Landmarks
Montecito Park
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n 1902/03, Francis Townsend Underhill, a multi-talented, wealthy New Yorker who had established two ranches in Santa Barbara
County, decided to take up architecture. He designed and built a small cottage on six parcels of Montecito Land Company land near the Country Club. He called his charming bungalow La Chiquita. Events took him to San Francisco for a few years, so he sold La Chiquita to Walter Stuart Douglas, a mine owner and manager from Bisbee, Arizona. Douglas and his wife, Edith Margaret (Bell) Douglas, had come to Montecito to escape the Arizona heat in 1903, and Margaret had fallen in love with La Chiquita. In a 1907 letter to her parents, she wrote, “You can imagine my surprised delight on driving through Montecito four years ago to come to a tiny cottage, whose situation was almost identical with my childhood’s home [Innellan, Scotland]. The lawns in front, the pink hydrangeas, the ocean across the road…. But few days passed before the house was mine, and shortly after, I added my pink rose garden and the bowling green.” When Underhill returned to Santa Barbara circa 1906, he designed a new La Chiquita for himself and his intended, Carmelita (above) The Parrott family, winter visitors, prepare for an excursion in 1901. The building on the right is the Santa Barbara Country Club; the others are the shingled cottages that grew up around the club and were rented out by their owners. These cottages became part of Montecito Park. (Courtesy Montecito Association History Committee) (below) A lantern slide of Inellan circa 1920 shows its expansion from the simple one-story cottage designed by Underhill (Courtesy Library of Congress)
de la Guerra Dibblee. The house was an instant hit with his friends who wanted him to design homes for them, so Underhill opened an architectural firm. In 1915, the new La Chiquita was lauded as one of the 12 best country houses in America by Country Life in America. Among Underhill’s many commissions, he designed the Montecito estate house for fellow yachtsman, horse breeder, and Union Carbide owner, C.K.G. Billings. Four of the five Douglas children were born in the Montecito cottage, which had been renamed Inellan, inexplicably dropping an “n” from the name. Over the years, the house expanded as the family did. In 1908, Walter Douglas purchased the holdings of the Montecito Country Club and several other area residents to form a deluxe vacation-cottage complex called Montecito Park. Local architect Joseph L. Curletti was hired to design and build additional cottages until there were nine rentals plus Inellan. In addition, the property included a gardener’s cottage, servants’ quarters, a greenhouse, and a garage. A pier, bathhouse, and gazebo stood above the beach.
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