revival style and part of the South Curtis Oaks housing tract, developed by builder J.C. Carly, associated ith the BEtter Homes in America movement. Built for drugstore manager Ernest Kimberlin, the property was advertised as the "Anne Hathaway Cottage" due to its intended similarity to the home of William Shakespeare's wife in Warwickshire, ENgland.
The Boathouses is a matched pair of detached, two-story residences located side by side on a narrow lot in Encinitas, named the S.S. Moonlight and the S.S. Encinitas. The homes were designed to authentically replicate the appearance and scale of boats while functioning as residential cottages. They represent an architecturally significant example of Fantasy-themed programmatic residential architecture. Unlike most Programmatic architecture, utilized for commercial buildings, the Boathouses are a rare and locally significant example of residential programmatic architecture--buildings intended to resemble something other than a building.
Glen Park BART Station is a one-story-over-basement, reinforced concrete transit station located in San Francisco's Glen Park neighborhood, designed by architect Ernest Born in an idiosyncratic blend of Brutalist and Bay Region Tradition styles, constructed between 1968 and 1972. The station is widely recognized as one of the most architecturally significant stations in the Bay Area Rapid Transit system.
Eastern Star Home, located in Los Angeles, was designed as a retirement and convalescent facility by the prominent San Francisco-based architectural firm William Mooser and Company and constructed in 1936, the Eastern Star Home excellent example of Spanish Colonial Revival style architecture. Located in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles the building is also significant for its association with the Order of the Eastern Star.
Japanese Hospital in the historically diverse East Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights is a two-story, T-shaped masonry building with a flat roof and tower, constructed in 1929 in the Streamline Moderne style. Subsequent additions to the building between 1966 and 1970 include an L-shaped addition that wraps around the north and west façades and a partial third story. The property represents an ethnic community’s creation of a health care institution as a way to ameliorate the disparity in public health services for ethnic minorities that resulted from widespread prejudice in early twentieth century Los Angeles. The hospital meets the registration requirements for properties associated with Health and Medicine established in the Asian Americans in Los Angeles, 1850-1980 Multiple Property Submission under the context “Japanese Americans in Los Angeles, 1869-1970.”
Smith, Maurice and Dinah Shore, House is one of the largest single-family residences Donald Wexler designed during his long career, built for Maurice and Dinah (Shore) Smith in the Las Palmas neighborhood of Palm Springs. The 1964 residence is Modern in style with a flat roof, intersecting planes, and a generous use of glazing. Pinwheel in plan, the house is set diagonally on the lot. The property includes an adjacent guesthouse, built in 1963 as an art studio for Dinah and a place to stay while the main house was under construction.
Swedish American Hall in San Francisco’s Upper Market area is a three-story-over-basement (plus mezzanine), wood frame, combination social hall and commercial building constructed in 1907 for the Swedish Society of San Francisco. The building—notable for its expressive woodwork, fine craftsmanship, and high artistic values—was designed with a blend of Scandinavian and Arts and Crafts influences by the Swedish born master architect, August Nordin. Freja Hall, the building’s largest public assembly space, features highly ornamental woodwork and soaring trusses that rank it among the finest expressions of Arts and Crafts design in California. The basement is home to the Cafe Du Nord, in continuous operation since 1908.
To-Kalon Vineyard is an 825-acre agricultural landscape of which 678 acres are planted to vineyard. The entrance to the historic district is located directly west of the town of Oakville, in Napa County. The property is significant for its association with Hamilton Walker Crabb whose viticultural and varietal experimentation led to advancements in grape and wine production. Crabb established the vineyard in 1868, and in 1903, the United States Department of Agriculture established the Oakville Experimental Vineyard on the property to continue Crabb’s research. The Robert Mondavi Winery was created in 1966 on a portion of the historic To-Kalon Vineyard.
Wexler House is an excellent example of the architecture of Donald Wexler at the start of his career in Palm Springs. Influenced by his time in Richard Neutra’s architectural practice, Wexler’s Modern residence with its flat roof and exposed post and beam structure, along with numerous glass walls, accomplishes its purpose as housing that is minimal, graceful, and elegant. Wexler designed the original two bedroom, two bath house for himself and his family in 1954. In 1968, Wexler built a three bedroom, one bath addition, consistent with his original design, on the north side of the house and converted an original bedroom into a den.
Properties nominated as California Historical Landmarks
Bryte VFW Memorial Hall was built in 1946 as a community center and movie theater by Jordan "Pappy" Ramos, in the Bryte neighborhood of the city of West Sacramento. The property is significant as the first All-Indian Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter in California, Post 9054, established in 1950. The post was established by veterans primarily from the Maidu and Miwok tribes of northern California. Beyond its role as a VFW hall, this building became a highly significant location for dances, community, networking, especially its role as the site of traditional Miwok dancing. The traditional dances revived at the Bryte VFW Memorial Hall, beginning as intermission entertanment as social dances, were precurors to many regional traditional dance organizations.
November 7, 2019 SHRC Meeting
The following nominations were scheduled for the November 7, 2019 SHRC quarterly meeting at the Multi-Purpose Room of 201B North E Street, San Bernardino, California. Nine nominations to the National Register of Historic Places, including a Multiple Property Document, and one California Register of Historical Resources nomination were heard by the Commission.
Properties nominated to the National Register of Historic Places
Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in California Multiple Property Submission (MPS) establishes a preliminary framework to identify and designate places in California associated with Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. The Multiple Property Documentation Form (MPDF) compliments and builds upon the national theme study, Finding A Path Forward: Asian American Pacific Islander National Historic Landmarks Theme Study produced by the National Park Service. The initial focus is on those groups who had a significant presence in the state before additional federal laws and policies virtually halted migration from Asia in the 1920s and 1930s. These pioneering groups hailed in successive waves primarily from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent. The Pacific Islanders discussed in this MPDF—Native Hawaiians, Chamorros from Guam in the Mariana Islands, and Samoans from American Samoa—came, like the Filipina/os, from territories controlled by the United States and were not considered immigrants subject to the restrictive laws.
Gran Oriente Filipino Hotel is a 1907 three-story-over-basement rooming house in South Park, a residential enclave in San Francisco’s South of Market (SoMa) district. Gran Oriente Filipino, a Masonic organization founded by Filipino Merchant Marines in the early 1920s, began renting the property in 1935. Passage of the Luce-Cellar Act in 1946 allowed Filipina/os who had arrived in the US prior to 1934 to naturalize and consequently to purchase property in California. The lodge’s purchase of the rooming house marked an important shift from renting to owning property and was a source of pride in the Filipina/o community. The hotel meets the registration requirements of the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in California MPS for property types associated with Community Serving Organizations.
Japanese YWCA was designed in a Japanese-inspired style—the original building by Julia Morgan in 1932, and the 2017 internally connected addition. Located in San Francisco’s Japantown, the property is the only building purpose-built by and for Issei (first generation) Japanese American women in the United States. The property is associated with their struggles and accomplishments as well as with the fight for African American civil rights and homosexual rights. Inspired by the 1980s campaign for Japanese American redress, a multi-generational group of Japanese Americans led a successful legal struggle to regain title to the building so that it could be kept in use for the benefit of the Japanese American community. The building meets the registration requirements of the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in California MPS for property types associated with Community Serving Organizations.
Church of the Epiphany began as a nineteenth century Ernest Coxhead Shingle Style chapel with Late Gothic Revival additions by Arthur Benton. During the 1960s and 1970s, the church was the site of community organizing and organization formation for the Latinx community of East Los Angeles. Under the guidance of Reverend John B. Luce, the church became a center for cultural heritage preservation, reflecting the intersection of religion and activism associated with the use of religion, cultural heritage, and non-violence to promote Chicano civil rights. The church meets the registration requirements for property types associated with Struggles for Inclusion in the Latinos in Twentieth Century California MPS.
Kelton Apartments in the locally designated Midvale-Kelton Apartment Historic District, a Westwood community in Los Angeles, is a three-unit building with a complex composition of three levels that track the slope of the lot. Completed in 1941, the property embodies a shift in Richard Neutra’s architectural approach from earlier, purer iterations of the boxy volumes of the International Style. While retaining some key character-defining features of the earlier style, Kelton Apartments embodies a more relaxed, regionally responsive composition with a woodsier palette, and extended terraces and roof overhangs that enable a fuller relationship with nature.
Burro Flats Site (Boundary Decrease and Additional Documentation) updates a 1976 nomination with additional documentation to establish National Register eligibility in additional areas of significance, including Native American Heritage, Religion, and Art, in addition to Prehistoric Archaeology as previously noted. Located in the Santa Susana Mountain Range, the site of both winter and summer solstice observations is eligible for its remarkable examples of prehistoric Native American rock art that are important representatives of the aesthetic and religious values of the Native American groups who created them.
Properties nominated to the California Register of Historical Resources
Palace Hotel, also known as the Far Western Tavern, was a destination for Swiss-Italian immigrants who traveled to Guadalupe, Santa Barbara County, and the surrounding area. Built in 1912 for Swiss-Italian immigrant Ercolina Forni and her husband Ernest, Ercolina ran the Palace Hotel alone after Ernest moved to northern California in 1920. The property is significant for its association with the commercial development of the city of Guadalupe and its association with the working life of Ercolina Forni.
W. Parker Lyon House exemplifies the tenets of Mid-century Modern residential architecture identified in the Multiple Property Documentation Form “Cultural Resources of the Recent Past, City of Pasadena; it is an excellent and early example of the Mid-century Modern residential architecture of master architect Thornton Ladd.
Bumann Ranch is a district located in Encinitas, San Diego County, consisting of the remaining historic features of a small ranch established in 1886; originally a 160 acre homestead, 10 acres remain. One of the last remaining, still-active homestead ranches in San Diego County, Bumann Ranch is associated with the exploration and settlement of the Encinitas area by German immigrants via the Olivenhain Colony. The family continued tilling the land via horse-drawn farm equipment until the death of one of two ranch horses, Mollie, in 1965.
Founders Church of Religious Science is located in Los Angeles and was constructed in 1959. This Mid-Century Modern church was designed by master architect Paul Williams and constructed of steel and reinforced concrete, capped by a large, domed roof with accompanying flat and pent volumes, with a unique elliptical plan and 14-foot perimeter wall of perforated concrete breezeblocks.
St. Hilary's Mission Church is a Gothic Revival style church is associated with the early settlement of Tiburon, Marin County. Constructed in 1888, the property was deconsecrated in 1954 and restored in 1959 by the Belvedere-Tiburon Landmarks Society.