Category: Historic Buildings

Petaluma’s Hotel Déjà Vu

HOW CITIZENS GOT PLAYED 100 YEARS AGO

Stock rally celebration for Hotel Petaluma at corner of Washington & Kentucky streets, 1922 (Sonoma County Library)

The new hotel was touted to be Petaluma’s saving grace, a means of reviving the downtown economy after a four-year pandemic and a national recession. With tourists increasingly drawn to Sonoma County, the city needed something to hook in those just passing through. What better lure than a high-rise, luxury hotel, the likes of which Petaluma had never seen, positioned at the corner of B Street and Petaluma Boulevard?

The year was 1922.

The economic recession following World War I was beginning to lift. The deadly influenza afflicting the country since the war had mutated into a less deadly seasonal flu. The town’s last livery stable had closed, motorcars having replaced horse-driven buggies. Auto tourism was suddenly all the rage in Northern California.[1]

Members of the Save the Redwoods League, 1920s (Humboldt County Historical Society Collection)

It began in 1918 with the Save the Redwoods League who set out in to preserve what remained of California’s old growth redwood groves by making them state parks.[2] Their call of the wild spoke to the new wave of automobility sweeping the country. No longer hampered by the limited speed and endurance of horses pulling wagons and stages, motor-savvy tourists were setting out on excursions to the most remote natural settings.[3]

Trailblazing auto tourists on the new Redwood Highway, 1920 (public domain)

In 1921, a group of promoters created the Redwood Empire Association to capitalize on the new craze. Their plan was to rechristen the route from Sausalito through Sonoma, Mendocino, Humboldt, and Del Norte counties as the Redwood Highway.[4] Petaluma, having recently declared itself “The Egg Basket of the World,” was quick to jump on the bandwagon, becoming one of the first cities to declare its Main Street (today’s Petaluma Boulevard) part of the Redwood Highway.[5]

Proposed map of the Redwood Highway, 1921 (San Francisco Examiner)

Now, all the city needed was an eye-catching attraction to ensnare the gas-powered, tree huggers passing through town.

The idea of a new downtown hotel had been kicking around for a decade. Petaluma’s existing hotels—small, outdated, and shabby—were patronized mostly by traveling salesmen and itinerant workers. In 1912, a group of local businessmen formed the Petaluma Development Company to promote building a grand new hotel. After ten years, they were still struggling to make it happen.[6]

The breakthrough came in the spring of 1922, when Sophie Hammell, chair of the Chamber of Commerce’s publicity campaign, brought to town the Hockenbury System, a Pennsylvania outfit who specialized in raising local capital to build landmark hotels.[7]  

Hockenbury recommended erecting a hotel along the promising new Redwood Highway, close to the downtown commercial district. They estimated the hotel would generate annual revenues of $100,000, with a net profit of $40,000 ($1.9 million and $750,000 respectively in today’s currency). That didn’t include the indirect return from what guests spent around the city, which they projected to be as much, if not more.[8]

Their speculative projections generated considerable excitement around town. Launching a time-limited stock rally, they pulled in $258,000 from 855 local investors ($5.3 million in today’s currency. The money, less Hockenbury’s commission, was deposited in the Petaluma Hotel Company Trust under the purview of a board of local business leaders.[9]

Sophie Hammell (center beneath sign) and fellow hotel stock sale boosters, 1922 (Sonoma County Library)

Site selection quickly coalesced around an empty lot at the northwest corner of Washington and Kentucky streets. The site of the Brooklyn Hotel from the 1850s until it burned down in 1900, the property had recently gone on the market. A San Francisco movie theater syndicate had purchased it earlier with plans to build a new motion picture theater, but instead sold it to a local speculator.[10]

Empty corner lot at Washington & Kentucky streets, 1920 (Petlauma Historical Library & Museum)

The speculator already had two bids for the property from outside developers, but offered the hotel board first preference. The board’s vice-president and largest stockholder, George P. McNear, objected that the site was too far away from the new Redwood Highway. As an alternative, he offered a lot he owned at the southwest corner of B and Main streets, kitty-corner to his grain and feed mill (today’s Great Petaluma Mill).[11] 

The site was occupied by a gas station and two brick commercial buildings McNear had constructed just six months before. He told the board he was willing to tear down the buildings at his own expense, and sell the lot for the same price the speculator was asking for the Washington Street site.[12]

Public opinion quickly shifted in favor of McNear’s proposal. A four-story, 100-room hotel at B and Main streets would be visible for blocks in every direction. Most importantly, it had parking—McNear owned a garage on the adjacent corner of C and Third streets—which the Washington Street site lacked. There was just one hitch. Demolition couldn’t begin at the site for a year, until the leases held by McNear’s tenants expired.[13]

The hotel board couldn’t wait that long. They moved forward with the purchase of the Washington Street lot, along with two adjacent buildings slated for demolition. Within weeks of closing the deal, they hired a San Francisco architect to begin designing the hotel.[14]

Hotel Petaluma soon after opening in 1924 (public domain)

In April 1924, the Hotel Petaluma opened to great fanfare, California’s governor serving as a guest of honor. Rising five stories above street level, the new hotel offered 96 guest rooms, with an additional 12 rooms for staff lodging. The ground floor featured a spacious lobby, a state-of-the-art kitchen, and an ornate dining room that seated 200.[15]

The hotel’s opening coincided with an economic upswing for Petaluma thanks to the city’s egg boom, the Roaring Twenties’ bull stock market, and the increasing popularity of the Redwood Highway. The hotel quickly became a valuable community hub for luncheons and conventions of local service clubs and civic organizations. It struggled however to fill beds, passing through a rotation of hotel operators.

Hotel Petaluma postcard, 1928 (Sonoma County Library)

The arrival of the Great Depression only made matters worse. The opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937 had little effect, despite an immediate surge of tourist traffic that forced Petaluma to expand Main Street from two to four lanes. The final death knell came with the 1957 opening of the 101 Freeway, which became the new Redwood Highway, putting an end to downtown tourist traffic. In hopes of luring in travelers, Petaluma changed the name of Main Street to Petaluma Boulevard.[16]

As motels sprang up along the freeway, the Hotel Petaluma was converted to a residential hotel, or SRO. In 1959, the Elks Club, seeking more space for their member gatherings, purchased the hotel from the Petaluma Hotel Company trust for $91,160. Adjusted for inflation, that represented only a fifth of the $285,000 locals invested in the hotel 25 years before.[17]

Entrance to restored Hotel Petaluma (Photo courtesy of Scott Hess)

In 2015, new owners undertook a full-scale historical restoration of the building, returning it to a hotel for overnight guests. As such, it asserted a new prominence as an anchor landmark in the city’s downtown historic district.[18]

Historical preservation became the economic engine for revitalizing the downtown in the mid-1970s. It began when Petaluma’s visionary mayor, Helen Putnam, enlisted developer Skip Sommer to convert George P. McNear’s abandoned grain mill at B Street and Petaluma Boulevard into a historically-themed center of boutique shops and eateries called the Great Petaluma Mill. A restoration fever soon overtook the downtown, drawing developers of adaptive reuse to town.[19]

B Street entrance to the Great Petaluma Mill, 1978 (Sonoma County Library)

Today, 100 years after the Hotel Petaluma’s grand opening, a new six-story, luxury hotel is being proposed for the empty lot at southwest corner of B Street and Petaluma Boulevard—the same site George P. McNear offered for the Hotel Petaluma in 1922.

The proposed new high rise will require an overlay to amend the building height limit for parts of the historic district from 45 feet to 75 feet, changing the current character and human scale of the downtown. Proponents say the trade-off is worth it. They expect the new hotel to lure in tourists and developers, revitalizing local businesses and generating needed tax revenues for the city’s coffers.

It sounds a lot like the stock rally Hockenbury pitched 100 years ago to raise money for the Hotel Petaluma. That turned out to be what Wall Street calls a “sucker rally.”

Rendering of the proposed EKN Appellation Hotel at B Street & Petaluma Boulevard (City of Petaluma)

******

A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 11, 2024.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] J.R.  Vernon, “The 1920-21 Deflation: The Role of Aggregate Supply,” Economic Inquiry, July 1991, Issue 29, Volume 3, pps. 572–580; “Why the 1918 Flu Pandemic Never Really Ended,” History.com. https://www.history.com/news/1918-flu-pandemic-never-ended; “Will Close Stable on May 1st,” Petaluma Argus, April 19, 1919.

[2] “Redwood Highway Opens Vast Scenic World to Autoist,” San Francisco Examiner, July 21, 1921; Save the Redwoods League website, https://www.savetheredwoods.org/about-us/mission -history/

[3] Peter J. Blodgett, “How Americans Fell in Love With Taking Road Trips,” Time magazine, August 15, 2015. https://time.com/3998949/road-trip-history/

[4] “Redwood Highway Suggested for Hiway,” Petaluma Courier, July 11, 1921; “Redwood Highway Opens Vast Scenic World to Autoist,” San Francisco Examiner, July 21, 1921; “Redwood Highway to Traverse Scenic Wonderland,” Cloverdale Reveille, January 27, 1922.

[5] “Petaluma, the World’s Egg Basket,” Petaluma Courier, June 25, 1918; “Redwood Highway Suggested for Hiway,” Petaluma Courier, July 11, 1921; “Redwood Highway Opens Vast Scenic World to Autoist,” San Francisco Examiner, July 21, 1921; “C.C. Endorses Naming of State Highway and Boulevard Road District,” Petaluma Courier, September 9, 1921; “Great North of Bay Development Program Outlined at S.R. Session,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, November 6, 1921; “North of Bay Association is Formed,” Weekly Calistogan, November 18, 1921; “Petaluma C. of C. Urge Highway Completion,” Petaluma Courier, February 19, 1922.

[6] “The New Hotel Project is Being Well Received,” Petaluma Argus, December 27, 1912; “Development Co. Officers,” Petaluma Courier, June 21, 1917.

[7] “Definite Plans Made for New Hotel Campaign” Petaluma Argus, April 12, 1922; “Mrs. L.B. Hammell Has Resigned,” Petaluma Argus, February 23, 1923.

[8] “Definite Plans Made for New Hotel Campaign,” Petaluma Argus, April 12, 1922.

[9] “Enthusiasm Shown at C.C. Banquet,” Petaluma Courier, April 19, 1922; “Legal Notice for Petaluma Hotel Company,” Petaluma Courier, February 7, 1923; “Petaluma Realizes a Dream of Years Today as the Doors of the Hotel Petaluma Swing Open,” Petaluma Argus, April 10, 1924.

[10] “A Warm Old Time,” Petaluma Argus, April 10, 1900; “Turner & Dahnke Buy Brown Lot; Build Theater,” Petaluma Courier, May 18. 1921; “T&D Co. Theater Lot is Sold,” Petaluma Argus, June 8, 1922; Classified ads, Petaluma Argus, December 28, 1921; “Free Market Moves to Old Fire House,” Petaluma Argus, March 10, 1922.

[11] “Hotel Committee Confer with L.W. Clark for Purchase of Brown Lot,” Petaluma Courier, June 11, 1922; “The Largest Stockholder,” Petaluma Argus, April 10, 1924.

[12] “Brick Layers Complete Work,” Petaluma Argus, April 20, 1922; “Offers Site at Third and B Street for the New Hotel,” Petaluma Argus, July 31, 1922.

[13] “Council Votes Parking Place on Lower Main,” Petaluma Courier, October 19, 1920; “Beautify Main Street,” Petaluma Courier, October 20, 1920; “The Lower Main Street Park Will Remain as Originally Planned,” Petaluma Argus, November 2, 1920; “Offers Site at Third and B Street for the New Hotel,” Petaluma Argus, July 31, 1922.

[14] “Site for New Hotel Selected by Board of Hotel Trustees,” Petaluma Courier, August 8, 1922; “New Hotel Committee Buys Site,” Petaluma Courier, November 9, 1922; “Frederic Whitton Named as Architect of New Hotel,” Petaluma Argus, December 16, 1922.

[15] “How This City Made its New Hotel a Fact,” Petaluma Argus, April 10, 1924; “Unique Opening of Hotel Petaluma,” Petaluma Courier, April 11, 1924; “Dazzling Gayety at First Formal Banquet at Hotel Petaluma,” Petaluma Courier, April 23, 1924; “Argus Scribe Tours Hotel Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus, April 10, 1924.

[16] “Improved Highway Facilities,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 15, 1937; “Petaluma Bottlenecks Doomed,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 11, 1938; “Active Council Works for Petaluma Progress,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 15, 1938; “Comments in Brief: Main Street Traffic,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 9, 1957; “Old Redwood Highway Renaming,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 23, 1958; “Supervisors Vote to Change Name of Old U.S. 101,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 9, 1958; “Comments in Brief: New Hotel Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 6, 1959.

[17] “Soon-to-be Elks Property, Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 10, 1959.

[18] “Historic Hotel is Sold,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 5, 1994; “Hotel Petaluma Sold Again,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 19, 2015.

[19] Interview with Skip Sommer by John Sheehy, December 23, 2022, Sonoma County Library Archives; “He’s Not Your Typical Developer,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 28, 1975; “Ambitious New Business Owners See Potential in Old Buildings,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, November 8, 1977; “Mill Played a Key Role in Downtown Revitalization,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 9, 1980.

The American Trust Building

A historical snapshot of 101 Petaluma Boulevard North

Whitney Building, 1880 (photo Sonoma County Library)

In 1868, grocer and grain merchant Albion P. Whitney, erected the iron-front, Italianate-style Whitney Building on the northwest corner of Western Avenue and Main Street for his new grocery.[i]

A native of Maine, Whitney first arrived in Petaluma in 1861. In 1864, he was elected to the city’s Board of Trustees (city council), where he served as president (mayor) for three terms, until being elected to the state senate in 1874. After his death in 1884, is son Arthur took over the business, operating it until 1891, when he sold the grocery to a French Jewish merchant named Achille Kahn.[ii]

Petaluma National Bank, 1903 (photo Sonoma County Library)

In 1903, Kahn moved his grocery across the street after the Whitney heirs sold the building to the new Petaluma National Bank. In 1923, the bank merged with its affiliate next door, the California Savings Bank, renaming itself the Mercantile Trust.[iii]

American Trust Bank, 1930 (photo Sonoma County Library)

In 1928, Mercantile Trust merged with the American Bank, becoming the American Trust Company. The new company tore down the Whitney Building and erected a Neo-Classical Revival building with a terra cotta finish in its place. Designed by San Francisco architects Hyman and Appleton, it expressed the temple-like style popular with bank architecture at the times.[iv]

Wells Fargo Bank, 1975 (photo Sonoma County Library)

In 1960, American Trust merged with Wells Fargo Bank, and continued to occupy the building until 1987, when it took over Crocker Bank at the corner of Western Avenue and Keller Street, and moved to that site to take advantage of its parking lot.[v]

Vintage Bank, 2022 (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)

From 1995 to 2022, the American Trust Building was occupied by Vintage Antiques. It is currently undergoing a renovation.[vi]

FOOTNOTES:

[i] “Imposing Front,” Petaluma Argus, August 20, 1868.

[ii] Munro-Fraser, History of Sonoma County (Alley, Bowen & Co., 1880), pp. 602-603; Tom Gregory, History of Sonoma County (Los Angeles: Historic Record Company, 1911), pp. 283-284; “Municipal Election,” Petaluma Argus, April 21, 1864; “A Valuable Citizen Goes,” Petaluma Argus, February 16, 1884; “Courierlets,” Petaluma Courier, November 2, 1891.

[iii] “Rumored Deal in Progress,” Petaluma Argus, May 28, 1903; “A History of the Petaluma Branch of American Trust Co.,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 20, 1928; “Announcement,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 17, 1927.

[iv] “Announcement,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 17, 1927; “American Trust Co. Building,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 20, 1928; “100 Anniversary,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 27, 1954; “1926 American Trust Building, http://www.chillybin.com/petaluma/wells.html.

[v] Ad, Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 30, 1960; Ad, Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 18, 1968; “End of an Era for Old Bank,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 30, 1986.

[vi] https://www.vintagebankantiques.net/

Petaluma’s Spooky House

The High Life and Low Times of a 19th Century Victorian Mansion

By John Patrick Sheehy & Katherine Rinehart

Clark Mansion,11 Hill Drive, 1977 (photo Sonoma County Library)

In 1967, attendees of Petaluma’s second annual Beauty Conference were treated to a bus tour around town, looking for areas in need of a facelift. The major blemishes they identified were dozens of abandoned chicken houses, decrepit remains of Petaluma’s heyday as Egg Basket of the World.1

But old chicken shacks weren’t the only eyesores marring the city’s good looks. The west side was pockmarked with timeworn Victorians, many of them carved into apartments during the Depression and World War II.

Following the tour, the city’s Beautification Committee, appointed by Mayor Helen Putnam to help spruce up the town, began a vigorous campaign to burn down the dilapidated chicken houses. By Christmas, 25 had been torched.2

Dilapidated Petaluma chicken house (photo public domain)

The committee then turned its attention to the aging Victorians.

Facing decades of deferred maintenance, many Victorian landlords found it stylish—and less costly—to encase the houses in stucco, aluminum, or asbestos siding. Others merely covered up the polychromatic palettes of their ornamental houses with a single color of paint, commonly white with green trim.

During Petaluma’s suburban housing boom in the fifties and sixties, developers began bulldozing the Victorians and replacing them with modern ranch style homes. With their open floor plans and long, close-to-the-ground profiles, ranch houses offered a more informal and casual living style than the ornate, multi-floored Victorians, which struck many people as creepy and old-fashioned.

That was, until the sixties counterculture rediscovered their beauty.

Stick Style Victorian, 908 Steiner Street, San Francisco, painted by Maija Gegeris, 1967 (photo courtesy of San Francisco Heritage)

Among the most striking visual icons of San Francisco’s legendary “Summer of Love” in 1967 were the old Victorians. A band of artists known as “the colorist movement” proudly reasserted their ornamentation and design in a dazzling array of hues as “Painted Ladies,” rekindling a love of Victorian architecture.3

That love soon spread to Petaluma. In February 1968, a group of local women, inspired by Mayor Putnam’s call to beauty, formed an advocacy group for the preservation and restoration of Victorians. They called themselves the Heritage Homes Club.4

Shirley Butti, center, with Lillian Fratini and Kay Stack, at Heritage Home meeting, Petaluma Woman’s Club (photo courtesy of Petlauma Argus-Courier, March 18, 196

The club held its second meeting at the Victorian home of their newly elected president, Shirley Butti.5 A fourth-generation Petaluman, Butti and her husband Plinio were in the process of restoring the long neglected Queen Anne mansion they had purchased at 11 Hill Drive. Locally known as “The Spooky House,” it was originally built in 1886 for Michigan lumber baron Melvin Clark and his wife Emily6

Clark Mansion, 11 Hill Drive, 1979 (photo Sonoma County Library)

The Clarks began wintering in Petaluma in 1874, after Mrs. Clark’s father and stepmother, Edward and Sarah Ann Jewell, moved out from Michigan with their four children for Edward’s health. The Jewells apparently chose Petaluma because a nearby relative, Omar Jewell, owned a 680-acre dairy ranch in Olema.7

Melvin Clark operated a large wholesale grocery business in Grand Rapids with his brother. Planning to escape to Petaluma during Michigan’s snowy winters, Clark and his wife purchased a large Victorian for the family at the northwest corner of Liberty Street and Western Avenue.8

For reasons unknown, they sold the house after a year, and returned with the Jewells to Grand Rapids, where Melvin Clark ventured into the lumber business, soon becoming one of the largest lumber barons in the county, with thousands of acres of timber and mineral land, and a series of mills in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Puget Sound area.9

Emily Jewell Clark and Melvin J. Clark, ca. 1880 (photos courtesy of Grand Rapid History & Special Collections)

After Edward Jewell’s health took a turn for the worse in 1880, he returned with his family to Petaluma. The Clarks also returned, purchasing house on D Street.10 In 1885, they decided to build their own home, purchasing John McGrath’s 87-acre ranch extending across Petaluma’s west hills from Western Avenue to near Hayes Lane. The next year they erected a 14-room, three-story Victorian mansion—the future “Spooky House”—at the top of Western Avenue overlooking Petaluma.11

The house’s two and half storeys had irregular roof forms, with windowed gablets and two corner towners. The upper story was clad in fish scale shingles, and the lower in shiplap siding. The windows were long and tall, with colored squares of “flash glass” around the upper sashes. The veranda over the entrance included a small impediment with the letter “C” for Clark.

Clark Mansion turret, colored flash glass attic window, and triangle gable above portico with “C” for Clark (photo courtesy of Ken Butti)

The features were similar to other Queen Anne Victorians designed that same year in town by a young local architect named Ed Hedges, the A.L Whitney home on Sixth Street and the David Tibbitts home on Post Street, which indicate that Hedges may have been the architect.12

Two Queen Anne Victorians designed by Ed Hedges in 1886: the Whitney House, 312 Sixth Street, and the Tibbitts House, 322 Post Street (photos Sonoma County Library)

For 14 years, the Clark family wintered at the ranch, while the Jewells lived there year round, growing oats and barley.13 After Edward Jewell’s death in 1900, his widow and children relocated to Oakland, and the Clarks’ visits from Grand Rapids became less frequent.14 In 1905, they sold the mansion and ranch to the Hillside Land Company, a local development group headed by Alexander B. Hill.15

A scion of William Hill, one of Petaluma’s early bankers, “Allie” Hill joined his father’s banking firm in 1886. After his father’s death in 1902, he inherited a great fortune that reputedly made him the wealthiest man in Sonoma County. He also faced a period of personal turmoil, when in 1903, his wife Hattie, daughter of Hiram Fairbanks, another wealthy local banker, and the mother of his three children, divorced him in a very public court case.

A year later, in a surprising turn of events, Hill married Hattie’s sister Elizabeth, and soon after moved into the 8,500 square foot Victorian mansion of his in-laws, the Fairbanks, at 758 D Street.16

Alexander B. Hill and Hattie Fairbanks Hill (photos in public domain)

In the fall of 1904, he assisted his widowed mother, Josie Hill, in erecting the Hill Opera House on Keller and Washington streets—site of today’s Phoenix Theater—as a tribute to his father.17

A few months later, Hill and his partners purchased the Clark Ranch, and set about subdividing it into small lots for into small lots for “hillside villas, to be anchored by street named Hill Boulevard that stretched from Western Avenue to D Street. 18Hill selected a spot at the top of Bassett Street upon which to build a mansion for himself and his new bride.19

1910 Sanborn map of Hill’s street layout for Hillside Tract in section of map not colored, extending south from Western Avenue along Webster Street to B Street (map courtesy of Library of Congress)

Directly behind the Clark Mansion, Hill opened a quarry to provide crushed rock for the development’s roads and sidewalks. He left the mansion itself vacant, renting out a small white house beside it to the quarry’s foreman, German immigrant Louis Neilsen and his family.20

Aside from its unfortunate fate of residing upon a formation of valuable basalt, the mansion’s abandonment may have also been related to changing tastes. The egg boom overtaking Petaluma at the turn of the century gave rise to a professional class of doctors, lawyers, and merchants, who had little interest in the stylistic excesses of the Victorian era.

While Queen Anne style houses still held some appeal—especially those designed with large rooms and round turrets—buyers were drawn to the new Tudor and Colonial Revival homes, as well as the Craftsman and Shingle Style houses of the Arts & Crafts movement, with their emphasis on natural woodwork, large rooms in a horizontal orientation, and logical floor plans.

Early 1900s homes: Tudor Revival, 700 D Street; Shingle Style, 617 C Street ; Craftsman, 1197 E. Washington Street, (photos Sonoma County Library and Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

Sales for Hillside Tract were slow to manifest. Lots in the flats along Webster Street quickly sold out, but those on the hillside failed to attract buyers, despite Hill’s significant investment in roads and water and sewer mains. A discouraged Hill never built his dream mansion, instead remaining at his in-laws’ mansion on D Street.

Finally, in 1919, Hill asked the city council to abandon the proposed street layout for the hillside they had approved earlier, and allow him to reconfigure the area into 5-acre farms, which, given the egg boom, were in high demand.21 He sold the Clark Mansion and 20 adjoining acres to the Neilsens for $10,350 ($163,000 in today’s currency).22

Hilma and Louis Neilsen outside Clark Mansion,1920s (photo courtesy of Shirley Neilsen Blum)

Three years later, Hill died, leaving an estate of $22 million in today’s currency. The remaining undeveloped parts of the Hillside Tract development were sold off to speculators.23

It wasn’t until after World War II that his vision for the development became a reality. With Petaluma’s egg boom in decline following the rise of factory farms in the Central Valley, the city began transforming into a housing suburb of San Francisco. One of the first suburban tracts built after the war was on Melvin Street (named for one of Neilsen’s sons), between Dana and English streets, by Blackwell Brothers in 1947.24

Two of the Neilsen’s sons, Elmer and Leo, on south side of Clark Mansion with a cow (photo courtesy of Ken Butti)

After purchasing the abandoned Clark Mansion in 1920, Louis and Hilma Neilsen set about restoring it with the help of their four sons. To help pay the mortgage, they converted the upstairs into a five-room apartment rental, and sold dairy cows, hens, kale for chicken feed, and goldfish they raised in a pond that had formed in the abandoned quarry. Hilma Neilsen also took in young children for day care.

In the mid-20s, they began subdividing their 20 acres into lots for sale, extending from the road to the mansion they now called Hill Drive, presumably in honor of Alexander Hill, down to Webster Street and across to Dana Street.25

After Louis Neilsen died in 1929, Hilma divided the downstairs of the Clark Mansion into two apartment units, living in one of the units until her death in 1943. Her sons Carl and Leo lived in the other unit. Her son Melvin, who became a doctor in town, built a house for his family at the top of Dana Street in 1941.26

Hilma Neilsen with son Leo on front porch of Clark Mansion, c. 1920 (photo courtesy of Shirley Neilsen Blum)

In the mid-50s, the family sold the house to Aloysius W. Boron and his wife. By that time it was well known as “The Spooky House,” which the Borons attempted to lay to rest, saying the ghosts were now guardian angels of the place. 27

Carl Neilsen claimed the rumor stemmed from the ghostly rattling of chains in the quarry, which lulled him to sleep at night as a boy.28 Eleanor Welch Ameral, who lived in the upstairs apartment in the 1940s, said the rumor started when Melvin Neilsen began studying late nights in the attic, leaving a light shining through the colored glass window, while the rest of the house was dark.29

In 1963, Shirley and Plinio Butti purchased the Clark Mansion for $13,000, or $116,000 in today’s currency, and reunited it into a single home. By that time, the mansion’s lot had been reduced to one-third of an acre, leaving it cheek-by-jowl with other homes on Hill Drive and Melvin Street.30

Shirley, a homemaker who would later open an antique store on Kentucky Street, and Plinio, a lumberman who soon became foreman of the Petaluma Co-operative Creamery, restored the exterior of the house in an array of colors, as well as the upstairs, where they lived with their three sons. They put off restoring the downstairs, which Shirley used for storing her vast collection of antiques.31

The Clark Mansion 1979 (photo Sonoma County Library)

In the spring of 1968, Shirley Butti assumed leadership of the Heritage Homes Club. A year later, one of Petaluma’s most prominent Queen Anne style homes, the Healey Mansion at the corner of Washington and Keokuk streets, designed by J. Cather Newsom, was torn down and replaced with a gas station. Built in 1903 by Petaluma merchant and city councilman Dennis J. Healey, it was converted in 1919 into a funeral parlor, which it remained until its destruction.32

The demolition of the Healey Mansion became a rallying cry that ignited the local preservation movement, eventually transforming Butti’s club into Heritage Homes of Petaluma. Over subsequent decades the organization helped to bring a number of Victorians—and their pretty colors—back to life, documenting and branding homes of historical significance with “Heritage Home” brass plaques, issuing preservation recognition awards, and hosting home tours.33

Healey Mansion at Washington and Keokuk streets, in the eve of its destruction, 1969 (photo Sonoma County Library)

The Buttis’ restoration of the Clark Mansion came to a halt after Plinio died in 1981. In 1987, Shirley moved into the house of her recently deceased mother on Eighth Street, and ten years later into a local senior living center. For 30 years the Clark Mansion sat vacant, except for Shirley’s antiques. After her death in 2018, her family sold the house for $949,550 to Karen Maxwell of San Francisco, who has since begun its next restoration.34

Clark Mansion interior, 2018 (photo courtesy of realtor.com)

Shirley’s antiques collection was another matter. While she was alive, she guarded it closely, not allowing anyone to touch it. Despite fears of being cursed for doing so, her family sold the collection in bulk to J.W. McGrath Auctions of Sebastopol. Within weeks of moving the collection to their store and warehouse, the McGrath Auctions building caught fire and burned down.35

The Spooky House had spoken.

*****

Thanks to Ken Butti, Shirley Neilsen Blum, and Amy Hogan for their assistance with the research for this story.

A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier.

Footnotes:

[1] Petaluma Argus-Courier: “Beautification Plan Will Not Up Taxes,” September 28, 1967; “Assessor Clouds Issue on Chicken Houses,” October 23, 1967.

[2] “Cleaning Up Area Must Come First,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 18, 1967.

[3]Victoria Maw, “Restoration of San Francisco’s Victorian ‘Painted Lady’ Houses,” The Financial Times, October 11, 2013; “Rainbow Victorians and The Colorist Era,” S.F. Heritage, April 17, 2020. https://www.sfheritage.org/features/colorfully-painted-victorians/

[4] “Heritage Homes Meeting Friday,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 11, 1968.

[5] “So They Tell Me Column,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 1, 1968.

[6] Emails from Ken Butti to John Sheehy, August 2021; Petaluma Argus-Courier: “Lillian Tobin Claimed by Death,” February 9, 1950; “So They Tell Me Column,” June 4, 1958; “Obituaries: Lillian Helman Tobin,” October 20, 1977; “Obituaries: Plinio Butti,” April 22, 1981.

[7] Petaluma Weekly Argus, “Farms in Marin County,” November 17, 1873; “Frightful Accident,” July 16, 1875; “From Michigan,” December 1, 1876; Findagrave.com: Omar Jewell died January 1, 1875 at age 53, buried at Cypress Hill.

[8] Petaluma Weekly Argus: “Real Estate Sale,” August 14, 1874; “Petaluma Cheese Factory” February 27, 1874; “Petaluma Cheese,” June 19, 1874; “From Michigan,” December 1, 1876.

[9] Petaluma Weekly Argus: “Local Brevities,” February 25, 1875, April 9, 1875; “M.J. Clark is Summoned,” November 26, 1909; Ernest B. Fisher, Grand Rapids and Kent County, Volume 2 (Robert O. Law Company, 1918), pp. 84-85; Biography of Melvin J. Clark, http://www.migenweb.org/kent/white1924/personal/clarkmj.html

[10] “Personal,” Petaluma Argus, June 11, 1880; “Real Estate Transactions,” Petaluma Courier, February 22, 1888; “M.J. Clark is Summoned,” Petaluma Argus, November 26, 1909. Note: they sold the house at 920 D Street to Catherine Farley Brown in 1888, who then built the current Queen Anne Victorian on the property in 1893.

[11] Petaluma Courier: Real Estate Transactions,” March 18, 1885; “Fine House,” March 13, 1886.

[12] Dan Petersen, Petaluma’s Architectural Heritage” (Santa Rosa, CA: Architectural Preservation Associates, 1978), p. 52; Information on Ed Hedges homes built in 1886 provided by Katherine Rinehart.

[13] Petaluma Courier: “Courierlets,” February 10, 1882, May 1, 1889 May 22, 1897, April 18, 1898.

[14] “M.J. Clark is Summoned,” Petaluma Argus, November 26, 1909; Petaluma Courier: “A Good Man Gone,” June 12, 1900; “Courierlets,” July 28, 1900; “About People,” February 19, 1897, April 23, 1902, May 15, 1902, November 4, 1904.

[15] “Hillside Villa,” Petaluma Courier, March 3, 1905; “Ties Are Severed,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, April 2, 1903.

[16] Santa Rosa Press Democrat: “Ties Are Severed,” April 2, 1903; “Betrothal Causes Surprise,” May 26, 1904. Note: Hill was living at his parents’ house at 106 7th Street until 1906, when he moved into the Fairbanks Mansion.

[17] “A.B. Hill is Taken by Death at His Home,” Petaluma Courier, June 14, 1922.

[18] “Clark Place Sold,” Petaluma Courier, February 11, 1905.

[19] “Hillside Tract to Aid Our Greater Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus, March 3, 1905.

[20] “Hillside Tract to Aid Our Greater Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus, March 3, 1905; 1910 U.S. Census, Petaluma, Louis William Neilsen; Interview with Shirley Neilsen Blum, August 27, 2021; “Hilma Marie Neilsen,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 11, 1943; Ad for L. Neilsen, chicken houses for sale, Petaluma Argus, June 9, 1909; Ad for L.W. Nielsen, hens and roosters for sale, inquire at hillside rock crusher, Petaluma Courier, May 11, 1912; Anna Keyes Neilsen, The Book of Anna, privately published memoir, 1999, pp. 31-35, courtesy of Shirley Neilsen Blum; Petition for Naturalization, U.S Department of Labor: Louis William Neilsen, no. 1502, November 13, 1928; Interview with Shirley Neilsen Blum, August 27, 2021.

[21] “To Abandon Hillside Tract,” Petaluma Argus, May 13, 1919; “The Action Will be Regretted,” Petaluma Argus, May 13, 1919; Ad by realtor D.W. Batchelor for Hill subdivision tracts, Petaluma Courier, August 8, 1919.

[22] Signed receipt for down payment and purchase terms, signed by realtor D.W. Bachelor, dated May 5, 1919; “Record of Survey: Being a Portion of the Lands of Jason Ferus Blum as Described by Deed Recorded Under Document No. 2002-101193, Sonoma County Records, 2017.

[23] “A.B. Hill is Taken by Death at His Home,” Petaluma Courier, June 14, 1922.

[24] “18 New Homes to Be Built In Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 11, 1947.

[25] Ads placed by the Neilsens, Petaluma Courier: September 20, 1920, April 7, 1925, May 10, 1927, March 22, 1922, May 11, 1927.

[26] Interview with Shirly Neilsen Blum, August 27, 2021; Interview with Ken Butti, August 2021; Petaluma Argus-Courier: “Hilma Marie Neilsen,” October 11, 1943.

[27] “So They Tell Me Column,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 31, 1958.

[28] “So They Tell Me Column,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 4, 1958.

[29] Email to Katherine Rinehart from Eleanor Welch Ameral, July 28, 2008.

[30] Emails from Ken Butti to John Sheehy, August 2021.

[31] Emails from Ken Butti to John Sheehy, August 2021.

[32] Petaluma Courier: “Left for San Francisco,” June 4, 1903; “Certificate of Use of Fictitious Name,” June 14,1919.

[33] “Heritage Homes,” Petaluma Historical Library & Museum. https://www.petalumamuseum.com/heritage-homes/

[34] Interview with Ken Butti, August 2021.

[35] “Sebastopol Business Fire Causes Chaos, Damage,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, May 10, 2018; Emails from Ken Butti to John Sheehy, 2021.

Historic Steiger Building Threatened

Steiger Building, built 1876 (Photo by Scott Hess)

While much of Petaluma is caught up in a furious debate over what constitutes acceptable public art along Water Street, developers are busy pursuing their own agendas for the area, with little regard for the historic guidelines set out in the Central Petaluma Specific Plan. The area’s first major proposed development—the Haystack Pacifica complex intended for the former Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railway yard between Weller and Copeland streets—is an ultra-modern complex with no visual compatibility to the historic downtown.

Now, the new owner of the Steiger Building, home to the Riverfront Art Gallery at 132 Petaluma Boulevard North, is proposing to hollow out much of this prominent landmark, while preserving its street-facing façade (“Revamp for Historic Building,” Argus-Courier, March 21, 2019). Known in the development trade as “architectural facadism”—preserving the face of a building while constructing an entire new building behind it—the practice is popular in older cities like San Francisco that are looking to build up rather than out.

For the Steiger Building however, there’s a hitch—it was built in two phases, the Greek Revival storefront in 1876, and a back addition in 1905. Both halves were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995 as they were part of a continuous family business. In order to hollow out the Steiger Building and construct a new three-story structure, the developer is reportedly challenging the historic status of the building’s back half.

The Steiger Building is steeped in Petaluma history. It occupies the site of the town’s first grocery—Kent, Smith & Coe—established in 1852. It was here, according to meat hunter John E. Lockwood, founder of Petaluma’s initial trading post in 1850, that the town’s first 4th of July celebration was held, with a grand ball that lasted for three days.

William Steiger, a colorful German immigrant, arrived in town in 1856 and opened up a gun and locksmith shop on Main Street near where the current day Odd Fellows Lodge sits, later moving in the 1860s roughly to where Thistle Meats resides today. In 1876, he moved again into the newly constructed building at 132 Petaluma Boulevard North, sharing the building with its owner, George Ross, who operated a photo gallery on the second floor. Not long after, Steiger purchased the building from Ross, and posted an iconic large sign in the shape of a rifle above the front entrance. Upon his death in 1878, his son, P.J. Steiger, renamed the shop Steiger’s Sportsman Emporium, and made it the founding headquarters of the Petaluma Sportsman Club, which operated a rod and gun preserve down the river through the 1920s.

One of P.J. Steiger’s sons, Joseph, turned out to be an adventurous entrepreneur. After purchasing Petaluma’s first bicycle, he convinced his father to open the town’s first bicycle outlet at the store just as the bicycle craze of the Gay 90s was taking off. In 1902, he purchased one the town’s first automobiles, a single cylinder Oldsmobile Runabout, and the next year persuaded his father to establish in the store Petaluma’s first automobile agency. After his father added the back extension to the building in 1905, Joe used the space to open Petaluma’s first auto repair shop, as well as its first “livery auto,” or taxi service. In 1907, after he and his brother Will assumed ownership of the store upon their father’s death, they began selling Indian motorcycles in addition to guns, fishing gear, automobiles, Victor phonographs, and sewing machines.

Joe Steiger (middle), with Don Cella and Bill Palmer, outside Steiger Bldg, 1924

Steiger’s eclectic sporting goods store remained a popular downtown anchor until Joe’s tragic death in 1924, when he and a close friend, city councilman H.S. McCargar, both drowned while fishing for bass in a rowboat near the Sportsman’s Club. Joe’s premature death put an end to Sonoma County’s oldest family-owned business. The Steiger Building went on to house many businesses over the years—including the Petaluma Power and Water Company, a real estate office, and most recently Murray Rockowitz’s photo studio and a co-op art gallery—as well as to become a cornerstone of the Golden Concourse.

If there’s a site that deserves protected landmark status, it’s the Steiger Building—both halves of it. The downtown needs to continue evolving and being revitalized, but not at the price of losing its historical fabric. Merely paying lip service to that fabric by retaining a storefront façade undermines the downtown’s authenticity. Unlike the debate raging over public art, there can be no question of the Steiger Building’s legitimate standing in town.

A version of this article appeared in the Petlauma Argus-Courier on March 28, 2019.