Author: John Patrick Sheehy

John is a history detective who digs beneath the legends, folklore, and myths to learn what’s either been hidden from the common narrative or else lost to time, in hopes of enlarging the collective understanding of our culture and communities.

Petaluma’s Land of the Dead

HOW DEATH DEFINED THE BIRTH OF A COMMUNITY

Cypress Hill Cemetery (photo Gail Sickler, Petlauma Argus-Courier)

Petaluma’s first death was by potatoes. In the fall of 1851, a farmer named Shirley was thrown from a wagon of potatoes and crushed beneath its wheels.[i]

Petaluma was just coming into being. The year before, a meat hunter named Tom Lockwood set up camp at an abandoned Coast Miwok trading village along the Petaluma Creek to ship wild game to hungry gold seekers in San Francisco.[ii]

By the time of Mr. Shirley’s death, a local potato boom, launched by the Irishman John Keyes, made a squatters hamlet of the encampment. Along with a couple of trading posts, a potato warehouse and a handful of rustic cabins, the hamlet featured a makeshift general store, hostel, and eating house erected by George H. Keller, a disappointed gold miner from Missouri.[iii]

Keller, Lockwood and a young man named Columbus Tustin buried Shirley’s body on the hillside across from Keller’s store, where Penry Park sits today. Keller read the service while the other men laid Shirley to rest in a coffin fashioned from redwood. A few months later, on January 3, 1852, Keller decided to turn the hamlet into an actual town.[iv]

Making an illegal claim to 158 acres of the Rancho Arroyo de San Antonio—a privately-owned, 13,000-acre Mexican land grant extending east of the Petaluma Creek into Marin County—Keller hired a surveyor named J.A. Brewster. With Lockwood’s help, Brewster platted a town on 40 acres running from the creek west to Liberty Street, and from Oak Street south to A Street.

At the center of town, on the hillside where Shirley was buried, Keller set aside land for Main Street Plaza (today’s Penry Park).[v]

Main Street Plaza (today’s Penry park), 1900 (Sonoma County Library)

Opening a real estate office at his store, he began selling lots in California’s new gold rush: land speculation. Among those buying was Tustin, who developed the town’s first subdivision, Tustin’s Addition, extending from First to Eighth streets, and A to F streets.[vi] After selling his bogus landholdings, Keller returned to his farm in Missouri.[vii]

1855 map of Petaluma (Sonoma County Library)

His founding of Petaluma wasn’t as much a land scam as a collective agreement among frustrated settlers. Prevented from homesteading on the Rancho Arroyo de San Antonio—whose legal ownership was in dispute—they willingly engaged in Keller’s charade in hopes of benefitting from a mutually profitable enterprise.

That Keller’s property sales were recorded by Sonoma County’s first recorder of deeds, William Boggs—the son of Sonoma County state assemblyman Lilburn Boggs—spoke to the extent of complicity in the charade, as did the federal appointment of Keller’s son Garret as Petaluma’s first postmaster.[viii]

The pursuit of gold, which drew most early settlers to California, was no different. Gold itself has no intrinsic value. It is a lie agreed upon. Its true value resides in the enthusiasm it ignites among people who believe in it.[ix] As David Starr Jordan noted, that enthusiasm ignited an ethos of “whatever is not nailed down is mine, and whatever I can pry loose is not nailed down.”[x]

The final nailing came, as with most things, in death and the courts.

In the spring of 1854, a young woman known only as Miss Smith—daughter of a popular Petaluma settler named John Smith—died unexpectedly. Her death prompted townspeople to create a cemetery where Oak Hill Park resides today. In doing so, they expressed their shared desire to put down roots of generational continuity in the town.[xi]

At the time, Petaluma had grown to a population of 400 residents. Within three years, that figure would more than triple to 1,338 residents, 38% of whom were women.[xii] Their influence, along with the creation of five churches and two fraternal lodges—the Odd Fellows and Masons—helped to domesticate and civilize what had been a rough-and-tumble town. That included showing proper respect for the dead.[xiii]

Although the average life expectancy at the time was only 38, much of that was due to childhood mortality. Those who lived to the age of 20, had a life expectancy of 60.[xiv]

Oak Hill (photo Victoria Webb, Petaluma Argus-Courier)

The eight acres for Oak Hill Cemetery were donated to the town by James and Mary Thompson, owners of Thompson Bakery on Main Street. Their daughter Josephine was the first settler’s child born in town on August 25, 1852.[xv]

The Thompsons purchased the Oak Hill property from Keller. A year after Miss Smith was buried, ownership of the cemetery reverted, along with the rest of Petaluma, to James Stuart, a San Francisco land speculator deemed the legal owner of the Rancho Arroyo de San Antonio by the California Land Commission. A legal challenge to the commission’s decision was dismissed in court.[xvi]

J.S. Stuart’s office of Rancho Arroyo de San Antonio, Main Street, 1855 (Sonoma County Library)

Stuart promptly opened a real estate office in town—Office of Arroyo de San Antonio—for residents to purchase a legal property deed from him, regardless of whatever bogus deeds they held from Keller, Tustin, or other squatters.[xvii] More than 200 residents shelled out a total of $70,000 ($2 million in today’s currency) to repurchase their lots from Stuart.[xviii]

After overproduction put an end to the potato boom, Petaluma’s economy began to grow in the mid-1850s with the new California wheat boom. By 1858, the townspeople decided it was time to incorporate as a city, allowing for taxation of its citizens for things like schools, roads, and cemeteries.[xix]

Oak Hill Cemetery by that time was something of a mess, neither ornamented nor enclosed, the dead buried without any apparent order. The newly elected city trustees, or city council, set out to change that. They began by asking Stuart to donate the existing eight acres of the cemetery to the city, along with 20 additional acres for future expansion. Stuart agreed to the existing eight acres, but balked at surrendering more of his prime real estate.[xx]

In 1866, local grain merchant John A. McNear, who had made a fortune on the California wheat boom, lost his wife Clara to an early death. She died during an exceptionally rainy January, and McNear, worried about her grave flooding, set off to find high ground upon which to bury her.[xxi]

John A. McNear (photo Petaluma
Historical Library & Museum)
Clara McNear (photo Petaluma
Historical Library & Museum)

Or so the story goes.

As Oak Hill Cemetery sat atop a hill, it seems more likely McNear recognized an opportunity at hand. For Clara’s final resting place, he purchased 40 hilly acres along Magnolia Avenue. Beyond the city limits at the time, it was not hindered by residential development like Oak Hill. After burying Clara on the hilltop, he laid out the rest of the grounds as Cypress Hill Cemetery and began selling plots. Ownership of the cemetery would remain in the McNear family until 1957.[xxii]

McNear Family plot, Cypress Hill (photo public domain)

Two local religious communities followed his lead, establishing their own cemeteries along Magnolia Avenue. The Salem Cemetery Association, established in 1857 by German Jewish merchants, purchased 8 acres from McNear at the south end of Cypress Hill Cemetery in 1870 (today’s B’nai Israel Cemetery).

Entrance to B’nai Israel Cemetery (photo public domain)

The next year, St. Vincent’s Catholic Church purchased 12 adjacent acres for Calvary Cemetery.[xxiii]

Calvary Cemetery (photo John Sheehy)

In 1879, city trustees voted to close Oak Hill Cemetery to further burials, citing a problem with rainwater draining into the downtown, creating a health hazard. They directed new burials of non-Jews and non-Catholics to Cypress Hill.[xxiv] City Hall watchdogs pointed out the rainwater from the cemetery flowed north, away from the downtown, running down Howard Street to West Street, and eventually emptying into the same seasonal creek as rainwater from the cemeteries along Magnolia Avenue.[xxv]

The trustees stood by their decision, pressing residents to move family members buried in Oak Hill to Cypress Hill, with financial incentives from McNear. Those unwilling or unable to afford doing so, were forced to leave their family members at Oak Hill, alongside the bodies of those buried far from home or whose families had left the area.[xxvi]

In 1900, the city decided to convert Oak Hill Cemetery into a park. By that time, thieves were stealing the marble tombstones and selling them to fish markets for counters. The city gave families six months to remove bodies still buried at Oak Hill before they leveled the grounds.

Oak Hill Park, 1905 (photo Sonoma County Library)

The Odd Fellows paid to move former members to their plot at Cypress Hill, including Thomas Baylis, who opened one of the town’s first trading posts in 1851.[xxvii]

A number of bodies remained behind. That became evident in 1947, when the city designated Oak Hill Park for the site of a new hospital. First, they were required to remove of all human remains from the grounds.[xxviii] Before excavations could begin, the city killed the project after failing to secure the necessary government funding. A decade later, Hillcrest Hospital was built at the top of B Street instead of Oak Hill Park.[xxix]

In 1876, a group of workmen leveling part of Main Street Plaza discovered the redwood casket of Mr. Shirley buried there by Keller, Lockwood, and Tustin. Shirley’s decaying bones were transferred to a new coffin, and reverently laid to rest in Cypress Hill Cemetery, where they remain today.[xxx]

******

A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 13, 2023.

SOURCES:

[i] “Centennial Resurrection,” Petaluma Weekly Argus, March 31, 1876; Our Oldest Pioneer,” Petaluma Argus, November 28, 1901; Note: J.P. Munro-Fraser, History of Sonoma County (San Francisco: Alley, Bowen & Co., 1880), p. 261 (Note: Munro-Fraser identifies the farmer as a Mr. Fraser, not Mr. Shirley).

[ii] Robert A. Thompson, Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, California (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1877), p. 54.

[iii] Robert A. Thompson, pgs. 24, 55; “History Mystery Solved,” Petaluma Argus Courier, February 11, 2021.

[iv] “Centennial Resurrection,” Petaluma Argus, March 31, 1876; “Territorial Legislature of 1857-58,” Kansas Historical Society Collection, Vol. 10, 1907-1908, edited by George W. Martin, p. 211; Robert A. Thompson, p. 55.

[v] David Hornbeck, “The Patenting of California’s Private Land Claims, 1851-1885,” Geographical Review, Vol. 69, No. 4 (October., 1979), p. 439; Thompson, p. 55; Munro-Fraser, p. 186.

[vi] Thos. H. Thompson, Map of Sonoma County, 1877; Sonoma County Deed Records, show two grants in 1853 from Columbus Tustin, one to Edward S. Jones, May 16, 1853, and the other to Fred Starkey, August 12, 1853, indicating that he was selling lots by that time. 

[vii] Henry Miles Moore, “Sketches of the Early Settlement of the City and County of Leavenworth,” Western Life (Leavenworth, KS), August 3, 1900; “History Mystery Solved,” Petaluma Argus Courier, February 11, 2021.

[viii] A Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval in the Service of the United States, 1853: Petaluma Postmasters,” p. 510, United States, Department of State; “Deeds of Sonoma County, 1847-1901,” film #008117705, LDS FamilySearch database. familysearch.org. (Note: Garret V. Keller is mistakenly identified by both Munro-Fraser and Robert A. Thompson in their books as Petaluma’s founder; he was only 21 years of age in 1852).

[ix] David Milch, A Life’s Work (New York: Random House, 2022) p. 154.

[x] The quote is attributed to Stanford University’s founding president David Starr Jordan, quoteinvestigator.com.

[xi] “The First,” Petaluma Argus, July 20, 1877; “Our Oldest Pioneer,” Petaluma Argus, November 28, 1901; Munro-Fraser, p. 262. (Note: the deceased is identified as “Miss Smith” in Munro-Fraser’s book and likewise Tom Lockwood’s recollections, but as Mrs. Stuart, the daughter of John Smith in the Argus’ 1877 article. Neither is listed in the 1854 death records of Sonoma County).

[xii] Robert A. Thompson, p. 56.

[xiii] Faiths Represented in Petaluma Churches,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1956 (Note: the five churches were the Baptist Church founded 1854, Methodist Church, 1856, Episcopal Church, 1856, St. Vincent’s Catholic Church, 1857, and Congregation Church, 1857); “Organizations-Clubs-Lodges,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 17, 1955 (Note: the Odd Fellows Lodge was established 1854, and the Masonic Lodge established in 1855).

[xiv]https://www.infoplease.com/us/health-statistics/life-expectancy-age-1850-2011; https://priceonomics.com/why-life-expectancy-is-misleading/.

[xv] “Our Oldest Pioneer,” Petaluma Argus, November 28, 1901; “Celebrated Birthday,” Petaluma Courier, August 27, 1921; “Death Claims Josephine Polk,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 16, 1940. (Note: Munro-Fraser states in his book on p. 251 that Robert Douglas, Jr. and his new bride Hannah Hathaway had the town’s first-born child, who only lived 12 days; however Douglas also states they weren’t wed until December 31, 1852, which was after Josephine Thompson’s birth in Petaluma on August 25, 1852).

[xvi] “The Cemetery,” Sonoma County Journal, December 24, 1858; “After the Rogues,” Sonoma County Journal, January 30, 1863.

[xvii] Ad for “Office Rancho Arroyo de San Antonio,” Sonoma County Journal, October 27, 1855.

[xviii] “The First Fight of the Lobby,” Petaluma Argus, February 25, 1863.

[xix] Thos. Thompson, p.20.

[xx] “The Cemetery,” Sonoma County Journal, December 24, 1858.

[xxi] “Died: Clarinda ‘Clara’ Damen Williams McNear,” Sacramento Bee, January 19, 1866; “High Water,” Petaluma Argus, January 25, 1866; Matriarchs of Local History, Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 26, 1997; “Get to Know Some of Petaluma’s Legendary People,” Butter & Eggs Day Special Section, Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 25, 2013, p.27.

[xxii] “Our Real Estate Transactions,” Petaluma Argus, April 27, June 8, July 20, 1872; “Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus, November 16, 1877; “Cypress Hill Sold to Locals By McNears,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 27, 1957

[xxiii] “Salem Cemetery Association,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 26, 1932; “Organizations-Clubs-Lodges,” Petaluma Argus Courier, August 18, 1955; “Catholic Cemetery,” Petaluma Argus, February 18, 1871; “Consecrated,” Petaluma Argus, April 29, 1873.

[xxiv] “Board of Trustees,” Petaluma Courier, May 29, 1878.

[xxv] “Re-Burial of the Dead,” Petaluma Argus, June 14, 1878; “A Protest,” Petaluma Argus, June 28, 1878; “Ordinance No. 122,” Petaluma Courier, June 13, 1879.

[xxvi] “Board of Trustees,” Petaluma Courier, May 29, 1878.

[xxvii] “Desecrating the Graves,” Petaluma Courier, December 27, 1895; “Swiped Tombstones,” Petaluma Courier, November 7, 1899; Petaluma Courier, March 21, 1900; “Depopulating Oak Hill,” Petaluma Courier, May 18, 1900; “Oak Hill Park,” Petaluma Courier, October 3, 1901.

[xxviii] “Council Takes Steps to Make Oak Hill Available for Hospital,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 22, 1947; “A History of Petaluma Medical Facilities,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 30, 2015.

[xxix] “Petaluma Hospital District First to Organize, Dropped to 26th Place for State, Federal Aid,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 8, 1950; “Hillcrest Dedication End of Long Labors,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 29, 1956; Jim Johnson, who participated in creating a stone labyrinth in Oak Hill Park in 1999, noted that they used a number of granite stones they found on the site, which they believed was from stores stones at the cemetery to be made into tombstones;”Labyrinth Gets Finishing Touches,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 16, 1999.

[xxx] “Centennial resurrection,” Petaluma Argus, March 31, 1876; there is no record of Shirley’s burial in either 1851 or reburial in 1876 in Sonoma County Cemetery Records, 1846-1921 (published by the Sonoma County Genealogical Society, 1999); Lucy Kortum notes Shirley was buried at the northwest corner of the Calvary Hill Cemetery set aside as a potter’s field, an that any markers that might have once existed are gone and the land is overgrown with trees and brush: Lucy Kortum, “Petaluma Cemeteries,” Petaluma Historical Museum, Update, v. 12 no. 1, p. 4.

Petaluma’s Lower Main Street

A history snapshot of Petaluma Boulevard North from B Street to Western Avenue

Lower Main Street looking north from B Street, 1903 (photo Sonoma County Library)

Lower Main Street (extending from Western Avenue to B Street) was largely comprised in the mid-1800s of grain warehouses, a hitching post, a workingman’s hotel, and Petaluma’s Chinatown, filled with laundries, groceries, and living quarters.

In the 1880s, the new Masonic Lodge at the corner of Main and Western Avenue, along with the banishment of the Chinese from town, lead to an expansion of Main Street’s commercial area to B Street, anchored by the first McNear Building in 1886.

Lower Main Street looking north from B Street, circa 1930 (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

In 1922, the popularity of the automobile lead to the replacement of the hitching post with Center Park, as Lower Main filled up with shops, hardware stores, and groceries.

The decline of the poultry and dairy industries in the 1960s, along with the new shopping malls in East Petaluma, left downtown Petaluma pockmarked with empty shops, shuttered grain mills, and dilapidated old buildings.

Lower Main Street looking north from B Street, 1953 (photo Sonoma County Library)

In the mid-1970s, Mayor Helen Putnam championed historic restoration as a means of revitalizing the downtown, beginning with conversion of the Lan Mart and the Great Petaluma Mill into boutique malls of shops and restaurants.

Thanks to her efforts, Petaluma’s downtown evolved into the trendy nightlife and shopping district it is today. A set of architectural design guidelines were adopted by the city in 1999 to preserve the downtown’s historical legacy.

Lower Main Street looking north from B Street, 2022 (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)

Petaluma’s Central Main Street

A history snapshot of Petaluma Boulevard North from Washington Street to Western Avenue

Main Street looking north from below Western Avenue, circa 1900 (photo Petlauma Historical Library & Museum)

With the construction of the Masonic Lodge and the town clock in 1882, the center of town moved to Main Street and Western Avenue.

As the California wheat boom drew to an end in the 1880s, Petaluma agriculture transitioned to poultry and dairy ranching. By the late 1910s, Petaluma was the self-proclaimed “Egg Basket of the World,” providing residents with one of the highest incomes per capita in America.

The city’s prosperity filled Main Street with a profusion of professional offices—doctors, dentists, insurance agents, lawyers, real estate agents, and a chicken pharmacy.

Main Street looking north from below Western Avenue, circa 1930 (photo courtesy of Dan Brown Collection)

The first automobiles appeared in town in 1903. Five years later, the cobblestones of Main Street were paved in asphalt to provide for smoother driving. By 1920, Main Street was trafficked almost exclusively by automobiles.

The inclusion of Main Street as part of the new Redwood Highway in 1925, brought new business from a tourists, vacationers, and traveling salesmen.

Main Street looking north from below Western Avenue, circa 1950 (photo Petlauma Historical Library & Museum)

With the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937, Main Street was widened from two to four lanes to accommodate increased through traffic. That diminished with the opening of the freeway in 1957, after which Main Street was renamed Petaluma Boulevard.

The street returned to two lanes in the 2010s as part of a “road diet.”

Main Street looking north from below Western Avenue, 2022 (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)

Petaluma’s Upper Main Street

A history snapshot of Petaluma Boulevard North at Washington Street

Main Street looking south from Washington Street, circa 1890s (photo Sonoma County Library)

Petaluma was founded in 1852 by George H. Keller, a failed gold miner from Missouri, who laid out Main Street between Oak and B streets on what had originally been part of a Coast Miwok trading route.

Main Street looking south from Washington Street, 1911 (photo Sonoma County Library)

The intersection of Main and Washington streets, from which these shots were taken over time, served as the initial center of town, a crossroads for carriage traffic and wagons from outlying farms. Citizens gathered in nearby Hill Plaza (today’s Penry Park) for community events.

Main Street looking south from Washington Street, 1950 (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

From the docks of the Petaluma River behind the street, flat-bottom scow schooners plied the Petaluma River to San Francisco, laden with potatoes, meat, and grains. Grain mills and warehouses lined both upper Main Street north of Washington Street, and lower Main Street from Western Avenue to B Street.

Construction in 1882 of the Masonic Lodge, capped by a town clock, shifted the center of town to Main Street and Western Avenue.

Petlauma Boulevard North (formerly Main Street) looking south from Washington Street, 2022 (photo courtesy Scott Hess)

Derby Building

A  snapshot history of the Derby Building at 199 Petaluma Blvd. North

Derby Building, 1875, 199 Petaluma Boulevard North (Photo Sonoma County Library)

The Great Petaluma Fire of 1872 changed the face of the gateway into town. The wooden buildings on both the northwest and southwest corners of Petaluma Boulevard and Washington Street were destroyed. Developers quickly swooped in to fill the void. [i]

On the northwest corner, wheat merchants John and George W. McNear erected a large Italianate building to house both the Bank of Sonoma County and the Washington Hotel.

Bank of Sonoma, 1885 (photo Sonoma County Library)

On the southwest corner, Andrew B. Derby used the same elegant style for his Derby Building. [ii]

Italianate architecture was all the rage in the 1870s. To emulate the opulent homes of the Italian countryside, architects applied mass-produced cast-iron ornamentation to the buildings. The new McNear and Derby Italianate buildings set the trend for Petaluma’s Main Street architecture for the next two decades.

Like the McNears, Derby arrived in Petaluma from New England in the late 1850s, and quickly became as a dealer in local real estate.[iii] Before the 1872 fire, his main tenant on the corner of Main and Washington streets was a newspaper and magazine shop. The new Italianate building attracted a classier clientele.[iv]  

Derby Building merchants, 1875: A.J. Snow’s Dry Goods Store on left, and A. Morris’ Cigars & Tobacco on right (photo Sonoma County Library)

For many years, Morris Cigar Store anchored the corner storefront, with a grocery or dry goods store in the Main Street storefront, and the Petaluma Courier newspaper and its presses in the Washington Street storefront. Upstairs was filled with the offices of dentists and doctors and a hall for performances, social gatherings, and community meetings. [v]

After Derby’s death in 1896, his heirs maintained the building until 1922, when it was purchased by John McNear’s son, George P. McNear. In 1925, McNear tore the Derby Building down, replacing it with a new Italian Renaissance style building to house the Sonoma County National Bank and the Petaluma Savings Bank. Covered in terra cotta tiles, the building was distinguished by its 28-foot high, cathedral-like ceiling, a popular style of banks at the time.[vi]

Bank of Sonoma in 1943, built 1928, purchased by Bank of America 1930 (photo Sonoma County Library)

In 1928, the Bank of America purchased the building to serve as its regional branch. Two years later, the Bank of America also purchased the Bank of Italy across the street on the northwest corner of Main and Washington streets to serve as its Petaluma branch.[vii]

The Bank of America operated both corner locations until 1968, when it combined the two branches into a new building on the northwest side of Washington Street and Petaluma Boulevard.[viii]

The former Sonoma County National Bank building on the southwest corner served as a real estate office in 1970s and 80s, a rug and antiques store in the 1990s and 2000s, and headquarters of The Seed Bank, an heirloom seed company, from 2009 to 2018. Since that time it has remained vacant. [ix]

Bank of Sonoma Building, 2002 (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)

FOOTNOTES:

[i] “Real Estate in Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus, March 30, 1872.

[ii] “Work Progress,” Petaluma Argus, April 20, 1872.

[iii] Ad, Petaluma Argus, March 18, 1869; “A Sudden Summons,” Petaluma Courier, December 9, 1896.

[iv] The News Depot was originally operated by G.C. Codding until 1866, when Derby took it over, apparently for Codding’s indebtedness, and Codding moved across the street. Derby sold the business in 1867 to Mose Korn: Ad, Petaluma Argus, June 7, 1866; Ad, Petaluma Argus, June 21, 1866.

[v] Ad, Petaluma Argus, March 17, 1873; “New Firm-New Store,” Petaluma Argus, September 11, 1874; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, September 10, 1880; “Par Excellence Club,” Petaluma Argus, September 13, 1872; “Entertainment To-Night,” October 31, 1872; “Woolen Mill Meeting,” Petaluma Argus, April 18, 1873.

[vi] “M. Goldman Buys Derby Block,” Petaluma Courier, January 5, 1922; “National Bank to Have New Home,” Petaluma Courier, February 2, 1923; “Doors of New Bank Building to Be Thrown Open to Public Tomorrow,” “The Marble Work for New Bank is a Real Work of Art,” Petaluma Argus, April 24, 1926; “Big Corner Deal Formally Closed and Bank of Italy Now in Possession,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 1, 1927.

[vii] Local Banks Merged with Bank of America,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 4, 1928; “A.P. Gianni to Merge Banks,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 4, 1930.

[viii] “Bank Opening,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 10, 1969.

[ix] Ad for Westgate Realty, Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 15, 1972; “Westgate Merges, Moves Across Town,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 12, 1987; “Setting Up Shop,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 10, 1995; “Ad for Monarch Interiors, Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 7, 2007; “Old Bank Building ‘Goes to Seed,’” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 11, 2009; “Seed Bank Leaving Iconic Petaluma Bank Building,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 4, 2018.

Bank of America Building

A  snapshot history of the Bank of America Building at 201 Petaluma Blvd. North

Bank of America Building, 2022 (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)

No site better expresses the changing look of Petaluma’s commercial architecture than the bank buildings that have occupied the northwest corner of Petaluma Boulevard and Washington Street since 1872.

Until 1865, local money lending was conducted by private bankers, most prominently attorney Isaac Wickersham and wheat merchants John and George W. McNear. In 1865, Wickersham opened I.G. Wickersham & Co., the first incorporated bank in Sonoma County.

The McNear brothers followed suit the next year, raising $100,000 ($2 million in today’s currency) to capitalize the Bank of Sonoma County. The bank initially operated at the southeast corner of Petaluma Boulevard and Washington Street.

In 1872, a fire burned down the Washington Hotel kitty corner to the bank. The McNears purchased the torched lot and constructed a new Italianate-style building to house both the bank and the Washington Hotel.

Bank of Sonoma County, est. 1866, 201 Petaluma Blvd. North (photo Sonoma County Library)

The building surpassed anything of its kind in Sonoma County. Standing at what was then the main entrance to Petaluma, it became the signature cornerstone of the city.

In 1926, the Bank of Sonoma County merged with Petaluma Savings Bank, and moved into a newly constructed building at 199 Main Street across the street (most recently the Petaluma Seed Bank).

Bank of Sonoma County & Petlauma Savings Bank, built 1926, purchased by Bank of American in 1930, 199 Petaluma Boulevard North (photo Sonoma County Library)

The former building was purchased by the Bank of Italy, which retained the Washington Hotel portion of the building, but replaced the bank itself with a new Spanish Revival-style structure. In 1930, the Bank of Italy merged into the Bank of America.

Bank of Italy, built 1928, 201 Petaluma Blvd. North (photo Sonoma County Library)

In 1967, all the buildings on the block between Petaluma Boulevard to Kentucky Street were torn down to widen Washington Street. In their place, the Bank of America constructed a modern-style building facing the Kentucky Street side of the block, converting the former bank site to a parking lot.

Bank of America Building, built 1967, with opening at Washington and Kentucky Streets (photo courtesy of Philip Squires)

Within 12 years, the Bank of America outgrew the building. Before tearing it down, they erected a new building on the original bank site at the corner of Petaluma Boulevard and Washington Street. It was designed in what the bank described as a “Victorian style” to better fit in with other buildings in the area.

Bank of America Building on the left built 1967, beside new Bank of America under construction in 1982, 201 Petaluma Blvd. North (photo Sonoma County Library)

The Cosmopolitan Hotel

A snapshot history of 27 Petlauma Boulevard North

Cosmopolitan Hotel (today’s parking lot beside McNear’s Saloon), circa 1900, built in 1866 as the New York Hotel (photo courtesy of the Dan Brown Collection)

The parking lot between the Lan Mart and McNear buildings on Petaluma Boulevard has seen many incarnations since 1853, when it housed the local post office and the first doctor’s office in town.

When Dr. Samuel W. Brown rolled into town in the spring of 1852, Petaluma was a very new community. It had been established just months before by George H. Keller, a failed gold miner from Missouri.

Brown, a physician and former postmaster from Hartford, Connecticut, Brown, came west in 1849 for the gold rush, then settled in Sacramento. Keller sold him a large lot running from Lower Main Street to Kentucky Street. Here he built one of the first houses in town. It served as a home for his family, as well as an office for seeing patients.

1855 illustration of Petaluma with Dr. Samuel W. Brown’s house and office marked in red; behind Dr. Brown’s house is the first Methodist Episcopal Church at 4th & A streets; Main Street runs to the right of Dr. Brown’s house, with the two-story American Hotel in the center (illustration Sonoma County Library)

In the fall of 1853, after Brown was appointed Petaluma’s postmaster—a position first held by Keller’s 21-year old son Garret—his house also became the local post office.[i]

A strong advocate of public education, in 1856 Dr. Brown was elected president of the board of the Bowers School, the town’s only public school. Four years later, he led the campaign to replace the dilapidated schoolhouse at Fifth and B streets  in 1860 with the B Street or “Brick School,”  which occupied the site until 1911, when it was replaced by Lincoln Elementary (today converted into an office complex).[ii]

B Street School, also known as the Brick School, built 1860 at the northeast corner of B and Fifth streets (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

A co-founder of the Sonoma County Republican Party, Brown ran for State Superintendent of Public Schools on the Republican ticket in 1860, but lost. He died two years later of a sudden heart attack. The children of the Brick School made enough 10 cent donations to purchase a tombstone for his grave, upon which they had inscribed “The children’s friend.”[iii]

Following Brown’s death, his home and office—declared a “Petaluma landmark” by the local newspaper—were moved to an unknown part of town. The lot was purchased in 1866 by George L. Purdy, a blacksmith from Valley Ford, who erected the New York Hotel on the site. Three stories high with 46 rooms, the first floor was occupied by two storefronts, initially for a grocery and a shoe store.[iv]

The hotel sat in the middle of Chinatown, adjacent to Chinese dwellings and businesses. Its point of distinction was as the hotel closest to the railroad depot at Second and B streets, which served the Petaluma & Haystack Landing Railroad. The line extended two-and-a-half miles south to the steamboat dock of Haystack Landing.

Unfortunately for Purdy, just prior to the opening of his hotel, the locomotive’s boiler blew up while the train was sitting at the depot, killing four people. It was replaced with a horse-drawn train car.[v]

After three years of struggling to make ends meet, Purdy sold the hotel. It turned over a couple of times before it was purchased in 1873 by Heinrich Matthies, the owner of the Union Hotel at the nearby corner of Main Street and Western Avenue (site of today’s Masonic Lodge), which he advertised as the “Deutsches Gasthaus” (German guest house).

Union Hotel (Deutsches Gasthaus), 1870s, originally located at the southwest corner of Main Street and Western Avenue, moved in 1882 to the northeast corner of Main and B Streets to make way for the new Masonic Building (illustration Sonoma County Library)

In 1876 Matthies remodeled and upgraded the New York hotel, renaming it the Cosmopolitan. On the Kentucky Street side, across from where City Hall would be built in 1886, he constructed a cottage for his family to live in.[vi] He also leased 11 rooms in the upper story of the new Centennial Building next door (today’s Lan Mart building), inserting a hallway to provide passage between the two buildings.

Cosmopolitan Hotel and Centennial Building (today’s Lan Mart), 1876 (illustration Sonoma County Library)

According to local lore, those 11 rooms served as a discrete brothel for hotel guests.[vii] If true, it would have most likely been in the late 1870s and 1880s, as the hallway between the two buildings was eliminated by the early 1890s.[viii]

After Matthies’ death in 1883, the Cosmopolitan became a workingman’s boarding house.

The Cosmopolitan Hotel, circa 1910s (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

In 1919, Matthies’ son Henry, a San Francisco-based contractor, tore down the dilapidated hotel and erected a modern single story commercial building with two storefronts in its place.

The Matthies Building, 1930 (today’s parking lot beside McNear’s Saloon), featuring Bolton’s 5 cents to $1.00 Store and Alyne’s Women’s Apparel, built in 1919 (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

One storefront was occupied by Alyne’s, a women’s apparel shop operated by Alyne Thomas, the daughter of local grocery merchant Achille Kahn. The other was occupied by F.W. Woolworth’s department store. After Woolworth’s moved to the new Phoenix Building on Main Street in 1929, they were replaced by a discount shop called Bolton’s 5 cents to $1.00 Store.[ix]

In 1934, the Matthies family sold the building to Americo Gervasoni of the Gervasoni Finance Company, which owned a number of properties around town.[x] In May 1952, with the two storefronts occupied by Guy’s Furniture Store and the Petaluma Paint Store, a fire of unknown origin broke out behind the paint store, burning down the building. The brick frontage was later demolish. [xi]

Matthies Building, 1953, boarded up after fire in May 1952 gutted the building (photo Sonoma County Library)

The lot sat vacant for almost a decade, until it was leased by the Chamber of Commerce for merchant parking, as a means of opening up more street parking for shoppers.[xii]

Scene from “American Graffiti” featuring police car parked in the lot left by 1952 fire of the Matthies building (photo public domain)

In 1973, the parking lot was famously featured in a scene in the film “American Graffiti.” A teenager covertly attaches a cable to the rear axle of a police car parked in the lot watching for speeders on the boulevard. The teen then speeds by in a car with his friends, prompting the police to pull out of the lot in pursuit, only to have the axle and rear tires of their car ripped off by the cable.”[xiii]

This landmark location remains a private parking lot today.

Parking lot at 27 Petaluma Boulevard North, 2022 (photo John Sheehy)

******

FOOTNOTES:

[i] Ad for Dr. S.W. Brown, Hartford Courant, December 23, 1833; “Whig State Convention,” Hartford Courant, January 16, 1842; “The Guillotine in Motion!” Hartford Courant, February 2, 1843; “Physician Charges in Petaluma,” Sonoma County Journal, December 1, 1855; “The Indigent Sick,” Sonoma County Journal, November 18, 1859 ;“Sudden Death,” Sonoma County Journal, January 31, 1862; “An Old Landmark,” Petaluma Argus, August 16, 1866; “Appointments of U.S. Postmaster, 1832-1971, National Archives; ancestry.com lists Brown as assuming Petaluma postmaster’s position on December 14, 1853.

[ii] “School Notice,” Sonoma County Journal, January 26, 1856; “Laying the Cornerstone” Sonoma County Journal, August 12, 1859; “Our Public School House,” Sonoma County Journal, February 24, 1860.

[iii] Republican County Convention,” Sonoma County Journal, August 22, 1856; Political, ”Sonoma County Journal, August 10, 1860; “Sudden Death,” Sonoma County Journal, January 31, 1862; “Name Then,” Petaluma Argus, August 22, 1867; “G.F. Parker, Former Petaluma resident, Compiles History of B Street School,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 10, 1937.

[iv] “Dissolution of Copartnership,” Petaluma Argus, January 5, 1864; Frightful Explosion,” Petaluma Argus, August 30, 1866; “New York Hotel,” Petaluma Argus, November 8, 1866; Ad for Sullivan’s New York Hotel, Petaluma Argus, June 17, 1869; “Changing Hands,” Petaluma Argus, April 16, 1870;  “Real Estate Transactions,” Petaluma Argus, February 7, 1873; Ad for New York and Union hotels, Petaluma Argus, October 1873; Munro-Fraser, History of Sonoma County (University of Wisconsin, 1880) p. 239.

[v] “Frightful Explosion,” Petaluma Argus, August 30, 1866.

[vi] “Improvements,” Petaluma Argus, May 12, 1876; “Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, August 18, 1876;

[vii] “Improvements,” Petaluma Argus, May 12, 1876.

[viii] The hallway between the two buildings is featured in both the 1883 and 1885 Sanborn maps, but not in the 1894 Sanborn map.

[ix] “Henry Matthies,” Petaluma Argus, September 29, 1883; “New Building and Two New Stories,” Petaluma Courier, June 28, 1919; “Get Notice to Vacate,” Petaluma Argus, June 30, 1919; The Woolworth Store Opening,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 30, 1929.

[x] “Gervasoni Finance Co. to Buy Matthies Building,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 23, 1934.

[xi] “Fire Destroys Two Stores in Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 19, 1952.

[xii] “Chamber Parking Lease Due Today,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 28, 1961.

[xiii] “Movie Crews Film Scenes in Downtown Area,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 29, 1972; “Re-enacting ‘American Graffiti at 4:30 in the Morning,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, May 15, 2008.

The Lan Mart Building

A  snapshot history of the Lan Mart Building at 35 Petaluma Blvd. North

The Centennial Stable and Druids Hall in the Centennial Building, late 1890s (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

For its first half century, half of this building served as a livery stable. The fieldstone wall from its original 1856 construction is still visible along the building’s interior hallway.

Built by S.G. McCollugh, the two-story Rough & Ready Stone Stable served guests at the adjacent Union Hotel to the north, where the Masonic Lodge sits today. An open stable yard extended from the back of the building all the way to Kentucky Street.[1]

In 1865, John Pfau, a German horse breeder, purchased the livery, and in 1876 incorporated it into a new building he constructed on its south side. He christened it the Centennial Building in honor of America’s 100th birthday.[2]

Early 1900s photo of The Ark dry goods store in the Centennial Building between the Masonic Lodge, right, and the Cosmopolitan Hotel, left (photo Sonoma County Library)

For the next half century, the Centennial Building, which sat in the middle of early Petaluma’s Chinatown, served as a social and commercial hub for German immigrants.

On the first level beside his livery, Pfau created two storefronts. The first was occupied by Centennial Headquarters, his high-class drinking establishment for ladies and gentlemen, offering classical and operatic music performances.

Ad for Centennial Headquarters, Petaluma Courier, 1877

In 1883, it was renamed the Eureka Saloon after Pfau’s champion stallion, and stayed in operation until Prohibition shut it down in 1920.[3] The other storefront featured the wine store of German immigrant Henry Dortmund, who established one of Petaluma’s first wineries near the end of Keokuk Street in Cherry Valley.[4

Ad for Wine Depot, Petaluma Courier, 1885

The front half of the Centennial Building’s second floor, the front half, where Old Chicago Pizza restaurant has pleased local taste buds for the past 45 years, was occupied by professional offices. The back half of the floor was divided into a meeting hall used as a lodge by the local fraternal chapter of German Druids—occupied today by a yoga studio—and 11 windowless rooms lit by skylights.

Pfau leased the rooms to Heinrich Matthies, a fellow German who operated both the Union Hotel and the New York Hotel, a boarding house on the south side of the Centennial Building, advertised them as “Deutsches Gasthaus.”[5]

The Cosmopolitan Hotel and Centennial Building (with sign for The Ark dry goods store), c. 1900 (photo courtesy of Dan Brown Collection)

In 1876, Matthies remodeled and upgraded the New York, renaming it the Cosmopolitan Hotel. He added a hallway to connect the rooms on the Centennial’s second floor to the hotel. Based on hearsay, these rooms were said to have served as a backdoor bordello for hotel guests.[6]

Layout of the Centennial Building and Cosmopolitan Hotel, 1883 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map

Pfau doubled the size of the livery yard behind the Centennial Building extending to Kentucky Street, adding a carriage and wagon house. That came in handy on Saturdays, when as many as 1,000 farmers and ranchers drove their wagons into town to do their trading—this at a time when Petaluma’s population stood at only 3,300.[7]

In 1884, Pfau sold the Centennial Building to two young Germans, Christian and Jeppe Lauritzen, who opened a meat market on the first floor beside the Eureka Saloon. Ten years later, the Lauritzens sold the building to German hardware merchant Ludwig Gross. Renaming it the Gross Building, he rented out the storefront beside the Eureka to Herman and Josef Schoeningh, operators of a dry goods store called The Ark, for almost two decades.[8]

Beginning in 1902, Druids Hall on the second floor became headquarters of a German mutual relief society called Hermann Sons. In 1930, they moved into their lodge on Western Avenue. The hall also hosted meetings of the Dania Society, the Swedish Lodge, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. From 1940 to 1960, it served as the Moose Lodge.[9]

1950s photo of the Gross Building, Main Street entrance (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

After Gross’ death in 1908, his wife Hattie assumed ownership of the building. In 1911, she closed the livery—a victim to the increasing adoption of automobiles—and remodeled the building, redesigning the front in a Mission Revival style.[10]

In 1928, she hired Petaluma architect Brainerd Jones to design a new building for what had been the livery’s back lot facing Kentucky Street. From 1934 to 1967, that building was occupied by Ascherman’s Grocery, which, during the 1930s, extended its market across to the Gross Building on Main Street.[11]

Lan Mart Building’s Kentucky Street entrance, 2022 (photo public domain)

In 1972, Victor and Marisa DeCarli, who owned both Gross Buildings, combined them into a boutique shopping center of shops and restaurants based on San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square. Renamed the Lan Mart—a play on “landmark,” it kicked off a revitalization and restoration of Petaluma’s historic downtown buildings.[12]

Lan Mart Building’s Petaluma Boulevard entrance, 2002 (photo public domain)

******

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Ad for the Dutch Horse Doctor at the Petaluma Livery Stable (McCullough’s livery), Sonoma County Journal, December 19, 1856; Ad for Rough & Ready Livery, Sonoma County Journal, August 7, 1857; Ad for McLaughlin’s purchase of livery, Sonoma County Journal, September 17, 1858.

[2] Ad for Pfau’s purchase of livery, Petaluma Argus, April 13, 1865; Local Brevities,” Petaluma Argus, July 23, 1875; “Pfau’s Centennial Building,” Petaluma Argus, March 3, 1876.

[3] “Centennial Headquarters,” Petaluma Argus, July 14, 1876; Ad for Centennial Saloon and Music Hall,” Petaluma Courier, March 7, 1878; Ad for Eureka horse, Petaluma Courier, May 31, 1877; Ad, Petaluma Courier, March 24, 1880.

[4] “In Town,” Petaluma Argus, July 18, 1883; “Courierlets,” Petaluma Courier, September 16, 1883; “County Notes,” Healdsburg Tribune, Enterprise and Scimitar, November 10, 1998; “Has Answered the Call,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, November 12, 1898.

[5] “Real Estate Transactions,” Petaluma Argus, February 7, 1873; “Improvements,” Petaluma Argus, May 12, 1876; “The Druids,” Petaluma Courier, December 22, 1880; “A House Warming,” Petaluma Courier, June 3, 1897; “Pizza Lovers Rejoice,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 1, 1976.

[6] Ad, Petaluma Argus, October 1873; Adair Heig, History of Petaluma: A California River Town (Petaluma, CA: Scotwall Associates, 1982), p. 143.

[7] “Pfau’s Centennial Building,” Petaluma Argus, March 3, 1876; “Saturday in Petaluma,” Petaluma Courier, April 2, 1884; U.S. Census, Petaluma, 1880.

[8] “Real Estate Transactions,” Petaluma Argus, February 8, 1884; Ad for Lauritzen Meat Market, Petaluma Argus, April 28, 1888; “Change of Base,” Petaluma Courier, May 11, 1894; “Brevities,” Petaluma Courier, May 2, 1899; “Remodeling Building,” Petaluma Courier, April 5, 1917.

[9] “Society Dania,” Petaluma Courier, April 11, 1899; “Briefs,” Petaluma Courier, February 20, 1902; “Hermann Sons Elected Officers,” Petaluma Courier, March 21, 1902; “Mayor Farrell Officiates at Corner Stone Laying of Hermann Sons’ Hall,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 8, 1930;  “V.F.W. News, Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 15, 1938; “VFW To Dedicate New Club Rooms,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 5, 1945; “Moose Lodges Leases Gross Hall,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 1, 1940; “Members Prepare New Hall for Occupancy,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 30, 1860.

[10] “Death of L.L. Gross,” Petaluma Argus, April 18, 1908; “Centennial Stable Closes After Half Century,” Petaluma Argus, September 1, 1911; “Contract Awarded,” Petaluma Argus, September 5, 1911.

[11] A.M. Seeberg Awarded Contract for New Gross Bldg,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 3, 1928; “Elegant New Building has Been Completed and Accepted,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 26, 1928; “Brainerd Jones Was Architect,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 26, 1928; “Ascherman Grocery Store Moves Over Week-end,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 7, 1934; “Ascherman Grocery Will Move to Gross Building,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 27, 1934; Ad announcing Ascherman’s sale,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 7, 1967; “Market Closes,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 13, 1970.

[12] First Ad for shop in the Lan Mart building, Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 9, 1972; “Lan Mart Stores are Commercial Experiment,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 15, 1973; “Lan Mart Center Has Grand Opening,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 6, 1973.

Who Planted Petaluma’s Bunya-Bunya?

Bunya-Bunya Tree in front of Petaluma Carnegie Library, 1940 (photo Sonoma County Library)

In the fall of 1961, I gathered with a group of other kids across the street from Petaluma’s Carnegie Library, to watch a man standing atop a long ladder extending up from a fire truck. He was knocking seed cones the size of pineapples from the Bunya-Bunya tree outside the library. In a normal year the tree generated only a handful of cones. That year it produced 50.[1]

A few months later, Elizabeth Burbank had the 100-foot Bunya-Bunya beside her house cut down. She had grown tired of its cones crashing through the roof, breaking telephone lines and threatening visitors.[2] Her late husband, Santa Rosa horticulturist Luther Burbank, planted the tree in the 1880s, when wealthy estate owners came to his nursery shopping for exotic trees to showcase in their gardens.

Bunya-Bunya Tree beside Burbank home in Santa Rosa, 1930s (photos Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego)

A majestic, dome-topped evergreen conifer from Australia, the Bunya-Bunya, or Araucaria bidwillii, fit the bill. The tree was a living fossil, its roots extending back to the Jurassic era. Along with its genetic cousin, the Monkey Puzzle Tree, the Bunya-Bunya became all the rage among Victorian tree connoisseurs, including Addie Atwater, wife of a Petaluma banker.[3]

Atwater planted a Bunya-Bunya in front of her house on the northwest corner of Fourth and E streets, across from Walnut Park, where it still stands today. An early advocate of city beautification, in 1896 she and Petaluma journalist Rena Shattuck co-founded the Petaluma Ladies Improvement Club.

Atwater home at 222 Fourth Street, 1910; partial view of Bunya-Bunya tree at far right (photo Sonoma County Library)

The club’s initial impetus was cleaning up Petaluma’s two public parks—Walnut Park and Hill Plaza Park (today’s Penry Park)—which were being used at the time for trash and livestock grazing. After transforming them into inviting public spaces, the club ventured forth as “municipal housekeepers” in planting trees and installing walking sidewalks throughout town.[4]

In 1904, Atwater, then a wealthy widow, sold a deeply discounted parcel of land at Fourth and B streets to the city for the new Carnegie Library.[5] The Ladies Improvement Club assumed responsibility for landscaping the grounds. In the winter of 1906, they solicited local nurseryman William Stratton, known as California’s “Eucalyptus King” for his early cultivation of the eucalyptus tree from Australia, to donate 11 ornamental trees to their library plantings, one of which is believed to have been the Bunya-Bunya.[6]

New planting of small Bunya-Bunya tree at the Petlauma Carnegie Library, left of palm tree, circa 1907 (photo Sonoma County Library)

The long-term manifestations of the Bunya-Bunya were relatively unknown to the Victorians. Mature trees grow to between 100 and 150 feet tall, with trunks measuring as much as five feet wide. Its timber is highly valued as “tonewood” in making musical stringed instruments such as guitars and ukuleles.

 It takes up to 14 years before the trees begin to generate seed cones weighing between 10 and 20 pounds, each of which contains between 50 and 100 edible nuts ranging up to 2 1/2 inches long. [7] Aboriginal peoples relied upon them for sustenance, eating them raw or roasted, or else storing them underground in wet mud, which is believed to have improved the flavor as well as extended their shelf life.  

Europeans found their flavor similar to chestnuts. They liked to boil them with their corned beef. Boiling remains a favorite means of preparing them today, for use in stews, salads or stir-fried dishes.[8]

Bunya-bunya seed cones (photo by John Sheehy)

But not everyone is a fan of the Bunya Bunya. That became clear in 1977, when the city of Petaluma opened a new public library on East Washington Street, and converted the former library into the Petaluma Historical Library and Museum.

The architect in charge of the conversion flagged the 80-foot tall Bunya Bunya for removal, noting the severe drought that year had caused it to precariously lean forward. Bunya-Bunya critics agreed, citing not only the inherent danger of its diving bomb cones, but the sharp, serrated leaves of its shedded branches, which made for formidable weapons in the hands of children playing war.

Leaning Bunya-Bunya outside new Petaluma Historical Library & Museum, 1978 (photo Sonoma County Library)

After tree-lovers rallied in protest, the city conducted a thorough arboreal examination of the tree, finding it to be healthier than assumed, and sparing it from the axe.[9]

In 1991, Ross Parkerson, a board member of the Petaluma Historical Museum Association and a former city planner, led a group of fellow tree advocates in convincing the Petaluma city council to protect the city’s oldest trees by passing the Heritage Tree Ordinance. The museum’s Bunya-Bunya was among the first to fall under its protection, along with the large oak and giant Sequoia behind the museum.[10]

The next year, the city created a Tree Advisory Committee, appointing Parkerson as its founding chairman. Thirty years later, it continues to consult with the city on tree management and preservation.[11]

Bunya-Bunya seed cone removal outside Petaluma Carnegie Library, 1961 (Photo Sonoma County Library)

While I could find no record of anyone having ever been clobbered by a falling seed cone from the museum’s Bunya-Bunya, since that day in 1961, when as a young boy I witnessed the tree’s big cones being knocked to the ground, I always look up when I pass the museum. It’s partly out of respect for the 116-year-old heritage tree, and partly out of personal caution.

******

A version of this article appears in the Fall/Winter 2022 newsletter of the Petaluma Museum Association.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Real Monkey Would Have Helped,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 23, 1961.

[2] “Burbank ‘Monkey’ Tree Coming Down,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, November 6, 1961.

[3] “The Trees in California’s Cityscapes,” California Garden and Landscape History Society, Vol. 16, No. 2, Spring 2013; “August Tree of the Month: Bunya Bunya,” edhat, Santa Barbara.

https://www.edhat.com/news/august-tree-of-the-month-bunya-bunya

[4] “The Splendid Work of the Ladies Improvement Club,” Petaluma Argus, June 11, 1907.

[5] “Carnegie Library Cornerstone Laid,” Petaluma Argus, June 10, 1904.

[6] “Ladies Improvement Club,” Petaluma Courier, December 30, 1905; “Improvement Club Meeting,” Petaluma Courier, October 3, 1906; “Made Donation of Trees,” Petaluma Courier, March 16, 1907; “W.A.T. Stratton’s Book on the Eucalyptus,” Petaluma Argus, November 15, 1907.

[7] Alistair Watt, “Tree of the Year: Araucaria bidwillii,” International Dendrology Society, 2018.

http://www.dendrology.org/publications/tree-of-the-year/araucaria-bidwillii/; “The Bunya-Bunya Pine (Araucaria bidwillii),” Permaculture News, November 27, 2013.https://www.permaculturenews.org/2013/11/27/the-bunya-bunya-pine-araucaria-bidwillii/

[8] The Bunya-Bunya Pine (Araucaria bidwillii),” Permaculture News, November 27, 2013; Ian Wright, “Bunya Pines are Ancient, Delicious, and Possibly Deadly,” The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/bunya-pines-are-ancient-delicious-and-possibly-deadly-96003

[9] “Monkey Puzzle Tree Wins Life,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 7, 1978.

[10] “Three Trees Look to be First Protected Under Heritage Law,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 25, 1991; “E. Ross Parkerson: Artist, Planner,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 18, 1991; “City Tree Panel in Full Bloom,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 7, 1992; “The Group Offers Neighborhoods Re-Leaf,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 24, 1993.

[11] “City Tree Panel in Full Bloom,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 7, 1992; “The Group Offers Neighborhoods Re-Leaf,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 24, 1993.

The 1886 McNear Building

A snapshot history of the 1886 McNear Building at 23 Petaluma Blvd. North

McNear Building with presumably John McNear standing in front with horse and carriage, 1880s (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

In 1886, John A. McNear erected a two story, Italianate-style building across from what was then known as Lower Main Street Plaza, today’s Center Park.[1] The area was then part of Chinatown, which extended along Lower Main Street from Western Avenue to B Street, where Main Street became Third Street, and continued to D Street.[2]

Of the roughly 1,000 Chinese residing in Sonoma County at the time, more than 100 lived in Chinatown, where they operated five laundries, a tobacco shop, a variety store, a restaurant, and a grocery. There was also a Joss House, or Buddhist-Taoist Temple, Chinese Masonic Hall, and a Chinese Mission School conducted by the Congregational Church, which trained young Chinese men to return to China as Christian evangelists.[3]

John A. McNear (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

In the mid-1880s, Petaluma’s Anti-Chinese League temporarily drove most of the Chinese from Chinatown. McNear, who continued to employ two Chinese as house servants and many more Chinese at his shrimping operations and brickmaking factory in Marin County, came under personal attack by the League.[4]

1885 Sanborn map showing the cleared building site of the new McNear Building extending from Main Street to Fourth Street, beside a group of “Chinese Shanties” still standing (Library of Congress)

Immediately after the Chinese expulsion, McNear erected his building on the site of a group of abandoned Chinese dwellings known as “shanties” beside the Cosmopolitan Hotel. His new two-story, 20,000-square-foot brick building extended from Main Street to Fourth Street. He leased out the entire upper story to Petaluma’s militia for an armory. The bottom story was occupied by a rotation of grocery, hardware, and appliance stores, many occupying the entire floor extending to the Fourth Street entrance.[5]

Labor Day automobile race outside the McNear Buildings, 1916 (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

In 1911, McNear constructed a new two-story building adjacent to his 1886 building. It included the Mystic Theater operated by his oldest son John Jr., a retired doctor, and his son’s sister-in-law, Lulu Egan. McNear evicted the Armory from his 1886 building and reconfigured the top floor into individual business and medical offices for lease.[6]

From the 1930 to 1942, the first floor of the 1886 building was occupied by Safeway Grocery.  After Safeway consolidated into their other store on Western Avenue near Liberty Street, the space was leased to Tibbett’s Appliance.[7]

McNear Buildings, 1951 (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

Tibbett’s gave way in 1953 to Guy Manwaring’s Furniture Store, after his original store, in the adjacent Gervasoni Building, burned down. That building site was converted into a parking lot, made famous in the  movie “American Graffiti.”[8]

In 1976, Guy’s Furniture relocated after the two McNear Buildings were purchased by Jeff Harriman and Wally Lourdeaux. After an extensive restoration of both buildings, they rented out the bottom floor of the 1886 building to a series of restaurants, beginning with the Petaluma Café, Cheers, and finally McNear’s Saloon and Dining House, which has occupied the building since 1987.[9]

A lifelong teetotaler, McNear is likely rolling over in his grave at the thought of his name being affixed to a bar in his landmark building.

1886 McNear Building, 2022 (photo public domain)

******

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “The Upper Story,” Petaluma Argus, July 3, 1886.

[2] Petaluma Sanborn Maps, 1883 and 1885, Library of Congress; “Improvements,” Petaluma Argus, November 29, 1884.

[3] 1870 U.S. Census; Thomas W. Chinn, A History of Chinese in California (Chinese Historical Society of America, 1969), p. 24; “Gordon C. Phillips, “The Chinese in Sonoma County, California, 1900-1930: The Aftermath of Exclusion,” a master’s thesis, Sonoma State University, 2015; Chinese New Year,” Petaluma Argus, January 20, 1868; “The Chinese Mission School,” Petaluma Courier, May 1, 1899;

[4] “The Boycott,” Petaluma Argus, March 13, 1886; “The Boycott Again,” Petaluma Argus, March 31, 1886;

[5] 1885 Sanborn Map of Petaluma, Library of Congress; Phillips thesis.

[6] “Last Dance in the Armory,” Petaluma Courier, June 14, 1912; “Company K Votes to Vacate Present Armory on First of Next Month,” Petaluma Argus, June 18, 1912.

[7] Ad for Skagg’s Grocery, Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 21, 1928; “Skaggs Now Safeway,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 10, 1930; “Earl Tibbetts To Engage in Business Here,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 14, 1945.

[8] “Fire Destroys Two Stores in Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 19, 1952; Ad for Guy’s Furniture, Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 2, 1952; Ad for Tibbett’s Furniture, Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 20, 1953.

[9] Bill Soberanes column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 11, 1976; “Another Historic Building Faces Renovation Project,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 30, 1976; “Petaluma Café to Offer Lunch, Late Night Dining,” PAC, January 28, 1978; Bill Soberanes column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 22, 1984; “McNear’s: Good food, dancing and fun,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 30, 1987.