In the 1920s, Petaluma found itself facing a housing shortage. The local egg industry was booming, drawing hundreds of new families to the area. Some came to purchase chicken ranches, others to work for hatcheries and other industries in the prosperous “Egg Basket of the World.” Dave Batchelor, a local realtor and developer, believed he had the solution: restricted residential neighborhoods. [1]
Since its incorporation in 1858, Petaluma had developed in a haphazard manner. Not only were residential neighborhoods dotted with corner groceries and taverns, many sat cheek-by-jowl with chicken hatcheries, foundries, hospitals, and factories for processing everything from incubators to silk and dairy products.
On the plus side, city residents—who numbered just under 4,000 between 1870 and 1900—were able to access all their needs by foot, bicycle, or the city’s horse-drawn streetcars.[2] For those wishing to travel outside the city, downtown stables provided rentals of horses and carriages. Messy as it might seem, Petaluma was the definition of what urban planners today call the “15-minute city.”
Then came the egg boom.
By 1920, Petaluma was one of the largest poultry-producing regions in the country. Its population had grown to more than 6,000. Automobiles now filled the streets. New home buyers came looking for safe and quiet residential neighborhoods with garages for their cars.[3]
As Petaluma lacked zoning ordinances, local developers like Batchelor began creating their own , buying up small farms at the western edge of town and subdividing them into residential-only lots for cottages and bungalows.
A Scottish immigrant, Batchelor got in early on the egg boom, purchasing Penngrove’s second poultry ranch in 1903.[4] The boom originated in the 1880s with the local invention of an efficient egg incubator by Isaac Dias and Lyman Byce. It took off a decade later thanks to the innovations of Chris Nisson, a Danish immigrant, who industrialized egg production by developing America’s first commercial egg hatchery on his Two Rock ranch. After hatching baby chicks in the Dias and Byce incubators, Nisson placed them in a brooder house equipped with a stove to serve as a mother surrogate until they were old enough to sell as laying hens.[5]
Batchelor, the son of a realtor, saw the boom coming. He began buying up Penngrove farms and subdividing them into small tracts for aspiring chicken ranchers, offering them a fully equipped, five-acre chicken ranch for $2,500 ($85,000 in today’s currency).[6] His speculative tendencies caught the attention of the Page brothers, who were in the process of subdividing the 10,000-acre Rancho Cotati they inherited from their father, Thomas Page. Batchelor succeeded in selling more than 900 poultry ranches for the Pages in the Cotati district.[7]
In 1909, Batchelor built the Hotel Penngrove across from the train depot in Penngrove, setting up his main office on the bottom floor, with branch offices in Petaluma and Cotati.
Three years later, he moved his headquarters and family into Petaluma, purchasing a stately home on a large lot at the corner of Howard and Prospect streets. In typical fashion, he subdivided the lot for three new spec houses.[8]
Hailed as one of Petaluma’s “red hot live wire businessmen,” Batchelor ventured south in 1913 to pursue a new development in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles County. Opening a branch office in Van Nuys, he began purchasing farmland and subdividing it into 400 hundred poultry ranches, creating what soon became known as “Southern Petaluma.”[9]
It was in Los Angeles that Batchelor first encountered restricted residential districts. In 1908, the city became the birthplace of city zoning when it banned a wide range of businesses and industries from residential zones. The intention was to promote orderly development, controlling noise, traffic flow, and activity levels as a means of protecting property values.[10]
Returning to Petaluma, Batchelor turned his focus to residential and commercial real estate as the city began to grow with the egg boom. In 1921, he was appointed to fill a seat on the city council after an elected member resigned.[11] The next year, he co-led a community fundraising drive to build the Hotel Petaluma, raising $258,000 ($3.5 million in today’s currency) from 855 local investors.[12]
At the time, Petaluma was undergoing a generational shift. To help address the housing crisis, Victorian mansions built by wealthy capitalists during the city’s river town era, were being carved up into apartments, and their large property estates sold off in subdivisions by their widows and descendants.
One such widow, Harriet Brown, whose estate extended along the south side of D Street from Eighth Street to Sunnyslope Avenue, engaged Batchelor to subdivide her property. Positioning the development as a showcase for the new egg boom elite, Batchelor marketed the subdivision as Petaluma’s first “restricted residence district,” anchoring it with a quiet cul-de-sac named Brown Court.[13]
Gallery of houses built on Brown Court in the 1920s (Sonoma County Library)
Two years later, he purchased an adjacent tract along Eighth Street between D and F streets from descendants of the Fairbanks family, who owned the mansion at the northeast corner of D and Eighth streets. After subdividing the tract into another restricted residence district, he carved out a cul-de-sac of tiny lots he called Batchelor Terrace, offering buyers a choice of modest four- and five-room modern cottages he built to order.[14] (An adjacent lot he sold off was later developed in a similar manner as Coady Court).[15]
In 1922, the National Association of Real Estate Boards advocated city zoning as a means of stabilizing property values. Three years later, Petaluma adopted its first residential and commercial zoning ordinances.[16] The National Association of Real Estate Boards also championed adding covenants to deeds that restricted certain neighborhoods exclusively to Caucasians. Those racial covenants were adopted in Petaluma, and remained in place until a Supreme Court ruling in 1967.[17]
In 1925, Batchelor declined to seek re-election to the city council, turning his attention instead to a new endeavor south of Santa Cruz. Leaving his partner to run the Petaluma realty office, he purchased a 290-acre retreat center from the Jesuit Fathers to develop a beachside town and resort he called Rob Roy, after the famous highlands chief, Rob Roy McGregor. He assigned Scottish names to all the streets, and moved his family into a new Mediterranean-style beachfront home.[18]
After investing a quarter of a million dollars in Rob Roy ($5 million in today’s currency), Batchelor found himself in a financial crisis as home sales in Rob Roy slowed during the Depression. In 1935, he sold the town to another developer who changed its name to LaSelva Beach and its street names from Scottish to Spanish. That same year, Batchelor shut down his office in Petaluma, new housing development having slowed there as well.[19]
The next Petaluma housing boom would not come until the end of World War II, when influx of discharged servicemen arrived with their families bearing low-interest VA loans. With subsidies provided by the government, developers began building a cascade of suburban tract homes, driving the city’s population up to 14,000 by 1960.
Built in exclusionary and restricted residential districts, and designed around cars and shopping malls, the new developments scrambled what remained of Petaluma’s 15-minute city.[20]
Batchelor didn’t return to Petaluma to ride the new suburban housing boom. He chose instead to open a real estate office in LaSelva Beach, where he happily resided until his death in 1963 at the age of 90.[21]
******
A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier September 6, 2024.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Ad, for “Dave” Batchelor, Petaluma Courier, March 9, 1924.
[2] http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/cities/Petaluma50.htm#1940
[3] Thea Lowry, Empty Shells: The Story of Petaluma, America’s Chicken City (Novato, CA: Manifold Press, 2000), pp. 1-3; http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/cities/Petaluma50.htm#1940.
[4] Irene Hilsendager, “History-David William Batchelor,” The Community Voice, August 25, 2023.
[5] Lowry, pgs. 33-35, 49-53.
[6] Hilsendager; “Live Real Estate Firm at Penngrove,” Petaluma Courier, April 12, 1904; Ad for poultry ranch, San Francisco Call and Post, June 20, 1909.
[7] Hilsendager; “History of Cotati,” Cotati Historical Society, cotatimuseum.com; “D.W. Batchelor Now Agent for Cotati Land Company,” Petaluma Argus, May 19, 1910.
[8] “Hotel for Penngrove,” Petaluma Courier, June 7, 1909; Ad for Batchelor & Rankin, Petaluma Argus, November 29, 1911; “Batchelor Buys Geo. Young Home,” Petaluma Argus, October 31, 1912; “D.W. Batchelor to Build Three Houses,” Petaluma Courier, February 3, 1922.
[9] More Activity in Poultry Business,” Van Nuys News and Valley Green Sheet, October 17, 1913; “Batchelor Goes South,” Petaluma Courier, October 12, 1913; “Chickens By Wholesale,” Los Angeles Times, June 25, 1913; “More Activity in Poultry Business,” Van Nuys News and Valley Green Sheet, October 17, 1913; “Hail to Van Nuys, the Southern Petaluma,” Los Angeles Times, July 6, 1913; Hilsendager.
[10] Jonathan Vankin, “Zoning Out: Why We Have Zoning Laws, and How They Shape California and Society (Not Always For the Best),” June 15, 2023, CaliforniaLocal.com; Jeremy Rosenberg, “The Roots of Sprawl: Why We Don’t Live Where We Work,” March 19, 2012, PBSSoCal.com, https://www.pbssocal.org/history-society/
[11] “The New Hotel Project is Being Well Received,” Petaluma Argus, December 27, 1912; “Chamber of Commerce in Annual Session,” Petaluma Courier, May 11, 1915; “Development Co. Officers,” Petaluma Courier, June 21, 1917; “White Leghorn Mining Co. Move Offices Here,” Petaluma Courier, March 11, 1924; “D.W. Batchelor Made Member of City Council Succeeds W. Stradling,” Petaluma Courier, October 4, 1921.
[12] “First Stock In Hotel is Sold,” Petaluma Argus, June 10, 1922; “Legal Notice for Petaluma Hotel Company,” Petaluma Courier, February 7, 1923; “E.J. Hockenbury Was Here,” Petaluma Argus, January 27, 1923; “Mrs. L.B. Hammell Has Resigned,” Petaluma Argus, February 23, 1923 “Unique Opening of Hotel Petaluma,” Petaluma Courier, April 11, 1924; Hilsendager.
[13] “Death of Samuel Brown,” Petaluma Courier, December 17, 1902; “Brown Tract on D Street to be Sold by Batchelor,” Petaluma Courier, December 16, 1921; “New Home for Dr. F.W. Anderson,” Petaluma Argus, July 12, 1922; “Will Build Elegant Home,” Petaluma Argus, August 7, 1922; “Dr. Dreyer Will Build Fine Home,” Petaluma Argus, March 17, 1923.
[14] “A Chance to Own a Modern Home,” Petaluma Courier, September 20, 1919; “Will Build on Laurel Ave,” Petaluma Argus, December 8, 1921; “Splendid New Restricted District for Beautiful homes is Opened Up Today,” Petaluma Argus, August 12, 1924; “Batchelor Terrace is Accepted,” Petaluma Argus, December 2, 1924.
[15] Note on Coady Court: Batchelor originally sold the large lot to Leo Burke, owner of the Must Hatch Hatchery, to build a large estate. After Batchelor Terrace was developed next door, Bourke changed his mind and sold the lot to developer Frank Coady, who developed Coady Court. “Fine New Home for Leo Bourke,” Petaluma Argus, August 12, 1924; “Coady Apartments 11 Lots and A Fine Cottage Change Hands,” Petaluma Argus, June 5, 1925.
[16] “Zoning Plan Advocated in All Cities,” San Francisco Examiner, June 2, 1922; “Zoning Ordinance Introduced,” Petaluma Argus, October 24, 1925 “Ordinances No. 284, Charter Series,” Petaluma Argus, October 26, 1925; “City Zoning Ordinance Formally Adopted,” Petaluma Courier, November 3, 1925; “Zoning Protest Report,” Petaluma Argus, December 8, 1925.
[17] Vankin; “Is There Racism in the Deed to Your Home?” New York Times, August 17, 2021; Marisa Kendal, “For Whites Only: Shocking Language Found in Property Docs Throughout Bay Area,” Bay Area News Group, February 26, 2019. Bayareanewsgroup.com; sample Petaluma deed in Sonoma County Official Records, Liber 293, page 328, dated April 13, 1931, for sale of property on Western Avenue in Petaluma to Clifford B. Murphy and Minnie J. Murphy; Moore, Montojo, Mauri, “Roots, Race, and Place,” Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, University of California, Berkeley, October 2019, p. 22.
[18] Note: the property included almost a mile of black sand beach, four acres of which Batchelor set aside for a new plant by his development partner Triumph Steel, who extracted manganese from the sand to use as an alloy in the making of steel. “D.W. Batchelor Buys Tract of Land in South,” Petaluma Courier, February 8, 1925; “F.A. Allenberg Now Associated with D.W. Batchelor,” Petaluma Argus, July 13, 1925; “Sales Among Those Sure to Be Kept in Office,” Petaluma Courier, May 21, 1925; “D.W. Batchelor Is Home from Rob Roy,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 16, 1926; “Was Up From Rob Roy Townsite,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 14, 1931; “Rob Roy District Now Being Transformed into Modern Home Subdivision,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, November 4, 1932; “D.W. Batchelor Is Here on Business,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 9, 1934; “Let’s Go to Beautiful, Secluded La Selva,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, February 25, 1951.
[19] “David Batchelor, LaSelva Beach Founder, Dies,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, July 9, 1963; “The Sand Was Gold,” Santa Cruz Sentinel,” June 2, 1985.
[20] “$500,000 Housing Program Here,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 2, 1946; http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/cities/Petaluma50.htm#1960
[21] “David Batchelor, LaSelva Beach Founder, Dies,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, July 9, 1963; “The Sand Was Gold,” Santa Cruz Sentinel,” June 2, 1985.