In 1962, a fire broke out on Kentucky Street between Kent and Galland streets, destroying one of the oldest landmark buildings in Petaluma.
Built in 1861 as a hotel called the What Cheer House—later renamed the Revere House—it originally sat at the southeast corner of Oak Street and Petaluma Boulevard North. In 1907, part of the building was moved to 512 Kentucky Street, where it became a private residence.
The hotel was built by George W. Cofer, who came to Sonoma County in 1852, having crossed the plains from Missouri in a wagon train. He initially settled on a farm west of Petaluma and married Nancy Ann Peters. In 1861, the couple moved into private quarters in their newly constructed What Cheer House.[1]
Three stories high, the hotel had 50 rooms, a dining hall and bar, and an adjacent livery stable. For many years it was the largest hotel in town, offering a commanding view of Petaluma Valley and the Sonoma Mountain Range. The nightly room rate was 25 cents a night ($10 in today’s currency).[2]
Cofer borrowed the name from the popular What Cheer House in San Francisco. That city’s largest hotel, it initially opened 1852, admitting only male guests and banning liquor on the premises.[3] The hotel’s name came from an old English expression—“What cheer, friend?”— a friendly salutation commonly used during the Gold Rush.[4]
Cofer’s guests were primarily teamsters, farmers, and drovers bringing grains, produce, and livestock into town. The hotel’s livery stable featured a scale for weighing hay and grain. Across the street sat Petaluma’s early flour mills. A free shuttle transported guests to and from the steamboat ferry landing on the river. The hotel also served as a stagecoach depot for passengers venturing north to Santa Rosa or Sebastopol.[5]
In 1865, Cofer sold the hotel and departed for Honolulu. He later took his wife and children to Peru, where they allegedly became the first Americans to cross the Andes. The Cofers ultimately settled on a farm near Red Bluff. [6]
The hotel’s new owner, Hugh Stockdale, came to Sonoma County from Pennsylvania in the early 1850s. Owner of a dry goods store in Bloomfield, he was an avid horse breeder, and helped to organize the first county fair held in Petaluma in 1867.[7]
Stockdale changed the name of the What Cheer House to the Stockdale House, and refurnished it to appeal to not only to farmers and teamsters but also to their families.[9] He lived with his own family in the private quarters Cofer created at the hotel. After two years, Stockdale leased the hotel to Reuben L. Gardner, one of California’s legendary hotel keepers, but continued to reside there with his family .[10]
A native of Rhode Island, Gardner had operated a series of hotels in California and Nevada, beginning with Sacramento’s Crescent City Hotel in 1850. He renamed Stockdale’s hotel The Revere House, most likely after Boston’s famous hotel of the same name. Within a couple years, Gardner moved on to a new hotel venture.[11]
The Stockdale family continued to reside at the hotel for the next 40 years, leasing its operation to a series of proprietors. Stockdale died there in 1890, followed by his wife Carrie 12 years later. In 1906, Stockdale’s children moved out and sold the building, but not the lot, to Charley Offutt, a local dairyman. [12]
Offutt first arrived in Petaluma in 1853 as a one-year-old infant traveling with his parents on a wagon train from Missouri.[13] His parents established 1,000-acre dairy ranch that stretched from Chileno Valley to Tomales Bay. Offutt took it over after their passing. In 1906, he decided to retire from dairy ranching and moved into town with his wife.[14]
Offutt’s main reason for buying the hotel building was to use its hand-hewn lumber in constructing a new house on a lot he purchased a block away. The lot extended from Petaluma Boulevard North to Kentucky Street. Subdividing the lot, Offutt used the lumber from the hotel’s first floor to build a Craftsman-style home for his family at 509 Petaluma Boulevard North (adjacent today to the former parking of North Bay Kitchen & Bath).[15]
He moved the top two stories of the Revere House to Kentucky Street, where he converted them into a single private residence he rented out. For brief periods, Offutt’s daughter Jennie, a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, lived there with her husband Arlington W. Stephenson, a music professor. Touring performers during the Vaudeville era, the couple eventually moved to San Francisco.[16]
Following Offutt’s death in 1935, Jennie Offutt Stephenson moved back into the old Revere House, apparently to be close to her elderly mother. Having recently separated from her husband, she began running a series of local night clubs—the Silver Dollar Club, the Rainbow Inn, and the Depot Hotel in Valley Ford (today’s Dinucci’s Restaurant)—with nightly jazz bands and dancing.[17]
During World War II, Stephenson converted the top floor of the old Revere House into four rental apartments.[18] On the evening of February 6, 1962, a smoldering cigarette left in one of the rented rooms set off a fire that severely damaged the old building.[19]
Stephenson tore down the building and in its place constructed the four-unit apartment complex that resides on the site today. The only remanent of the landmark Revere House is the lumber in the old Offutt house at 509 Petaluma Boulevard North.
A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 9, 2026
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “Married,” Sonoma County Journal, April 10, 1857; Ad for the What Cheer House, Petaluma Argus, September 20, 1861; “Death of G.W. Cofer,” Daily Red Bluff News, August 6, 1895.
[2] Ad for the What Cheer House, Petaluma Argus, September 20, 1861; “Jottings,” Petaluma Courier, January 29, 1879: best hotel view in town.
[3] “Library of Congress Images Show S.F. As It Was Before 1870,” SF Gate.com, July 20, 2020.
[4] “The What Cheer House,” Stagenine.com, https://www.stagenine.com/pages/the-what-cheer-house
[5] Ad for What Cheer House, Petaluma Argus, September 20, 1861; Ad for Revere House, Petaluma Argus, April 4, 1867.
[6] For Sale ad for What Cheer House, Petaluma Argus, June 30, 1864; Ad for Stockdale House, Petaluma Argus, July 20, 1865; Ad for Stockdale House listing Stockdale as proprietor, Petaluma Argus, November 9, 1865; “Passengers,” Daily Alta California, March 25, 1865; “Passengers,” Daily Alta California, March 25, 1865.
[7] Ad for Miller & Stockdale Dry Goods Store, Sonoma County Journal, June 1, 1860; “County Fair, Petaluma Argus, April 11, 1867; “Dead,” Petaluma Courier, November 12, 1890.
[9] Ad for Stockdale House, Petaluma Argus, November 16, 1865.
[10] “Good Change All Around,” Petaluma Argus, March 14, 1867; First ad for the Revere House, Petaluma Argus, March 21, 1867; “Death of R.L. Gardner,” Oakland Tribune, August 8, 1877.
[11] “The Revere House,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revere_House.
[12] “Dead,” Petaluma Courier, November 12, 1890; “Death Calls Mrs. Stockdale,” Petaluma Argus, May 10, 1902; “Briefs,” Petaluma Courier, September 25, 1903: rooms still being rented at Revere House; “Briefs,” Petaluma Courier, June 4, 1906: Stockdale heirs move out of hotel.
[13] “Pioneer Ranch Owner, 83, Passes,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 28, 1935.
[14] “Pioneer Ranch Owner, 83, Passes,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 28, 1935; “Jennie Stephenson Dies in Petaluma,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, December 25, 1977.
[15] “Historical Unity Meets Next Week,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 23, 1959.
[16] “Life Ends for Mrs. Isable Farrel,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 9, 1945; Jennie Stephenson Dies in Petaluma,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, December 25, 1977.
[17] Jennie Stephenson Dies in Petaluma,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, December 25, 1977.
[18] “Silver Dollar Reopens August 29,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, August 24, 1936; “Rainbow Inn to Be reopened Saturday,” Santa Rosa Republican, June 24, 1937; “Valley Ford Hotel is Leased,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 4, 1938; “Condition of Mrs. Offutt Critical,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 7, 1942; “Obituaries: Jennie B. Stephenson,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 24 1977.
[19] “Fire Ravages 97-year-old Revere House,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 12, 1962.
