Spanish Colonial Style

ARCHITECTURE Robert Sweeney

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CHAPTER 3

Irene and Bernhard Hoffmann 3.02

Hoffmann house

3.03

Hoffmann house

I

rene and Bernhard Hoffmann first came to Santa Barbara in November 1919 from Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to spend the winter. Within a year they had settled in. Bernhard Hoffmann explained: We decided to move to California because of the health of a member of the family.…We have friends and relatives in various cities, San Francisco, Pasadena, San Diego and elsewhere. It would have been pleasant to live in any of those cities….

We were impressed by two places in California— Ojai and Santa Barbara….

But we saw the beginnings and possibilities here, and the fact that this city is on the ocean persuaded us to come here.

We had read “Two Years Before The Mast,” and we knew the story of Cabrillo and we were immensely interested in the De la Guerra house and the Carrillo adobe and the other old buildings, and all they implied and all their history meant.

Perhaps it was because we were newcomers—in reality this is Mrs. Hoffman’s [sic] dream,—that we saw the possibilities of restoring some of the oldtime [sic] beauty and picturesqueness, and preserving what we already have.

It is tempting to speculate that the Hoffmanns met Osborne Craig at Siamasia in Montecito, where they all stayed in 1919. A more tenable explanation is that they first crossed paths after Craig established his office in the Oreña adobe. Irene Hoffmann was taking Spanish lessons from Delfina de la Guerra, who was still living in the adjacent ancestral home, and Hoffmann reported seeing The Patio and being impressed. No matter. The Hoffmanns had a vision and

the financial resources to carry it out. They became Craig’s Medici.

Hoffmann House, Casa Santa Cruz Santa Barbara, 1921

T

here are many beautiful and well-appointed modern homes in Santa Barbara, but none more beautiful and appropriate to its charming family life that that of Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Hoffman [sic] of Massachusetts and California. Set high above Mission Canyon and appropriating its natural beauty, the handsome house, designed by James Osborne Craig and carried to completion by Carlton M. Winslow, looks out over the city and its incomparable setting as though gravely considering its future problems.

In May 1920, the Morning Press reported that Mrs. Hoffmann, who with her husband had occupied the Dalliba cottage on East Valley Road in Montecito for several months, had leased the McCalla house on upper Garden Street and would take possession in June. Five months later, Mrs. Hoffmann purchased the property from Mrs. McCalla. Though one might question the choice of Santa Barbara instead of more fashionable Montecito, the site at the edge of Mission Canyon with a precipitous drop off—and corresponding view across the canyon—was undeniably appealing and the house was set well back from the street, assuring privacy.

The house was constructed in the late nineteenth century; an early photograph shows it to be large and unlovely (Fig. 3.01). The layout was conventional: the entrance hall was roughly in the center of the plan with the living hall, morning room and library to the left or west; the dining and service rooms were

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2.10 Edith Chesebrough house, Pebble Beach (project)lands (completed by John O’Shea)

John O’Shea (1876-1956) worked in Carmel between 1917 and 1945. He is believed to have had a romantic interlude with Mrs. Bigelow before marrying Mary Shaugnessey in 1922. His role in the house is confirmed by articles in the Carmel Pine Cone, June 8, 1922: “John O’Shea supervised building of Bigelow house,” and in California Southland, August 1925: “house and garden of Mrs. Bigelow…started

by Mr. Craig, but changed and completed by the owner and the artist, Mr. O’Shea.”

Chesebrough House Pebble Beach, ca. 1919 (project)

W

riting to Mary after returning from one of his excursions to the Monterey Peninsula, Craig indicated the possibility of two new commissions there.

One seemed sure: “…I was definitely commissioned to get up sketches for another house…;” the other was hopeful but uncertain: “…I rather anticipate still another house from the same neighborhood.” The definite commission may have been a project for the golfer Edith Chesebrough in Pebble Beach. The site on Seventeen Mile Drive rose above wave-splashed rock outcroppings and the Pacific Ocean, a display of nature upstaging any man-made intrusion.

Craig’s response has the additive quality of a true Spanish farmhouse. The surviving elevation drawing depicts a one- and two-story mass with perpendicular wings; a projecting, arched entry and the lean-tos that became a standard feature of Spanish Colonial design. Railed porches overlook the ocean (Fig.2.10).

The Chesbrough house was not built but comparison with another house nearby that was, designed

by George Washington Smith for Mrs. Arthur Rose Vincent is inevitable. The architects’ responses for

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classical detailing and symmetry distinguish this as a work of Osborne Craig. Few devices were used to mitigate the size of the building or its visual weight; tension is created by the push and pull of irregularly juxtaposed forms (Figs. 3.06-3.10). No attempt was made to create ceremonial axes: rooms are entered at corners suggesting diagonal circulation (see Fig. 3.04).

This is a house of corridors. None of the main public spaces—music room, library or dining room—is accessible directly from the entrance vestibule but instead by halls providing shifts in direction and an air of mystery and slight disorientation. The main stair occupies its own self-contained space and is approached similarly (Figs. 3.11, 3.12).

The two main terminuses—added by Craig—are high-ceilinged, ceremonial spaces: the music room with its fine sixteenth-century fireplace and the dining room overlooking Mission Canyon (Figs. 3.13, 3.14). The library between, with a low vaulted ceiling and walls lined with bookcases is more intimate (Fig. 3.15). Similarly, the second floor is something of a maze with its family bedrooms, guestroom and servant quarters. A separate apartment with a small kitchen was provided for the Hoffmanns’ daughter Margaret, who was diabetic, and her nurse; the outdoor stair on the front elevation leads to this. Each of the family bedrooms has a fireplace, all studies in sculptural simplicity (Figs. 3.16-3.21).

Critical architectural response was immediate and positive. In February 1924 the house was included among the “city’s most beautiful homes and gardens.”

In March it received honorable mention as a notable example of architecture. Two years later, California Southland published an article on the garden designed by Florence Yoch (Fig. 3.22).

Casa Santa Cruz has a checkered history. The Hoffmanns moved out around 1936, leaving the house vacant until 1943 [1940?] when they sold it to the neighboring St. Anthony’s Seminary. It then entered a long period of decline. The seminary used it for both administrative and residential purposes; between roughly 1949 and 1951 it served as a Franciscan Brothers School. Over time, it was reduced to a near ruin; the certificate of occupancy was revoked the city in 19__. The seminary offered it for sale in 1989; the current owners, Tanny Keeler and Kent Hodgetts, acquired it in 1999. Restoration has been ongoing since. Tanny Keeler has commented espe-

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ARCHITECTURE

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5.15 tecito

Miley house I, Mon-

Emmor J. Miley House I Montecito, 1924

M

ary Craig received two commissions from Emmor and Beatrice Miley in late 1924: a comparatively modest house on San Leandro Lane in the Ivydene Tract and a far grander residence with outbuildings on a large site at the north end of El Bosque Road. The strategy was that the Mileys would live in the smaller house while the larger one was under construction.

The house on San Leandro was one of several flatfronted, plaster-skinned projects that Mary designed in the twenties and early thirties. Like so many buildings in Santa Barbara the house, though grounded in the spirit of Andalusia, is a riff on its sources. Essentially linear in composition—the second floor is expressed only intermittently in elevation—a cross axis is established off center by a gabled, two story mass containing the entry framed with sandstone blocks and surmounted by an iron balcony in the best Spanish tradition (Fig. 5.15).

Emmor J. Miley House II Montecito, 1924

I

n October 1924, as the Campbell house neared completion, the Morning Press announced that construction would soon begin on a new house for Emmor and Beatrice Miley on property directly in front of San Ysidro Ranch; Mary Craig was the designer. The commission seems to have come to her with few financial constraints: the Mileys had oil money and needed a house to display their windfall though, at approximately 14,000 square feet, it was smaller than Mrs. Campbell’s adobe palace.

The two-story plan wraps around a central patio overlooked by a balcony (Figs. 5.16, 5.17). The entrance hall leads to the stair hall, library and music room on the right. The dining room and service wing are to the left. Though this is a house of considerable pretention, analysis of the layout leads to several inevitable conclusions: overall, there is less than full resolution. An axis is established from the front door

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5.18 Emmor J. Miley house II, Montecito [west or front elevation] 5.21 Emmor J. Miley house II, Montecito [reja] 5.16 Emmor J. Miley house II, Montecito 5.17 Emmor J. Miley house II, Montecito

5.19 Emmor J. Miley house II, Montecito [west or front elevation, looking north]] following pages 5.20 Emmor J. Miley house II, Montecito [south elevation]

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to a door across the entrance hall leading to the patio, yet the patio itself is entered off axis. A cross axis extends from the library though the entrance hall to the dining room, creating a fine enfilade. Conversely, the music room, the largest and most ceremonial space in the house, is reached through a secondary corridor, dark and narrow. In the patio, the columns supporting the balcony are positioned irregularly and the beams overhead are awkwardly resolved.

The full weight—physical as well as visual—of this house with its rusticated Santa Barbara sandstone cladding is apparent on arrival: the west (front) and south (side) facades are seen simultaneously (Figs. 5.18-5.20). The effect is amplified by stone lintels and windowsills, and ironwork. Both elevations are essentially flat; the front is relieved by the arched entry porch and rejas (Fig. 5.21). The side elevation has greater articulation with its arcaded loggia and differing roof angles. The patio at the back, with its white plaster walls, is more in the spirit of contemporary “Californian” architecture in Santa Barbara (Figs. 5.22-5.24) The two-story stair hall is embellished with a finely detailed iron railing, one of the truly remarkable features of the Miley house (Figs. 5.25-5.27).

The drawings, however, are unsigned and cannot be attributed to Mary with certainty; the ironwork may have been designed by Chester Carjola and added by a later owner. The library with its paneling, book-

cases and stone fireplace is the most intimate space in the house (Fig. 5.28). The music room with its scored stone walls is overlooked by a musicians’ balcony; it opens on one side to the patio, on the other to a loggia and distant ocean view (Figs. 5.29-5.31).

And the enfilade linking the library and dining room, indicated on the plan, is expressed in three dimensions as stone arches (Fig. 5.32).

Even though mass is the defining quality of this house, there are fanciful moments, particularly the fine ironwork of the stair railing, the rejas and the brackets supporting a balcony on the north elevation (Fig.5.33). And each of the chimneys has a unique sculptural stone cap (see Fig. 5.22).

This house was to be the trophy of an oilman who suddenly won big but it was not unique: other contemporary wildcatters were guilty of similar architectural grandstanding. Among many examples, it may be useful to make specific analogy with a house built

by E. W. Marland in Ponca City, Oklahoma. The similarities are striking. Marland’s house was designed

by John Duncan Forsyth (1886 or 1887-1963), an architect based in Tulsa, and completed between 1925 and 1928. Like the Miley house, it was built of rusticated masonry though at 44,000 square feet it was more than three times as large. Both houses have an overwhelmingly solid, masculine presence with their stonework, open beam ceilings and wrought iron embellishments and both have playful chimneys, though the Marland house seems to be a more

5.26 Emmor J. Miley house II, Montecito [stair rail, bottom of stair] 5.25 Emmor J. Miley house II, Montecito [stair hall]

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previous pp 5.47 430 Plaza Rubio, Santa Barbara [Forsyth]

5.48 424 Plaza Rubio, Santa Barbara [Harby] 5.46 434 Plaza Rubio, Santa Barbara [left of Forsyth] 5.51 Plaza Rubio garden [back of 430] ff pages 5.50 Plaza Rubio [view back to Mission Santa Barbara

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