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    Napa:: An Architectural Walking Tour
    Napa:: An Architectural Walking Tour
    Napa:: An Architectural Walking Tour
    Ebook223 pages1 hour

    Napa:: An Architectural Walking Tour

    By Anthony Raymond Kilgallin

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    About this ebook

    Though world-famous for its miles of superior vineyards, Napa offers much more to the historian than its reputation as wine maker. Just an hour from San Francisco and Sacramento, the many towns of the Napa region are small enough to be walkable, friendly, and unique in design. The 240 images in this new book, with some photographs never before collected, demonstrate the architectural and historical diversity of this beautiful region, presented in walking-tour format. Through vintage photographs, the reader is pulled back in time to 1880 Napa, where a scant but diverse 4,000 residents reside. Of those people, only 163 were actually born in California, which accounts for the variety of architectural styles throughout the county. The multinational heritages of Irish, German, English, Canadian, Swiss, Scottish, French, Swedish, Mexican, Italian, and Chinese settlers are richly expressed through the architecture and landmarks of Napa's villages and towns. Captured here are the homes and structures that give the region its glow, including Napa's Churchill Manor, Greystone Winery in St. Helena, Magnolia Hotel in Yountville, and Stags Leap manor in the heart of the Stags Leap District.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439629987
    Napa:: An Architectural Walking Tour
    Author

    Anthony Raymond Kilgallin

    Anthony Raymond Kilgallin is a member of the Napa County Historical Society and a guest lecturer on local topics of interest. Most of the images used in the book come from Napa's Goodman Library.

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      Book preview

      Napa: - Anthony Raymond Kilgallin

      Kelly

      INTRODUCTION

      The best introduction to Napa County is a personal visit. The sooner the better, as America’s greatest philosopher and essayist of the 19th century learned 130 years ago. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) visited Calistoga in 1871. The following is extracted from a letter to his wife.

      Dear Lidian,

      We live today and every day in the loveliest climate. Calistoga is a village of sulphur springs, with baths to swim in, and healing waters to drink. The roads and the points of attraction are Nature’s chiefest brags. And if we were all young—as some of us are not—we might each of us claim his quarter-section of the Government, and plant grapes and oranges, and never come back to your east winds and cold summers—only remembering to send home a few tickets of the Pacific Railroad to one or two or three pale natives of the Massachusetts Bay, and half-tickets to as many minors. Its immense prospective advantages only now beginning to be opened to men’s eyes by the new Railroad are its nearness to Asia and South America. With this assured future in American hands, Chicago and St. Louis are toys to it. I should think no young man would come back from it.

      On Saturday, August 7, 1937, Al Adamo announces the Napa Agricultural Town Fair Parade on Brown Street.

      One

      NAPA CITY

      The two brick, false front, two-story buildings which make up the Hatt Building and the brick warehouse across the street from it are the last of the large 19th century brick industrial buildings which once clustered along the commercial wharves at the foot of Main Street. They are remarkably unaltered in their original design details with original post and interior construction, cast iron shutters, stepped gable cornice, and stone landing remaining. The first Hatt Building was constructed in 1884 of brick made from Napa River clay and has a 65-foot frontage on Main and 105-foot frontage on Fifth Street. The lower floor was used for distributing hay, grains, and coal; the upper floor with an unusual hardwood floor was used for dances, a roller skating rink, and a basketball court in later years. Note the plaque A Hatt–1884 for Capt. Albert Hatt, owner of the building. The building adjoining it to the south was built c. 1886–87 of brick from the San Quentin area. The second floor has pressed-iron wainscoting added in 1901. Note the grain milling equipment. Captain Hatt was a leading milling and warehouse operator as well as owner of a boat plying the important Napa River trade.

      The Art Deco style of the 1930s is rarely seen in Napa County and its characteristic glazed tile facade is found only in the Oberon Bar in Napa at 902–912 Main Street. The most significant and unusual feature of the Oberon Bar is the sophisticated treatment of the stylized Ionic columns in tile with their capitals in polychromatic tiles picking up the floral patterns common to Art Deco. Unaltered in design, the Oberon Bar possesses on a simple scale the major features of the style: an angular appearance with a vertical emphasis in the stylized columns in relief; hard-edged low-relief patterns around the door and window openings; ornamental detailing in contrasting tile along the sidewalk and roof edges; and zigzag decorative banding above the first floor storefronts.

      On April 18, 1906, the San Francisco Earthquake reached as far as this store at Main and Second in Napa.

      The Bank of Napa-Bank of America building at 903 Main is the only example in Napa of the Beaux-Arts Classicism style of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, which we have come to identify with government and commerce. This area bounded by Main, Brown, First, and Third has been historically the banking center of Napa, with five banks once located here. The bank building, erected as the Bank of Napa in 1923, is a two-story structure of reinforced concrete. Six massive Doric columns on the Main Street facade support the ornate cornice with its dentils, frieze, and parapet.

      Luther M. Turton designed the Winship building (1888), long a prominent visual landmark at the intersection of 19th-century Napa’s busiest commercial streets, in conjunction with the adjoining Semorile Building. Both buildings, in the commercial Italianate design, are significant in presenting a coherent 19th-century street facade, one of only two locations in Napa’s commercial district which recall the 19th-century city.

      On Tuesday, May 26, 1904, graduation exercises for Napa Central School are held at 8 p.m. sharp at the Napa Opera House. The word opera was a $10 word for vaudeville.

      The Williams Block was the first major retail commercial development north of the bridge over Napa Creek on Main Street in 1886. It was expected to draw business northward along Main Street from its core at First and Main. Subsequently, brick and stone would replace many of the early frame false-fronts prevalent in the 1870s and 1880s in the downtown district. The three-section, one-story Williams Block of native stone marks this transition to stone and stands as one of the earliest remaining commercial blocks in Napa. The heir of George Williams contracted with architects Wright and Saunders to design the building. The unadorned commercial style reflects the craftsmanship in stone of Napa’s 19th-century stonemasons. It was lit with skylights and encircled with galleries inside.

      Known since the 1920s as the Sam Kee Laundry, the Pfeiffer/Barth Brewery is the oldest stone commercial structure remaining in Napa. Its simple commercial Italianate false-front style is representative of the earliest commercial buildings in Napa, which were more commonly built of wood. The two-story rectangular building is of native cut sand stone. The main facade has a symmetrical arrangement of windows and a central door.

      Main Street north of the commercial district became a residential district for many of the downtown merchants at the turn of the century. The Brown House (1891), 1543 Main, is a very fine example of a transitional house combining elements of the Queen Anne, Bungalow, and Colonial Revival styles. It was occupied by J.L. Brown, president of Nickels and Brown Bros., a meat market a few blocks south on Main Street. The sweeping roof has projecting attic gables supported by Colonial Revival columns, recessed porches with turned balusters, and shed dormers. Note the Palladian window treatment in the front attic gable. To one corner is a polygonal bay giving the appearance of a tower, a carry-over from the Queen Anne style. The curving veranda in front has a triangular pedimented portico supported by Doric columns. Note the variation in texture from narrow horizontal siding on the first level to shingles on the second.

      The rhythmic placement of the arched windows of the old Napa Steam Laundry (1900) at 1600–1616 Main Street in the Romanesque Revival style contributes to the significant impact of this turn-of-the-century industrial building on the streetscape at the corner of Main and Vallejo Streets, just north of Napa’s commercial district. The Romanesque Revival style, most often associated with churches and government buildings, is emphasized here in the semi-circular arched windows with their corbelled hoodmolds.

      The transitional bungalow with a corner bay is seen throughout Napa in the neighborhoods developing at the turn-of-the-century. The De Curtin House (1900) at 1631 Main Street has an unusually fine corner bay with unique window moldings. William De Curtin, president of the California Brewing Association on Soscol Avenue, manufacturers of Golden Ribbon Beer, lived here in the early 1900s. The hip roof bungalow sits on a raised foundation. It has the characteristic side front porch and a square corner bay. A modillioned cornice continues around the house.

      The Jillson House (1890) at 1645 Main Street, a Stick style residence, reflects the wealth of its early owner, C.B. Jillson, whose profession was listed only as capitalist in the early 1900s. Two story square bays in front and to the sides carrying decorative gables with carved sunburst motifs are characteristic of the Eastlake influence of the l880s. The low hip roof has a bracketed cornice and stick work frieze.

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