Historic Preservation: Theory and Practice

HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN NAPA, CALIFORNIA

Kara Lynn Brunzell B.A., University of California, Los Angeles, 1988

PROJECT

Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

HISTORY (Public History)

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO

FALL 2009

HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN NAPA, CALIFORNIA

A Project

Kara Lynn Brunzell

Approved by:

______, Committee Chair Dr. Lee Simpson

______, Second Reader Dr. Patrick Ettinger

______Date

Student: Kara Lynn Brunzell

I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University format manual, and that this project is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to

be awarded for the Project.

______, Department Chair ______Dr. Christopher Castaneda Date

Department of History

iii

Abstract

HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN NAPA, CALIFORNIA

Kara Lynn Brunzell

Statement of Problem

How do historic preservation activities in Napa, California relate to the theory and practice of preservation? How does Napa’s history fit into broader themes of history, and how does Napa’s historic architecture illustrate that history.

Sources of Data

Data sources include the printed and online literature of historic preservation, urban history, local history, and cultural resource management. The student also consulted works of local and state history, historic resource surveys and other local planning documents, and documented her experience as an intern for the City of Napa.

Conclusions Reached

Napa’s history and historic preservation efforts reflect broader themes of history and the evolving historic preservation movement. Emerging areas of preservation, such as historic landscapes and heritage tourism, will gain importance in Napa’s future.

______, Committee Chair Dr. Lee Simpson

______Date iv

DEDICATION

To my eminently patient family, who supported and encouraged me over the last three years.

They deserve no less than my permanent retirement from academic pursuits as a reward for their heroic efforts.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to all those who made this project

possible. My family, Alice, Nora, Simone, Ynez, and Phil Barber, provided incalculable

quantities of love, encouragement, and humor. Their support enabled me to juggle the

commute, coursework, and internships required by the CSUS Public History Program. Our

chaotic household was the perfect antidote for long hours of research and thesis-writing.

Thank you for all your kindness and help, and for letting me monopolize the computer. My brother, David Brunzell, has been not only a source of encouragement, but an always- available information resource.

Several CSUS professors contributed significantly to the knowledge and skills I built in the Public History program. Marie Nelson introduced me to historic preservation. Rand

Herbert and Greg King helped me get started in Cultural Resource Management. Mona

Siegel honed my writing and critical thinking. Charles Roberts and Shirley Moore encouraged me to think about history from the perspective of the dispossessed. Charles

Postel provided a challenging perspective on American history.

Several people in Napa also assisted me greatly. Marlene Demery, Planning Director at the City of Napa, brought me on staff to work on the local preservation program. Her high expectations allowed me to stretch my wings in this internship. I was able gain precious preservation experience by working with the Cultural Heritage Commission, writing grant applications, and assisting with surveys. The volunteer members of the

Cultural Heritage Commission have also provided me with invaluable encouragement, technical advice, knowledge of local history, and practical help. And city staff, of course, made it all possible with their administrative support.

Lee Simpson provided fundamental direction for this project, pointing me towards crucial readings and refining the scope of my research. She has generously (and quickly) responded to all my questions, and her edits and commentary were helpful. My advisor,

Patrick Ettinger, has guided my path through this program with wisdom as well as wit. I would certainly not have met the fall deadline without his gentle pressure. It was he who goaded me “off the couch” in early October, insisting that I could write this paper in three weeks if I set my mind to it. His kind words, positive attitude, and incisive thinking have spurred me to improve my own thinking and writing both on this project and during the course of the Public History program.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

Dedication ...... v

Acknowledgements ...... vi

Chapter

1. HISTORIC PRESERVATION: THEORY AND PRACTICE ...... 1

Introduction ...... 1

Early Preservation Efforts in the United States ...... 1

The Birth of the Historic District ...... 5

Federal Government Involvement ...... 7

The National Historic Preservation Act ...... 10

Post-NHPA Preservation ...... 13

Legal Precedent ...... 15

Preservation After 1980 ...... 16

Landscape, Rural, and Small-Town Preservation ...... 16

2. HISTORY OF NAPA, CALIFORNIA ...... 21

Origins...... 21

The Mexican Period ...... 22

American Settlement – Gold Rush ...... 22

American Settlement – Agricultural Development ...... 25 viii

American Consolidation and Prosperity ...... 26

Early Twentieth Century ...... 31

Prohibition and Depression ...... 34

World War II and the Modern Era ...... 36

3. REDEVELOPMENT AND PRESERVATION IN NAPA, CALIFORNIA ...... 41

The Redevelopment Era ...... 41

1980 to the Present ...... 44

The Formation of Preservation Non-Profits in Napa ...... 47

The Formation of the Cultural Heritage Commission ...... 50

Preservation Awareness in Napa ...... 54

Historic Context Survey ...... 56

Historic Homes Workshops ...... 60

California Preservation Foundation Conference ...... 62

The Future of Preservation in Napa ...... 63

Conclusion ...... 64

Appendix A. Grant Application, 2009 ...... 70

Appendix B. Publicity Material for Historic Homes Workshop...... 77

Appendix C. Historic Homes Workshop Schedule ...... 79

Appendix D. Historic Landscapes PowerPoint Presentation ...... 81

Appendix E. Grant Application, 2010 ...... 92

Bibliography ...... 100

Chapter 1

HISTORIC PRESERVATION: THEORY AND PRACTICE

Introduction

Though commemoration and public remembrance of history have been elements of

American culture since the early colonial era, historic preservation as it is understood today is a relatively recent phenomenon. American preservation, restoration, and reconstruction of old buildings did not begin in earnest until the nineteenth century. The climate of patriotic nationalism that developed after the Revolutionary War led Americans to attempt to preserve sites associated with the heroes of the Revolution. Since that era, historic preservation has morphed and spread into a much broader endeavor, one that would scarcely be recognizable to the first American preservationists. One of the recurrent themes in the American preservation movement has been the split between private and government-sponsored preservation endeavors. The purpose of this paper is to outline the history, theory, and evolving practice of American historic preservation. A brief history of one town, Napa, California, and its efforts at historic preservation over the past forty years will serve as a case study. Napa’s history and its ever-changing preservation landscape will serve to exemplify the issues raised by the general literature of historic preservation.

Early Preservation Efforts in the United States

The first American efforts at building preservation grew out of a desire to keep the actions of “great men” alive in the public memory. Groups of interested individuals began to mount efforts to restore and preserve particular buildings, such as Independence Hall in

Philadelphia, a synagogue built in Rhode Island in the eighteenth century, and Thomas

Jefferson’s Monticello. These commemorative restorations began as early as 1816. The

well-known campaign to preserve George Washington’s home, however, begun in 1853 by

the Mount Vernon Ladies Association (MVLA), is widely recognized as the birth of the

American Historic Preservation movement. Though it is important to acknowledge its

preservation antecedents, the Mount Vernon effort is significant for its status as the

paradigm of nineteenth-century preservation in the United States.

As William Murtagh points out in Keeping Time: The History and Theory of

Preservation in America, Mount Vernon’s preservation was “seminal” on several fronts.

Like the earlier efforts listed above, Mount Vernon was preserved through grass-roots

organizing and fund-raising by a group of private citizens. Nineteenth-century preservation

of historic sites was motivated by the era’s nativistic patriotism. The sites considered most

significant were those associated with great men, who were almost always political

or military leaders, or, like Washington, both. The MVLA broke with earlier

commemoration movements, however, in that it was the first group to mobilize wealthy

women behind a strong female leader. In doing so, the association created a lasting

template for what would be more than a century of amateur female leadership of the

American preservation movement.1

In creating a secular shrine to Washington, the MVLA was, Murtagh argues, an

elite group attempting to hold onto its status in the face of a rapidly changing society.

Immigration and new wealth threatened the old class system, and preservation of sites

1. William J. Murtagh, Keeping Time: The History and Theory of Preservation in America, (Pittstown, NJ: Main Street Press) 1988, 29.

3 associated with great men was a natural response. Laura Croghan Kamoie adds nuance to Murtagh’s argument with her assertion that race and sectional tensions were also essential motivating factors for this group of Southern white women. In 2003 Kamoie reviewed an exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, which celebrated the MVLA’s achievements. The author notes that MVLA founder Ann Pamela

Cunningham recruited wealthy southern white women on the basis of “Southern feeling and honor.” Mount Vernon worked within the tradition of the historic site as shrine, a space marked off from ordinary places and separate from the fabric of visitors’ daily lives.2

Well into the twentieth century, preservationists continued to utilize the basic elements of the approach pioneered so effectively by the MVLA. The creators of Colonial

Williamsburg, like the Mount Vernon preservationists, focused on the preservation of physical evidence of “the spirit of the past.” Williamsburg had served as Virginia’s capital between 1699 and 1779, but many of the original buildings had either been replaced or seriously deteriorated by the twentieth century. W.A.R. Goodwin, who oversaw the restoration of a Williamsburg church as its rector, became interested in restoring more buildings in the historic town. John D. Rockefeller supported the project financially, and it eventually grew into a 1920s restoration of the entire village. Goodwin and his associates not only restored the buildings from Williamsburg’s era of glory, they recreated buildings that had been demolished and removed those constructed after the period of significance.

2 Ibid., 29; Laura Croghan Kamoie, “Saving Mount Vernon: The Birth of Preservation in America,” CRM, The Journal of Heritage Stewardship, Fall, 2003, http://crmjournal.cr.nps.gov/08_rexhibit_sub.cfm?issue=Volume%201%20Number%201%20Fall%202003& seq=5, accessed 22 October 2009.

Over 700 buildings that had been constructed after 1790 were demolished in order to

present a unified colonial-era appearance.3

Though the Colonial Williamsburg project involved preserving an entire village

rather than one famous person’s dwelling, the motivations of its creators were very similar

to the MVLA’s. Patriotism and commemoration of the founding of the nation were as

important to the creation of this site as to Mount Vernon. Nineteenth- and early- twentieth-

century house museums and outdoor museums operated according to the same guiding

principles. Early preservationists focused on setting aside special sites that enlightened,

inspired, and entertained vistors.4

Colonial Williamsburg was and continues to be a smashing success in terms of

numbers of visitors and revenue brought into the area. During the 1930s and subsequent

decades, Colonial Williamsburg cast a long shadow over other towns that boasted historic

architecture with similar potential for economic exploitation, and many towns attempted

imitations. The methodology its creators used, however, is widely considered flawed by

today’s standards. The destruction of so many non-conforming buildings laid the

organizers open to charges of presenting a sanitized, and even falsified, version of the

town’s history. Just as serious is the fact that these unwanted buildings represented over

200 years of history that occurred after the chosen period of significance. In addition to the

demolition of so many resources, some of the buildings that ultimately became part of

Colonial Williamsburg were replicas. Though based on extensive research, these

3 David Hamer, History in Urban Places: The Historic Districts of the United States, (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998), 2.

4 Murtagh, 36.

reconstructions could never truly replicate the originals they were intended to represent.

In his insightful volume, History in Urban Places: The Historic Districts of the United

States, David Hamer has referred to this demolition and reconstruction as “the selection of

history to be remembered and preserved.”5

The Birth of the Historic District

Though Colonial Williamsburg has certainly been a successful and influential venture by many measures, this sort of blatant manipulation of historical architecture is no longer accepted as a desirable method of building preservation or of educating the public about history. A grass-roots preservation drive begun in 1929 in Charleston, South

Carolina, however, has largely retained its relevance in the ensuing eighty years.

Charleston had been an important port in the early nineteenth century, but had lost its position after the Civil War. Much of the grand architecture of its heyday remained, in spite or because of the fact that progress had passed Charleston by in the early twentieth century. Its revolutionary neighborhood preservation movement was galvanized by the construction of gas stations in Charleston’s oldest neighborhoods, and by architects from other cities stripping local mansions of their original fixtures and fittings. In 1931 the grass-roots effort resulted in the formation of the Old and Historic Charleston District,

America’s first historic district. Charleston was a major departure from the tradition of historic preservation as the saving of special places that were outside the prosaic realm of contemporary life.6

5 Hamer, 2 – 3; Ibid., 4; Norman Tyler, Historic Preservation: an Introduction to its History, Principles, and Practice, (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2000), 38; Hamer, 4. 6 Murtagh, 105.

Prior to the designation of Old and Historic Charleston, American cities had not

restricted the use of private property in order to benefit the public through neighborhood

conservation. Old Charleston’s designation broadened the house museum-based

preservation paradigm to include occupied neighborhoods. Before Charleston, the historic

preservation had generally meant a shrine to a great man. Who had lived in a building was

far more important than the aesthetics of that building. The ground-breaking approach in

Charleston heralded a shift to preserving buildings for their architectural value or their

local significance. In Charleston historic preservation also broadened to include vernacular

buildings for the first time.7

Though Charleston’s preservation-oriented property restrictions were enacted without enabling legislation at the state level, this did not prevent the district from effectively preserving the character of Old Charleston. The district’s legality was dubious by today’s standards, but it was successful due to local conditions that included broad community support, a combination of public and private leadership, and a relatively wealthy local base of support. Hamer argues that although the Charleston effort was certainly ground-breaking, unique local conditions also contributed to the district’s success. In particular, Charlestonians’ self-consciousness and pride regarding local heritage, as well as the truly extraordinary architectural quality of the city, were circumstances that could not easily be replicated in other locales.8

7 Ibid., 58. 8 Tyler, 39; Hamer, 6.

The creation of Charleston’s historic district is widely heralded as the genesis of the modern American historic district. The pioneering concept of neighborhood conservation considerably broadened the preservation agenda in the United States.

Murtagh defines neighborhood preservation as “a heterogenous project, the whole of which exceeds the value of the individual parts.” Rising or falling property value, sociological change, neighborhood boundaries, and integrity of location are all issues crucial to the formation of historic districts, none of which were considered important to the creators of earlier house and outdoor museums. Hamer points out that many techniques used in modern preservation were first attempted in Charleston. These included historic zoning, architectural review, a comprehensive architectural survey, a local foundation, and a revolving fund for preservation.9

Federal Government Involvement

In addition to the private and local government-sponsored preservation programs discussed above, the federal government began to get involved with historic preservation in the 1930s. Preservation had traditionally been handled locally in the United States, and private individuals or occasionally local governments took the lead on deciding what to preserve and how to preserve it. But federal efforts to stimulate employment during the

Great Depression led to an unprecedented allocation of tax dollars toward preservation- related activities. One of the most significant was the Historic American Building Survey, begun in 1933. This nation-wide survey not only produced an archive of information on historic buildings and established standardized methodology for recording historic

9 Murtagh, 105; Ibid., 108; Hamer, 6.

8 resources, it also created a template for future federal involvement in the preservation of privately owned buildings.10

Federal leadership in historic preservation continued to increase as the twentieth century progressed. In 1947 the National Council for Historic Sites began its effort to launch the National Trust for Historic Preservation. President Harry Truman signed the legislation which created the National Trust in 1949. The National Trust remains the largest American preservation organization – and probably the most influential. The diverse activities of the National Trust include direct administration of historic sites, and the publication of Preservation magazine. The Trust established the Main Street

Center in 1980, and continues its involvement with this popular downtown revitalization program today. The National Trust also maintains a list of threatened architectural treasures, gives preservation awards, and acts as an influential national advocate for saving historic resources.11

The Federal government’s influence on historic buildings and neighborhoods, however, has not always been benign. During the middle decades of the twentieth century, ambitious and well-meaning housing and highway programs pursued modernization without fully considering its impact on historic architecture. Federal activities during this era led more often to the destruction of historic structures than to their preservation. The

Housing Act of 1949 and the Urban Renewal Act of 1954 were intended to improve older

American cities by replacing deteriorated inner-city housing with functional modern

10 Murtagh, 56 – 58.

11 Murtagh, 48; National Trust for Historic Preservation website, http://www.preservationnation.org/about-us/history.htm, accessed 22 October 2009.

buildings. Lina Cofresi and Rosetta Radtke are representative of preservationist

consensus in their assertion that these programs were “directly responsible for the

wholesale clearance of entire inner-city slum neighborhoods in many historic towns and cities across the country.” Federal program managers expected private developers to step in and rebuild blighted areas, however, the cleared lots were frequently left vacant for years when investors did not materialize. The philosophy behind urban renewal was a conscious obliteration of traces of the past in the name of progress. Hamer points out that a desire to shed unpleasant memories of the Great Depression and the inspirational example of urban regeneration in war-torn European cities led to broad enthusiasm for these policies for a time.12

United States Department of Transportation policies during this era worked in tandem with housing policy to destroy old neighborhoods in inner cities. The Highway Act of 1956 “boosted highway funding by a quantum leap,” Owen D. Gutfreund states in

Twentieth Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape.

Gutfreund also argues that federal policy drained resources from urban areas and funneled them into suburbanization. Cutting highways through residential areas exacerbated the building demolition and neighborhood obliteration caused by urban renewal. Tyler concurs with Gutfreund’s assessment that urban areas were sacrificed in order to build up suburbs.

He states that “there were no more heavy-handed aggressors than the bulldozers of the highway program. Center cities, and their rich historic fabric of businesses and

12 Hamer, 12; Lina Cofresi and Rosetta Radtke, “Local Government Programs: Preservation Where it Counts,” in Robert E. Stipe, ed., A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-first Century, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 119; Tyler, 191; Hamer, 13.

neighborhoods, were destroyed in the attempt to make them accessible to the new and

powerful suburban commuter.”13

Though urban renewal is reviled by preservationists for the destruction it caused to

historic neighborhoods and buildings, most acknowledge that its legacy is not entirely

negative. The program was extremely complex, and at times urban renewal funds were

used for preservation rather than demolition. Even more significant, however, is the

reaction provoked by the scale of the program and the rapidity of the change it wrought.

Hamer argues that urban renewal was a “crucial catalyst,” both for the formation of a broad

and activist nation-wide preservation constituency and for the shift in focus of preservation

practice from the protection of individual buildings to the creation of historic districts.14

The National Historic Preservation Act

In 1965 the U.S. Conference of Mayors, in conjunction with the National Trust,

published the preservation manifesto, With Heritage So Rich. This influential effort led

Congress to pass seminal American preservation legislation, the 1966 National Historic

Preservation Act (NHPA). This broad constellation of legislation inserted the federal

government into historic preservation to an unprecedented degree. In Historic

Preservation, Norman Tyler assesses NHPA’s value as greater than its primary function as

regulatory protection for resources. Tyler credits the act with bringing about fundamental

change in the American perspective on preservation from an optional activity engaged in

by elites to an “integral part of society.” In her introduction to A Richer Heritage, Diane

13 Owen D. Gutfreund, Twentieth-century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 55; Ibid., 59; Tyler, 216.

14 Hamer, 14; Ibid., 12.

Lea asserts that, “it is simply impossible to overstate the importance or incentive value of the 1966 Act.”15

Several separate components of NHPA have had a significant impact on the

American preservation since passage of the act. Title I of NHPA authorized the nation- wide inventory of significant historic properties, the National Register of Historic Places, and specified its administration by the National Park Service under the Secretary of

Interior. While earlier registers had included only buildings, structures, and objects, NHPA specified that districts were also eligible for inclusion. The National Park Service assembled staff to craft significance criteria for potential resources. To qualify for the

National Register a historic resources must “possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association.” In addition, National Register resources must be relevant under one of four criteria: association with historical events, association with an important person, architectural excellence or typicality, or a likelihood to yield important data.16

The National Register is important as a source of pride and recognition for communities and owners of historic buildings. However, the unique symbiotic relationship between federal, state, and local governments on historic preservation is probably the

National Register’s most significant legacy. Rather than a federal bureau dictating historic significance to states and municipalities, the National Register became a collaborative effort between local and national governance. Part of this effort involved the creation of

15 Tyler, 45; Diane Lea, “America’s Preservation Ethos: A Tribute to Enduring Ideals,” in Stipe, 11.

16 National Park Service Website, “Introduction,” and “Determinations of Eligibility,” http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/publications/bulletins/brochure/, accessed 23 October 2009.

State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPO’s), which today perform much front-line preservation work. Murtagh defines the National Register as a “state and local program in which the federal government reacts to those. . . resources which the states and localities recommend as worth preservation.” Cofresi and Radtke argue that the connection forged between local historic resources and federal money “was the real significance of the 1966 act.”17

The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) is another important legacy of NHPA. Title II of NHPA provided for the ACHP, an independent federal agency which promotes the “preservation, enhancement and productive use of our Nation’s historic resources.” The ACHP’s independence makes it valuable as a preservation watchdog, and it also performs the essential function of administering Section 106.18

Section 106 is perhaps the most significant portion of the NHPA legislation. This statute mandates that cultural resources be taken into account before federal money is spent on any type of construction project. John M. Fowler, in his chapter in A Richer Heritage on the Federal Preservation Program, refers to Section 106 as “the centerpiece of federal protection for historic properties.” Section 106 does not restrict how private funds are allocated, or prevent a National Register building from being demolished by its owner, or even outlaw a freeway chopping up a historic district. What it does do is to provide an invaluable mechanism to protect historic properties from harm caused by federal activities.

Section 106 mandates that historic resources be, at a minimum, documented and taken into

17 Murtagh, 73; Cofresi and Radtke in Stipe, 119.

18 Advisory Council on Historic Preservation website, http://www.achp.gov/, accessed 20 October 2009.

account before ground is broken on any federally funded highway or construction

project. Though this does not guarantee their retention, it often slows down the bulldozers

long enough to find ways around the demolition of historic buildings.19

The passage of NHPA was a watershed in terms of federal protection of historic

resources. The modern focus on context evolved from the work of the U.S. Conference of

Mayors in 1965, who insisted that saving individual buildings was not sufficient and that

“total heritage” must be taken into account. This broadening, which grew out of a reaction

against urban renewal, led to increased emphasis on neighborhood conservation and the

“district” concept. Far from acting in a vacuum, Congress was part of a cultural wave in

favor of preservation. Hamer argues that Congress, in enacting NHPA, was “responding to

and reflecting growing support for local preservation.”20

Post-NHPA Preservation

NHPA also marked the beginning of a process of professionalization of

preservation activities that has continued to increase until today. Section 106, in particular,

led to the creation of “cultural resource management” (CRM) as a professional discipline.

Thomas F. King, in his Cultural Resource Laws & Practice: An Introductory Guide, concisely sums up the birth of CRM. Archaeologists, King writes, came up with the term to distinguish themselves from historic preservationists after the passage of NHPA. The confusion over whether CRM encompasses archaeology, historic preservation, or both, while implying a responsibility for resources that goes beyond either discipline, “has

19 John M. Fowler, “The Federal Preservation Program,” in Stipe, 45.

20 Hamer, 18.

14 allowed a considerable range of such resources to be ignored by federal planners and decision-makers – indeed it has encouraged them to do so.” In his more recent Thinking

About Cultural Resource Management, King defines what the enterprise should be: “CRM is centrally about living people and their communities, and the values they ascribe to aspects of the physical environment.”21

Preservation continued to evolve significantly over the next fifteen years. In 1976

Congress instituted tax incentives that finished the work NHPA had begun in shifting federal weight to preservation rather than demolition. Prior to this change in law, tax incentives had rewarded demolition and new construction more highly than the preservation of existing buildings. John M. Fowler, in an essay on federal preservation, argues that though rather modest, these incentives increased the pace of preservation by making it more economically attractive.22 (Richer, 60)

A NHPA amendment in 1980 created the Certified Local Government (CLG) program. Like the National Register, the CLG program’s effect is to increase the synergy of local, state, and federal government preservation efforts. The federal government created the CLG program, but gave states, specifically SHPO’s the authority to grant CLG status to local governments. SHPO’s also regulate CLG’s, ensuring that certified municipalities use widely agreed upon standards and enforce preservation ordinances.

Though decentralization, the original goal of the program, has not worked as thoroughly as

21 Thomas F. King, Cultural Resource Laws and Practice: An Introductory Guide, (Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 1998), 18; Thomas F. King, Thinking About Cultural Resource Management: Essays from the Edge, (Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 2002), 15.

22 Fowler, in Stipe, 60.

15 its creators hoped, the CLG program has, as argued by Cofresi and Radtke,

“significantly boosted the effectiveness and credibility of local preservation.”23

Legal Precedent

In addition to congressional legislation supporting historic preservation, the courts began in the 1970s to uphold the legality of enforceable local historic preservation regulations. The Penn Central case provided a significant legal precedent that continues to be relied on by preservationists today. In 1978 Penn Central Transportation Company and the City of New York battled in court over the company’s right to build a cantilevered tower addition over Grand Central Station. The proposed new construction would have been much taller than the original structure, and would have required the destruction of part of the original façade. The Supreme Court decision in favor of the city consolidated local government’s right to deny building permits in order to preserve historic buildings.

This decision remains the legal basis for municipal controls on private historic properties.

More than thirty years later, the Penn Central case is considered a preservation milestone.

This case continues to be, as stated on the National Trust’s website, “the leading case governing the constitutionality of permit denials under the takings clauses of the federal and state constitutions.”24

23 Tyler, 45; Cofresi and Radtke, in Stipe, 121. 24 Tyler, 87; National Trust for Historic Preservation website, Legal Resources, http://www.preservationnation.org/resources/legal-resources/understanding-preservation-law/constitutional- issues/takings-clause.html, accessed 21 October 2009.

Preservation After 1980

In the years since 1980, the scope of historic preservation has continued to broaden, both in theory and in practice. The number of historic districts, preservation non-profits,

and preservation professionals continues to grow nationwide. The types of resources

considered worthy of preservation also continue to expand. Vernacular buildings, cultural

landscapes, small towns, and rural resources are some of the areas that have come sharply

into the focus of preservationists over the last three decades.

Landscape, Rural, and Small-Town Preservation

Though landscapes have traditionally been preserved alongside buildings, they did

not come into focus in their own right until recently. Twentieth-century garden preservation focused on providing an attractive setting for historic buildings. The landscape was considered secondary, and plants were often chosen for an old-fashioned feel rather than based on documentation, as such documentation was often unavailable. It was not until the 1970s that landscape preservation began to be taken more seriously and pursued for its own sake rather than as a backdrop for historic buildings. Another issue affecting landscape preservation is that improving a landscape’s scenic beauty may actually require the destruction of its historic features. Though landscapes are commonly placed in one of three categories -designed, natural, or cultural- there is a broad consensus that these designations overlap and blur into one another. Landscape preservation is also

17 often difficult to separate from another preservation growth sector, the effort to save historic rural areas.25

Interest in rural and small town preservation has grown in recent years alongside the maturation of landscape preservation. The concerns of rural, small town, and landscape preservation overlap for obvious practical reasons, and many shared tenets that do not apply to the old-fashioned focus on architectural landmarks govern their pursuit. The preservation of rural areas, which manifestly includes both historic structures and landscapes, is extremely complex. It has been plagued by particular difficulties and specific political issues. Suburban sprawl and insensitive highway development threaten rural areas, which often have minimal forms of government that lack the tools to combat these threats. In addition, dispersed rural populations are often unable to exercise enough political clout to compete with that mobilized in densely populated areas.26

Some of the very attributes that make rural landscapes special can also threaten their existence. The traditional absence of professional land-use planning in rural areas, for example, provides some of the unique attributes of rural areas while also posing a special challenge for rural preservation. Though small rural towns derive much of their historic character from informally organized open spaces and the greater distance between historic resources, modern city planning departments are important tools for preservation. The absence of professional planning in rural areas also exacerbates what is often a local lack

25 Genevieve P. Keller and J. Timothy Keller, “Preserving Important Landscapes,” in Stipe, 187; Ibid., 189; Murtagh, 125.

26 Keller and Keller, in Stipe, 208.

18 of awareness regarding the value of historic resources and the practical aspects of their preservation.27

Murtagh has argued that a vibrant agricultural economy provides a foundation stone for rural preservation, as sprawling development lowers the acreage farmed and destroys both historic landscapes and buildings. On the other hand, agriculture itself, particularly modern agri-business, can threaten rural buildings and landscapes. Farm consolidations, for example, can render rural buildings redundant, causing historic agricultural buildings to fall into disuse.28

Even though rural landscape preservation dates from the 1970s, rural landscapes remain underrepresented on the National Register. In addition to the challenges discussed above, the federal government’s actions sometimes inhibit, or at least fail to encourage, rural preservation. Awareness of rural significance criteria lags behind other types of preservation knowledge, sometimes even in SHPO offices. Furthermore, conservation tax incentives that are used to preserve historic architecture do not apply to landscapes. The

Federal Highway Administration, while it tends to readily recognize individual resources, can be reluctant to acknowledge rural historic districts. This leaves transportation corridors free for destructive highway development. In fact, as the federal government did in urban areas in the 1960s, government programs on balance tend to promote rural development over landscape preservation.29

27 Murtagh, 135; Keller and Keller, in Stipe, 208.

28 Murtagh, 135; Ibid., 137; Keller and Keller, in Stipe, 209.

29 Keller and Keller, in Stipe, 194; Ibid., 204, Ibid., 209.

Though in the past environmental conservation and building preservation often

seemed to be oppositional values, rural landscape preservation efforts are showing them to

be convergent. In recent years, conservation and preservation are more frequently

considered “two sides of the same coin,” as Murtagh has argued. As land trust movements

grow in rural areas, the idea that preservation of the cultural and natural environments are

overlapping rather than mutually exclusive pursuits is becoming mainstream. Suburban

sprawl is possibly the most serious threat to the natural world as well as to cultural

landscapes. Genevieve P. Keller and J. Timothy Keller analyze this issue incisively in their

essay “Preserving Important Landscapes.” They argue that inappropriate rural development

and urban flight/urban decline are two faces of the same issue. The authors point to the

failure of the preservation community to link them as the cause of lagging rural

preservation. Many rural communities attempt to stem sprawl through land-use regulations. The Kellers argue, however, that,

until preservationists understand that only extensive rehabilitation and even selective redevelopment in urban centers and deteriorating inner suburbs will begin to halt the continued development and despoliation of farmland and countryside, rural land protection is likely to continue to be a series of skirmishes and brushfires with successes concentrated primarily in well-off rural communities.30 So an attempt to preserve rural landscapes leads back to downtown revitalization.

Preservation issues are not easily separated into discrete themes; each category of cultural

resource conservation overlaps with the next. One of the most popular and lasting

preservation efforts is the Main Street program, which was pioneered by the National Trust

in 1977, and seeks to help communities to re-invigorate their historic commercial districts.

The program seeks to preserve historic buildings for economic benefits as well as the

30 Murtagh, 125; Keller and Keller, in Stipe, 209; Keller and Keller, in Stipe, 209 – 210.

intangible humanistic values traditionally associated with preservation. A partnership

between local government and business, Main Street was conceived as a way to compete

with malls by exploiting the commercial potential of historic architecture.31

Despite its undeniable successes, the Main Street program is not without its

detractors. Main Street’s dual goals of simultaneously revitalizing and preserving old

downtown areas can lead to some odd results, and opens the program up to criticism. Main

Street projects’ focus on economic viability has frequently led to beautification that comes

at the expense of historic features. In an attempt to attract people to downtown areas,

features with an antique appearance, such as brick sidewalks, can give an elite “period”

makeover to an area with a humble history. Many of these projects can destroy historic

landscapes in their attempt to preserve and restore historic buildings or give a historic

appearance to buildings. Facadism, which preserves exterior aspects of buildings while

destroying context, is a particular danger. The version of the past presented by Main Street

projects, as Hamer has argued, is frequently a “selective vision of an idealized community”

rather than a balanced portrait of the town’s history.32

31 Murtagh, 108; J. Myrick Howard, “Non-profits in the American Preservation Movement”, in Stipe, 324.

32 Keller and Keller, in Stipe, 211; Murtagh, 149, Hamer, 90.

Chapter 2

HISTORY OF NAPA, CALIFORNIA

Origins

Before the arrival of Europeans in California, the Asochimi people populated the

region that would become known as Napa Valley for thousands of years. The Mexicans

and later the Americans called them the “Wappo.” Apparently a corruption of guapo,

nineteenth-century primary sources attribute this name to military exploits against the

Spanish and translate its meaning as “brave,” (though in modern Spanish the word usually

means “handsome.”) There is very little information available regarding the Wappo prior

to their exposure to the mission at Sonoma, though early Napa historian C.A. Menefee

cites George Yount as estimating that as many as 12,000 Indians resided in the

Napa/Clearlake area when he arrived in 1831. The Wappo lived in settled villages, though

they rotated their camps seasonally. Their houses and sweatlodges were simply constructed

and meant to be regularly replaced. They fished and gathered acorns, plants, and insects for

food. The names of the six bands of Wappo in the valley have survived in local place

names. The Napa band occupied the area between Napa River and Napa Creek, which is

today the center of downtown Napa. Menefee states that the word “Napa,” in addition to

being the name of the tribelet, is the Wappo word for “fish.” The Uluca group lived east of the river, and historic Tulocay cemetery bears their name.33

33 Stephen Powers, Tribes of California, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 196; C. A. Menefee, Historical and Descriptive Sketchbook of Napa, Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino: Comprising Sketches of their Topography, Productions, History, Scenery, and Peculiar Attractions, (Napa City, California: Reporter Publishing House, 1873), 19 – 20.

The Mexican Period

During the early nineteenth century the Catholic Church and Mexican land grantees

began to make inroads into the region. In 1820 the church established the mission at

Sonoma, and General Mariano Vallejo received the Sonoma and Napa valleys as a land

grant in 1838. Though the mission at Sonoma was a significant distance away from the

Wappo, the priests attempted to bring Napa Indians into their sphere of influence.

Meanwhile, Mariano Vallejo’s brother Salvador began a Napa Valley cattle ranching

operation, and the Mexican government granted Cayetano Juarez land to the east of what

would become Napa City. Like other Indian groups in California, the Indians of Napa

began during this era to be decimated by disease, slaughtered in massacres, and to be

forced to compete with introduced livestock for their means of subsistence. Menefee

records a violent cholera epidemic in 1833 that raged through the Indian population of

Northern California, while in his History of California Hubert Howe Bancroft refers to an

1838 smallpox outbreak that reduced Napa Indians to a “handful.” Though Mexican cattle

ranching and missions brought only a scattered population and did not alter the landscape

in obvious ways, change was already threatening not only the traditional lifeways but the

very existence of Napa Indians.34

American Settlement – Gold Rush

After Yount established his Napa Valley rancho, more American settlers began to trickle into the region. Mexico still controlled the region politically, and as late as 1847,

34 Menefee, 19; Ibid., 15; Ibid., 22; Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California: vol. VII, , 1860 – 1890, (San Francisco: The History Company, 1890), 438 – 439.

the only buildings in the Napa area were Mexican adobes. One of these, built by

Cayetano Juarez on his rancho that same year, still stands today on Soscol Avenue just

north of downtown Napa. In 1846 the American settler-led Bear Flag Revolt signaled monumental changes on the horizon. On their way to imprison Vallejo in Sonoma, the

Bear Flag group spent two nights in Napa, adding a dozen men to their numbers. Though little was accomplished militarily by the ragtag Bear Flag group, it pushed the United

States closer to war with Mexico and eventual annexation of California.35

By 1848 Americans were settling in greater numbers in Napa Valley, and Nathan

Coombs, who owned a farm just south of the town, laid out the town plat for “Nappa

City,” (as it was then called), a tiny area of about only 600 square yards near the

confluence of the creek and the river. In May of the same year Harrison Pierce constructed

the first permanent building in the American town, which he intended to use as a saloon.

Soon after its completion, however, news of the discovery of gold reached Napa, and

Pierce left the fledgling town in its pursuit, along with most of the other American men.

This pattern was repeated several times in Napa’s early years, with the town emptying of

men with each new rumored mineral strike. Formal American government came to Napa

with statehood in 1850, and after the organization of the county in 1851 immigration to the

area increased. By 1850 Napa City had grown to a population of 159 white residents.

However, for most of its first decade Napa had few white women and children, and none of

the trappings of “civilization.” Menefee describes a wild frontier town in which fights were

35 Menefee, 45; Mildred Brooke Hoover, Historic Spots in California: Third Edition (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966), 244; Lin Weber and the Napa Valley Museum, Images of America: Napa (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2004), 12; Ibid., 19; Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California: vol. V, 1846 – 1848, (San Francisco: The History Company, 1886), 110.

common and no effort had been made to pave streets. “The streets in wet weather,” the

author asserts, “resembled mud canals rather than thoroughfares for men or horses.”36

Like the Indians and Mexicans who preceded them, the founders of Napa City

chose their site based on an essential resource: the Napa River. For the first half century of

Napa’s existence as a town, the river provided virtually the only transportation route into

and out of the county. Individuals could come and go on horseback, but goods had to be

freighted on the river. Menefee describes the importance of the river to the town: “The

Embarcadero, or landing, at the head of navigation, and the ford just above it, determined

the location of the town. There being no bridges in those days, gave the ford much

importance.” Bridges followed shortly after American settlement, though the first bridge

over Main Street collapsed and the second was swept away in a flood. The river was the

town’s source of essential water and its road to the world outside the Valley, but as the fate

of the early bridges showed, this resource could turn deadly. Napa’s location adjacent to

the river meant that it would repeatedly suffer from catastrophic flooding.37

Despite the sorry state of the town’s thoroughfares, there was apparently a passable

road leading up the valley quite early in the American era. William Heintz, in Wine

Country: History of Napa Valley, cites a traveler to Napa who stated that by 1852 there

was a road all the way up the middle of the valley. Originally a trail used by local Indians,

the County Road was first macadamized, or paved with crushed rock, around 1852, at least

as far as St. Helena. Highway 29 north of Napa still follows the general route of this early

36 Menefee, 52; Ibid., 49 – 50; U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Population Schedules of the 7th Census of the United States, 1850: California, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1964), Microfilm.312.09794; Menefee, 54 – 55.

37 Ibid., 54; Ibid., 46 – 47.

road. Many roads in Napa City and County remained unpaved, however, and in 1864

the Napa County Register referred to the local roads as “pathless in wet weather.”38

American Settlement – Agricultural Development

As Napa grew, it gradually took on the character of an established town and lost the

air of a frontier camp. The Californios began to lose their land and social position to

American interlopers, and the Indians that had survived needed to work as agricultural

laborers or servants to survive. Though the first American agriculturalists ran cattle on the

land like the Mexicans who came before them, wheat soon replaced hides and tallow as the

valley’s most important cash crop. By the 1860s farmers had planted orchards in the

southern part of the valley, and growers were experimenting with grapevines. In the 1870s

Uncle Sam’s Winery opened at Main Street and the Napa River in downtown Napa. Heintz

credits the expansion of the wine business to the Civil War’s disruption of European trade,

as well as to the publicity generated by California wine over the previous decade. During

this era, Napa was beginning to rival Sonoma as the best-known table wine producer in the

state. Though agriculture was the most important industry in the valley, there were also

cinnabar (mercury) mines and significant timber operations during the early American

settlement period.39

38 William F. Heintz, Wine Country: A History of Napa Valley, The Early Years: 1838 – 1920, (Santa Barbara: Capra Press., 1990), 40; Richard H.Dillon, Napa Valley Heyday, (San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 2004), 288; Menefee, 60; Napa County Register, 27 February 1864.

39 Frank A. Leach, Recollections of a newspaperman: A Record of Life and Events in California (San Francisco: Samuel Levinson, 1917), 56; Ibid., 59; Heintz, 112 – 113; Ibid., 114; Norton L. King, Napa County, An Historical Overview, (Napa: Office of Napa County Superintendant of Schools, 1967), 54 – 58; Weber, Napa, 37 – 44.

These labor-intensive industries were not only drawing speculators and investors into the valley; they also created a strong local demand for workers. During the first two decades of American settlement, Californios and the dwindling number of Indians were able to supply much of Napa’s need for laborers. A handful of Chinese were present from Napa’s foundation, but as the Native American population declined, the Chinese community grew. Menefee states that Indians were numerous in Napa until about 1856.

Over the next decade the Chinese supplanted them as agricultural workers, miners, and public works crews, and founded a settled community. By 1880, according to Yolanda

Beard, only fifty Wappo remained in Napa Valley. In addition to providing much of the labor required to build the county, the Chinese were farmers and entrepreneurs. By 1886 a

Chinatown near the confluence of the river and creek boasted several houses as well as a laundry, and a temple or “Joss House.”40

American Consolidation and Prosperity

While the Chinese population was supplanting the Indians, white Americans further consolidated their position as the dominant class. The white population had exploded, and by 1860 Napa City had 2,322 white residents. As agriculture began to prosper in Napa

County, so did its principal town, through which virtually every item produced in the county was required to pass. Business owners began replacing the hastily constructed wood-frame commercial buildings of Napa’s first decade with more permanent and expensive structures of brick and stone. Public as well as commercial buildings

40 Menefee, 19; Ibid., 218 – 219; Yolanda S. Beard, The Wappo: A Report, (St. Helena, California: Yolande S. Beard, 1977), 41; Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, 1886, (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1983) Microfilm, Reel 37, Montague – Nelson, City of Napa beginning at 707.

exemplified this trend as the nineteenth century progressed. Perhaps none was a better symbol of Napa’s “progress” than the Napa County Courthouse.41

Napa’s courthouse, though one of the town’s oldest extant buildings, is actually the

county’s third structure built for that purpose. The first, wooden, courthouse was quickly

outgrown, while the second was shoddily constructed, and its walls cracked in less than a

decade. Designed by prominent San Francisco architects Joseph and Samuel Newsome, the

Italianate courthouse was constructed in 1878. An imposing and graceful structure

befitting Napa’s status as the seat of government for the county, the courthouse was

originally adorned by a very large and ornate cupola. This was damaged in the 1906

earthquake and was removed in the decades following. Except for the removal of the

cupola, the building remains virtually unchanged today. Courthouse square is to this day

the focal point for county government, with the 1878 courthouse its visual symbol.42

The county had finally built a courthouse to last, but this investment was puny

compared to the money the state was about to pour into Napa. In 1875 the State of

California financed construction of the gigantic Napa State Hospital for the Insane just

south of town at Imola. The brick gothic-revival building, designed to be reminiscent of a

castle, boasted no less than seven spires. It cost $1.5 million to build, which would be over

$29 million today. The asylum significantly boosted the local economy, both in the

construction and operation phases. Communities all over the state had competed to house

41 U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Population Schedules of the 8th Census of the United States, 1860: California (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), Microfilm 312.097974 U.S.; David Kernberger, Mark Strong’s Napa Valley, (St. Helena: Historic Photos, Publishers, 1978), 27

42 King, Napa County, 29; Kernberger, 27 – 31; Diane Christman, Historic Resources Inventory, (1978).

the asylum, as this infusion of tax dollars amounted to a hefty subsidy for the chosen

city. Napa won based on its idyllic climate, among other advantages. The asylum was

virtually its own town, and included an underground railway system, farms, its own wharf

for off-loading freight from the river, and on-site staff housing. Despite its brick towers,

the asylum building suffered only minor damage in the 1906 earthquake. By 1948,

however, the asylum was condemned as too old-fashioned. It had been constructed to last,

however, and fourteen ineffectual hours with a wrecking ball soon gave way to dynamite,

with which the forces of modernization ultimately prevailed. Despite the loss of the main

structure, many of the historic buildings and landscapes associated with the asylum survive

today, and the site continues to be used as a state mental hospital.43

Grand government buildings were not enough on which to build the local economy,

and the Napa community needed at this point to substantially improve its transportation infrastructure. In addition to the County Road, the “East Side Road” or “Old Back Road” followed the Napa River up the valley. This was an important alternate route to the east of the river, especially during winter when the main road was prone to flooding. The county built new roads connecting the Old Back Road to the eastern portion of the county in the

1860s, which allowed grain grown in the more remote stretches of Napa County to reach the market. For the remainder of the nineteenth century substantial wagonloads of wheat came down the eastern route to Napa’s entrepôt. As fruit, and grapes in particular, began to

43 King, Napa County, 6 – 7; The Inflation Calculator, http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi, accessed 18 November 2009; Lauren Coodley, The Transformation of an American Town, (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2003), 35; Kernberger, 82; Weber, Napa, 100.

29 supplant wheat in Napa County, vineyards and wineries sprang up adjacent to both county roads. 44

In 1865 the railroad was extended to Napa from Soscol, a village a few miles to the south, providing yet another alternative to roads and the river. County government, in alliance with railroad ownership, planned to extend the rail line north to Calistoga, but local voters defeated the proposal. Napa residents felt that the railroad threatened their position as depot for all the produce of the county, and feared that the railroad was an attempt to cut the city out of its shipping profits. In 1869 the railroad built the line over local objections. The railroad went in on the west side of the river near the county road, strengthening the tendency for investors to build the most impressive wineries near that highway. Ironically, despite people’s fears, the railroad only strengthened Napa’s position as a transportation hub.45

As the nineteenth century progressed, local agriculture continued to expand, while quicksilver mining provided some economic diversity. With its strategic location at the navigable head of the river and railroad lines running north and south, Napa was poised to become an economic powerhouse. Napa’s lucrative tannery industry was built on its access to transportation infrastructure, as well as two essential raw materials for tanning: animal hides and abundant water. Sawyer Tannery was the first, opening adjacent to the river in

1869. It was followed in 1874 by Napa City Tannery, and in 1876 the California Glove

Factory began producing gloves from the available leather. The river was essential both for

44 Dillon, 292; Leach, 56; Ibid., 59; Mrs. Y. M. Hardin, Early History of Pope Valley, (unpublished manuscript, March 1941), 2.

45 Ira L. Swett and Harry C. Aitken, Jr., The Napa Valley Route: Electric Trains and Steamers (Glendale: Interurban Press, 1975), 16; Dillon, 130; Ibid., 188; King, Napa County, 35 – 36.

30 transportation of tannery products as well as for disposal of the toxic waste generated by the tanning process. Though the town’s economy depended on the river, flooding was a threat in every rainy winter. Toward the close of the century, in 1896, the river showed her dangerous side, and Napa suffered a devastating flood.46

With county government centered on Brown and Third streets, and industry clustered near the river at the foot of Main Street, commercial buildings began to spread north along Main. By the 1870s the early wood frame structures had mostly been supplanted by stone and brick. The buildings at the center of downtown were primarily

Italianate in style with uniform frontages, though some scattered construction in wood continued. The uniformity of scale and massing during this era contrasted with diversity of facing material and ornamentation to provide a visually attractive commercial district.

Banks, hotels, and retail stores were built to serve the town and surrounding countryside as the wealth of the region increased. Meanwhile, Napans were also constructing churches, schools, and houses immediately adjacent to downtown. By 1873 speculators had made at least six additions to the original city plat.47

In the 1880s the Napa River bristled with wharves, and an industrial district boasting tanneries, warehouses, and mills lined both sides of the river south of the downtown retail district. Farming continued to expand, and though wine grapes were important, there were also many acres planted to fruit and nut orchards. In 1883 farmers introduced the French prune to Napa, which would come to dominate in the area north of

46 King, 18; Coodley, 29; Ibid., 39; David Wolper, Chairman, Napa, the Valley of Legends: 150 Years of History, Historical Fact Sheets, (Napa, California, 1997), 56.

47 Christman; Kernberger, 28 – 32; Menefee, 54.

town, and would remain an important crop until the 1960s. Several dairies on the edge

of town provided milk products for Napans.48

Early Twentieth Century

By the turn of the twentieth century Napa had grown to a population of over 5,000

residents. The name of the town had evolved over the years; at some point its spelling was

changed from “Nappa City” to “Napa City,” and gradually, the “city” was dropped. By

1900 the town was known simply as “Napa.” The first years of the twentieth century were

difficult ones for the wine counties. Phylloxera, a vine-killing root louse, infested the valley, killing thousands of grape vines and threatening not only growers’ profits but the entire local economy. Many local farmers responded to this threat by tearing out grapevines and planting fruit trees, significantly shrinking the tonnage of grapes available for winemaking.49

During the early twentieth century, Napa’s manufacturing sector remained strong

despite the problems in the wine business. A shirt factory and a second glove factory

opened near the river. Napa’s economy was somewhat insulated from hard times by its still

strategic location vis a vis the transportation infrastructure. This position was further

strengthened in 1907 when an interurban rail line opened between Napa and Vallejo. Later

extensions to St. Helena and Calistoga made traveling to Napa increasingly easier.50

48 Kernberger, 2; King, Napa County, 48; Coodley, 39.

49 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, 1891; Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, 1901; Coodley, 39; King, Napa County, 48. 50 Lin Weber and the Napa Valley Museum, Images of America: Napa Valley Wine Country (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2004), 96 – 97; Swett, 22.

The San Francisco earthquake caused destruction so widespread that it made

1906 the “Year One” of Northern California history. The force with which the quake shook

Napa, however, was substantially diminished by its distance from the epicenter, and the

local devastation was nowhere near the scale of San Francisco’s. Though people were

injured, there were no deaths. Many buildings were seriously damaged, among them the

Napa Valley Opera House (1879) on Main Street. Chimneys all fell down over town, and

almost all of the many Victorian-era ornamental towers that adorned buildings, including the courthouse cupola, were damaged or destroyed. Because this natural force hit Napa more lightly than other regional communities, the town did not have to be virtually rebuilt in the same way that San Francisco and other towns did. The Napa Downtown Association claims that Napa has more pre-1906 buildings than any other Bay Area municipality.51

By the twentieth century Napa’s once vibrant Chinese community was in decline.

Like many other towns in California, Napa’s anti-Chinese agitators during constituted a vocal minority in the late nineteenth century. Prodded by white working class fears of labor competition and by political demagoguery, Congress passed a series of Chinese exclusion acts. The Chinese population in Napa shrank in response to restrictions on immigration and acts of persecution against their members, and by the first years of the twentieth century farmers could no longer count on having enough Chinese laborers to dig their wine caves and harvest their crops. Italian immigrants began to take the place of the

Chinese as laborers of all kinds. Bringing wine-growing experience from the old country,

Italians began to dominate that business. Though the community was subject to

51 Weber, Lin, Roots of the Present: Napa Valley 1900 to 1950, (St. Helena, California: Wine Ventures Publishing, 2001), 57; Christman; Napa Downtown Association website, http://napadowntown.com/history.html, accessed 20 October 2009.

discrimination from Anglo Americans, they were not persecuted to the same extent as

the Chinese or the Indians. Many Italian laborers were able to save enough to purchase

farms, homes, or businesses in and around Napa. This community has persisted, and

remains an important force in the wine business today. Their legacy is also inscribed on the

built environment in the form of plaques that bear the names of the buildings’ original

owners, many of whom were Italian.52

As manufacturing, agriculture and commerce continued to grow, residential

construction reflected the population growth that accompanied these activities. In 1905 the

city established Fuller Park on the western border of Napa’s oldest residential

neighborhood. Immediately to the south of downtown, the district was already well

established, with impressive mansions on many corner lots. Many of the larger lots were

subdivided in the first two decades of the twentieth century, adding more and smaller

single family homes to the neighborhood. New neighborhoods were also constructed

during the early years of the century: Spencer’s addition to the northwest, West Napa just

to the west of Fuller Park, and East Napa across the river. East Napa’s growth was

stimulated by the opening of an interurban rail line between Vallejo and Calistoga with a

station in East Napa. The modest single-family houses in East Napa attracted many

members of the growing Italian working class. The neighborhood became heavily Italian,

and retains this ethnic character today.53

52 Weber, Roots, 31; Weber, Napa, 87. 53 Donald S. Napoli, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Napa Abajo/Fuller Park Historic District,1996, Section 7, 2; Ibid., 4; Page & Turnbull, Inc., Historic Context Statement and Detailed Property Survey for the Soscol Gateway/East Napa Neighborhood, (Prepared for Napa Community Redevelopment Agency, 2009), 3.

The advent of World War I brought hardship for many Napa residents, in particular local German Americans. Though as a group they had fit in well with the mainstream before the war, hostilities with Germany brought widespread paranoia regarding anyone who spoke German. Those who did not enthusiastically support the war were especially liable to be persecuted. Napans also lost their lives in the war and in the influenza pandemic that followed on the heels of the conflict.54

Prohibition and Depression

The Great War was a significant event for Napa, but a political battle played out on the national stage would affect the Valley far more deeply. When the federal government banned the production and sale of alcohol, the devastation in Napa was almost as severe as the 1906 earthquake – and equally outside local control. Government officials immediately padlocked the largest wineries, throwing the local economy into chaos. Although they had shuttered the biggest and best known wineries, federal agents were not able to control what happened at every small vineyard. Perhaps unsurprisingly, local law enforcement officials

(who frequently had family members in the wine business),were not enthusiastic Volstead

Act enforcers. The Napa area produced beer and brandy in addition to wine during

Prohibition. This was, ironically, the birth of the Napa Valley tourism industry. With paved roads now stretching from Vallejo to St. Helena, Bay Area tourists could drive up for a day to get away from the San Francisco fog. They would bring along a few jugs to fill, and

Napa Valley’s back roads were often thronged with wine tourists during Prohibition. In one of the county’s early efforts to attract heritage tourism, the county supervisors changed

54 Weber, Roots, 112 – 137.

the name of the Old Back Road to the Silverado Trail during this era, in attempt to

capitalize on the history of the Silverado Mine.55

Basalt Rock Company, a rock quarrying business, opened just south of Napa in

1920. Although the Great Depression struck Napa early when grape prices collapsed in

1928, the economic effects were not as severe as in other places because many locals were

employed at Basalt and at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo. In 1938 the Basalt yard

expanded, adding a barge operation that it used to ship the rock down the river. During

World War II the company became a defense contractor, building a shipbuilding works and

dry-dock. It produced not only barges, but tankers and salvage-rescue tugs. Prohibition had

been repealed in 1933, and before America entered the war Napa’s wine business was on

track to make a comeback. In 1938 the county paved the Silverado Trail all the way up to

Calistoga, making it easier for tourists to explore the wineries of the former Old Back

Road.56

Well into the twentieth century the river continued to be a transportation and

recreation resource as well as a waste disposal system for factories and households. By

1930, locals were complaining about the river’s disgusting filth, and the mayor led a group

of businessmen in a clean-up campaign. Napa’s Chinatown, situated on low-lying ground between the river and creek, was a casualty of this effort. The city relocated the seven families still residing at China Point, razed Chinatown’s buildings, and turned the area into a park. During the twentieth century the spit of land on which Chinatown had stood

55 Weber, Roots, 148 – 175, Earl Thollander, Back Roads of California (Menlo Park: Lane Publishing Co., 1977) 133. 56 Weber, Roots, 206; Ibid., 213; Coodley, 54 – 55; Weber, Napa, 101; Todd. L. Shulman, Napa County, 84; Coodley , 56 – 57; Weber, Roots, 230.

36 gradually eroded, and twenty-first century flood control work submerged the remains of the peninsula. Today no trace of the Chinese community remains in Napa’s built environment, and even the ground on which this significant community has been obliterated.57

World War II and the Modern Era

The 1940s introduced explosive growth to Napa. Newcomers were flooding the

West Coast in search of defense jobs, and Napa, because of its proximity to Mare Island

Naval Shipyard, was in the thick of this great migration. Mare Island employed 6,700 people at the start of 1940; by November of 1941 the shipyard had 22,444 employees. In

1942, Napa was one of the fastest growing towns in the whole Western United States.

Between 1940 and 1950 Napa’s population nearly doubled, from 7740 at the start of the decade to 13,570 by its end.58

Though Napa benefited economically from war work, finding housing for its increased population was a particular challenge during World War II. Between 1946 and

1951 seventy-one subdivisions were constructed, including several in the Westwood neighborhood and Glenwood Street within Spencer’s Addition. These projects added hundreds of modest single-family homes, but they also spread the urbanized portion of the city and began to encroach on agricultural land. The federal government constructed a housing project at the Basalt plant for service members and veterans called Shipyard

57 King, Napa County, 64; Weber, Roots, 189. 58 Weber, Roots, 262 – 263; Ibid., 249; Coodley, 58 – 59; Ketteringham, 196.

Acres. In 1948 it housed 1,400 people and had its own school, post office, and grocery

store, but the entire neighborhood was demolished shortly after the war.59

The population influx was a symptom of broad change occurring in the local

community that mirrored state- and nation-wide trends. Women had entered the workforce

in unprecedented numbers as males were drafted overseas and war work demanded more

laborers. Though this was a boon in terms of the working family’s budget as well as the

local economy, it left many children suddenly unsupervised. Napa, like other towns where

mothers had gone to work in defense industry factories, experienced a serious jump in

juvenile delinquency during the war. This included a near-riot on Halloween, 1944, when

500 young people threw garbage at police and broke out of the police station after being

arrested.60

An improvement to Napa’s transportation infrastructure at the end of the1940s was

to have a significant impact on the town and its surrounding countryside. Highway 29

wound through downtown before routing north-bound drivers along Jefferson, which took

a curve north of Napa High School, then carried on north into Napa Valley. By 1950 Route

29 ran up the west side of Napa in its modern location, though traffic coming from Vallejo

still had to come up Soscol. The way traffic was increasingly routed away from downtown

Napa during the second half of the twentieth century contributed greatly to Napa’s inability

to capitalize on the valley’s tourism potential.61

59 Ketteringham, 193; Virginia Hanrahan, Historical Napa Valley, (unpublished manuscript, circa 1948), 15. 60 Weber, Roots, 263 – 264; Ibid., 280.

61 Weber, Roots, 231; Ibid., 234; Thomas Brothers Maps, Napa County Map, 1940 - 1945; Thomas Brothers Maps, Napa County Map, 1950 – 1955.

Despite the population growth and robust postwar economy, the 1950s seems to have been a period during which downtown Napa began to decline as a commercial center.

Though he acknowledges that it had not been replaced by competing newer shopping areas, William James Ketteringham notes what he calls “urban decay” in the city’s core, including a number of vacant storefronts. The author suggests that Napa’s orientation shifted during this period from county agriculture to the increasingly urbanized and expanding Bay Area. Downtown, at this point, was also beginning to suffer from parking problems, as residential areas sprang up outside walking distance and more people relied on cars for daily transportation. Construction of the new City Hall on School Street in 1952 seems to have done little to stem the tide of downtown’s decline.62

One other proximate cause for downtown Napa’s postwar decline must have been the realignment of the highway. Northbound travelers who once had to pass downtown restaurants and shops on their way to St. Helena could now stay on a relatively straight road that avoided the congestion of downtown. The highway did not even pass very close to downtown, and today’s freeway, with a similar alignment, is 1.19 miles from Main

Street. Though only a drive of a few minutes, it is enough to eliminate many impulsive stops and curtail retail traffic. This infrastructure change reversed Napa’s traditional position as gatekeeper to the valley. For decades, as the upper valley grew wealthy on tourism dollars, Napa was known as a place one passed by on the way to taste wine in

Napa Valley.63

62 Ketteringham, 199; Wolpner, Valley of Legends, 68.

63 Mapquest, http://www.mapquest.com/maps?1c=Napa&1s=CA&1a=1st+St+%26+State+Hwy+29&1z=94558&1y=US&

The wine business did not recover fully from the disruptions of Prohibition and

World War II for at least a decade after the war’s end. By the late 1960’s wine was again

dominating the Valley, as Napa’s reputation spread and growers realized that wine grapes

were more profitable than prunes. County agriculture was threatened, however, by urban

sprawl. Ironically, the very success of the wine business exacerbated the problem by

transforming a sleepy agricultural region into a desirable destination for second homes. In

1968 the Napa County Board of Supervisors passed its controversial agricultural preserve

measure. The first regulation of its kind in the state, the agricultural preserve severely

curtailed development outside established city limits in Napa County. Though it was

extremely controversial because of its restriction of property rights, and though it would be

repeatedly challenged over the years, the agricultural preserve has been remarkably

successful at preserving Napa County’s landscape and agricultural character. James

Conaway has said that it “would prove to be one of the most important things to have

happened to Napa Valley, as important in its way as the phylloxera epidemic and

Prohibition, except that its effects were positive.”64

A few short years after the agricultural preserve was formed, local activists began working to set aside more public open space. In 1974 the city purchased the land that would become Westwood Hills park from a developer that had intended to build 400

1l=38.299825&1g=- 122.30269&1v=INTERSECTION&2c=Napa&2s=CA&2a=1st+St+%26+Main+St&2z=94559&2y=US&2l= 38.29919&2g=-122.28547&2v=INTERSECTION, accessed 30 October 2009. 64 City of Napa, City of Napa General Plan Map, 1968; James Conaway, Napa: The Story of an American Eden (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990, 82 – 92.

houses on it. The city purchased Alston park around the same time, and today both undeveloped parks are heavily used by Napa residents.65

The changes that the 1960s brought to the nation came slowly to Napa. Though

immigration had increased during the strong post-war economy of the 1950s and Mexicans had begun to replace Italians as vineyard and cellar workers, Napa remained a white-

dominated town. Napa was known as a town where African Americans were made to feel

unwelcome after sundown, and black employees at Napa State hospital lived either in

Vallejo or in on-site housing. In 1963 a fair housing advocate and local minister’s house

was firebombed by the Ku Klux Klan, apparently in retaliation for his activism on behalf

of racial equality. Napa’s population, however, continued to grow, and by 1970 Napa was

home to 37,000 people.66

65 Coodley, 131. 66 Coodley, 122; Ibid., 124; Ibid., 128.

Chapter 3

REDEVELOPMENT AND PRESERVATION IN NAPA, CALIFORNIA

The Redevelopment Era

While the county was taking radical steps toward preserving the Napa Valley’s rural way of life, the City of Napa began taking its own radical measures. The city’s efforts, however, were in pursuit of change and modernization rather than the conservation of what already existed. By the close of the 1960s the Napa City Council was controlled by a group that believed strongly that Napa’s future growth required wholesale changes downtown. The City Council formed the Napa Community Redevelopment Agency and made the revitalization of downtown its mission. The push for downtown redevelopment coincided with, and was a catalyst for, the beginning of the local architectural preservation movement that mirrored the strenuous efforts to preserve Napa’s rural heritage that were already underway.

Ironically, by the time redevelopment reached Napa the passage of NHPA had already signaled a nation-wide shift away from wholesale demolition of cities, though perhaps it is unsurprising that a medium-sized town in a rural county would lag behind the curve on any cultural trend. San Francisco city planning consultants Hall and Goodhue were probably in closer touch than local government with emerging practices across the country when they advised retention of over fifty downtown buildings as early as 1971.

Despite this professional study, demolition proceeded at a breathtaking pace well into the

1970s. As large and small cities across the nation had done during the preceding decade,

Napa decided that downtown revitalization meant demolishing historic structures. National

Register listing did not protect buildings, and at least two listed early twentieth-century department stores were destroyed. In addition, redevelopment demolished several nineteenth-century commercial buildings as well as the entire west side of Main between

First and Pearl. The wrecking ball also narrowly missed several buildings considered

irreplaceable landmarks today. A glossy Redevelopment publication from 1973 bragged

that forty-nine sites had been cleared or contracted for clearance in the nine-block target

area.67

One major project that was planned but never took place was the East Side

Freeway. For years, Napa City and County plans included a proposal to construct a second

freeway immediately east of Soscol boulevard. This plan was to include a crosstown

expressway that would have roughly followed the alignment of the residential Vallejo

Street. This potentially destructive project was never begun, and eventually the city

abandoned the plan.68

Redevelopment was by far the most destructive force in Napa’s century and a half

history. However, the agency was responsible for construction as well as demolition

downtown. A “semi-mall” on First and Brown Street, the First Street Plaza, and a nearly

70,000 foot Mervyn’s store, as well as 195 off-street parking spaces, were among the projects that had broken ground by 1973. The Redevelopment Agency put considerable

67 Christman; Hall and Goodhue Architecture and City Planners, “Historic/Architectural Preservation Study,” (Prepared for Napa Community Redevelopment Agency, 1971), 10 – 12; Kernberger, 21, Ibid., 23 – 25; Paul R. Gore, Chairman, “The Making of Napa’s New Era: Third Year Action Report,” (Napa Community Redevelopment Agency, 1973), unpaginated.

68 City of Napa, City of Napa General Plan Map, 1968.

43 energy into a project they considered in the city’s best interest. Their published pamphlet enthused:

The making of a new Napa era is all about us. New buildings are rising up to house the city’s major stores and smaller shops. Older buildings, many of early Napa vintage, are undergoing face-liftings and interior renovations, putting them in step with today and guaranteeing them a long-term role in the city’s future. Drab thoroughfares are being dressed up as tree-lined malls, topped by an exciting new plaza.69

Though it is easy in hindsight (and popular locally) to criticize redevelopment’s failures, the philosophy that informed its activities was far from mischievous. The

Redevelopment Agency and City Council were responding to a real decline in the downtown business district’s appearance and economic power. The deterioration of the area fed fears, which were by no means irrational, that downtown would be completely supplanted by a shopping center elsewhere in the county. A 1975 Charles Hall Page &

Associates Historic Preservation Study summed up the strategy that had informed the attempt to remake downtown.

The basic proposal was to redevelop the downtown area into a regional shopping center. It projected demand for four or more major department stores as anchor tenants. . . The idea was to pre-empt the future development of a major regional shopping center elsewhere in Napa County by satisfying the market demand in downtown Napa on Redevelopment Agency land.

Though the study acknowledges the very real need to confront this danger, it suggests that wholesale redevelopment was not a recipe for success. Downtown, Page argued, could never compete with a suburban mall by attempting to become a mall, but by being an attractive and accessible downtown. Page suggested solutions such as decking existing

69 The Making of Napa’s New Era, unpaged.

parking lots to replace the earlier policy of wholesale lot clearance. This same study

notes no vacancies in renovated downtown buildings in 1975, while there were four in new

Redevelopment buildings. Interestingly, this study dismissed tourism as a potential source

of significant income for Napa. In addition to this professional critique, the downtown

activities of the early 1970s, which included the relocation of both businesses and families,

spurred significant community backlash, and by the later years of that decade a local

preservation movement had formed and become active.70

1980 to the Present

By the end of the 1970s the transition from prunes to wine grapes in Napa County was almost complete. The City of Napa was increasingly oriented toward the Bay Area, and its suburbs continued to creep north- and westward despite the agricultural preserve’s inhibition of development. Downtown seemed to be caught in a cycle of revitalization and deterioration. The city council approved construction of the Cinedome multiplex in 1983, with which the Art Deco Uptown theater on 2nd Street could not compete. In 1986

Carithers department store closed, just fourteen years after its Redevelopment-era

construction. Winter 1986 also brought a devastating “100-year flood” to Napa, only

ninety years after the previous deluge of such magnitude. Two-thirds of Napa businesses

were damaged, 250 homes destroyed, and three people killed in this catastrophic disaster.71

70 Charles Hall Page & Associates, Urban and Environmental Planning & Design, San Francisco, “Summary Report: Parkway Plaza Historic Preservation Study,” (Prepared for the Napa Community Redevelopment Agency, 1975), 34; Ibid., 27; Ibid., 31; Ibid., 37.

71 Coodley, 132; Ibid., 140; Ibid., 142.

By the late 1980s local government’s revitalization attempts emphasized building preservation over redevelopment. “Main Street Napa,” an undated study from circa 1987, discussed land use, retail strategy, and downtown urban design. The authors of this document assumed that Napa’s historic commercial buildings should be reused, demonstrating how consensus had shifted in favor of historic preservation. The city’s strategy at this point involved the active promotion of Napa’s unique architecture, improvement of the pedestrian environment, and orientation toward the river as an amenity. The attitude toward tourism had also changed radically. The study states that

Napa had “allowed neighboring communities to the north to usurp Napa’s potential tourist market and identity.” It blamed this on the difficulty and distance of the passage from the freeway to downtown, pointing out the three turns required before a vehicle can reach the street that leads to downtown. The second factor cited was Napa’s failure to create “a unique identity or established identifiable tourist attractions and markets” despite its famous name and beautiful architecture.72

Post-cold war military base closings hit California hard, and Napa was no exception. Mare Island Naval Shipyard closed in 1993, pulling a major economic support from under the town. In a further blow to the downtown core, Target, Office Depot, and

Home Depot stores were developed in south Napa in 1996. Woolworth’s, J.C. Penney’s, and local institutions Merrils Drugstore and Brewers were among the downtown casualties

72 Author unknown, “Main Street Napa: Land Use and Retail Strategy, Streetscape Design Concept, Urban Design Guidelines,” (circa 1987), 3; Ibid., 5.

in the years immediately following the opening of the “big box stores.” In 1998,

however, a flood control measure passed that has begun a transformation in central Napa.73

The Napa Flood and Water Conservation District estimates that Napa County has

suffered $542 million in flood damage since 1986. Since 1998 a half-cent sales tax has funded an extremely ambitious flood control and river restoration project designed to make the City of Napa safe from a 100-year flood event. Despite questions about the success of flood control, the steps that have been taken so far to protect downtown have gone a long way toward reassuring property investors, and the local development environment has changed radically since the early 1990s. In October, 2008 the Redevelopment Agency released a statement that estimated a total of $519,013,000 of combined public and private investment in the downtown commercial core between 1999 and 2008. This work has included not only flood control work, but several new hotels, the Oxbow Public Market, and numerous smaller projects. The construction projects have also spurred small adaptive reuse and renovations in the neighborhoods adjacent to downtown.74

Through business and development cycles the City of Napa and its rural

surroundings continue to evolve. Though flood control work has brought hope and an orgy

of development, as of 2009 the work is only 40% complete. After millions of dollars in

work, much of Napa flooded once again on New Years Eve 2005, and it is as yet unclear

whether the town will ever be safe from the vagaries of the river in winter. Downtown is in

73 Coodley, 144; Ibid., 147.

74 Napa Flood and Water Conservation District, http://www.co.napa.ca.us/GOV/Departments/DeptPage.asp?DID=6&LID=1691, accessed 1 November 2009; Napa Flood and Water Conservation District, http://www.co.napa.ca.us/GOV/Departments/DeptPage.asp?DID=6&LID=1692, accessed 1 November 2009; Napa Flood and Water Conservation District, http://www.co.napa.ca.us/GOV/Departments/DeptFAQ.asp?DID=6, accessed 1 November 2009.

47 flux, much as it was thirty-five years ago. Mervyns’ closed a year ago and was recently replaced by Kohl’s. The area has seen a massive 600,000 square feet of new construction in just a few years, but landowner George Altamura continues to hold several key historic properties vacant. The Oxbow Market seems to be a success, but next door Copia stands shuttered. For better or worse, Napa has made the hoped-for transition to tourist town, and locals complain that downtown has nothing for them. While a decade ago there was little connection between the wine country and the City of Napa, today downtown boasts fourteen locations for wine-tasting. What remains to be seen is whether this era’s development will stand the test of time like Napa’s nineteenth-century architectural heritage, or need to be redeveloped all over again a decade down the road.75

The Formation of Preservation Non-Profits in Napa

Like the movement in support of the agricultural preserve, Napa’s nascent historic preservation movement attracted some unlikely supporters. Main Street merchants, for example, formed a group called Citizens against the Destruction of Napa. This group fought the controversial redevelopment clock tower, a battle they ultimately lost when the widely reviled time-keeping wooden sculpture was installed on the First Street Plaza. This group was also one arm of a popular movement to save the Opera House, which by the1970s had not held a performance for sixty years, and was slated for destruction. By the

75 Napa Register online, http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.napavalleyregister.com/content/articles/2008/10/05/ne ws/local/doc48e861b50f4c8105126850.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2008/10/ 05/news/local/doc48e861b50f4c8105126850.txt&usg=__D7m1a5UZA29fBMs74M2CrKMayM0=&h=399& w=600&sz=83&hl=en&start=14&tbnid=YpVGOPCn88AmyM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq %3Ddowntown%2Bnapa%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4ADBS_enUS265US2 65%26sa%3DG, accessed 3 November, 2009; Napa Downtown website, http://www.napadowntown.com/wine_card.html, accessed 3 November, 2009.

48 middle of the decade a strong majority of local residents backed downtown preservation over building clearance and redevelopment. In 1975 a citizens voted in a citywide referendum to maintain the city boundaries without annexing increased area, and to retain downtown as the town’s principal shopping district.76

Napa County Landmarks was formed in response to redevelopment, and is still an important player in local preservation today. Originally focused on the historic buildings of the City of Napa and called simply “Napa Landmarks,” the local non-profit was founded incorporated in 1974 to promote preservation in the wake of the destruction of much of

Napa’s historic downtown. In its first few years of existence, Landmarks started a historic walking tour program and saved several houses from the wrecking ball through purchase and rehabilitation.77

But Napa Landmarks’ most significant contribution to preservation in the 1970s was its effort to survey the historic portion of the city and create a Historic Resource

Inventory (HRI.) Landmarks received grants from both the city and the state, and used the money to perform a historic resource survey of Napa. The survey was conducted primarily by volunteers over an eighteen-month period from 1977 to 1978. City staff updated and added to the volunteer-generated list on an as-needed basis over the years. Though the effort produced a list of several hundred significant buildings, consultant San

Buenaventura Research Associates of Santa Paula pointed out flaws in the methodology from a professional perspective: “This data was evidently not collected systematically, and

76 Coodley, 149; Weber, Napa, 58; Coodley, 150.

77 Napa County Landmarks website, http://www.napacountylandmarks.org/popUps/aboutUs/historicTimeline.html, accessed 31 October 2009.

49 numerous gaps were apparent.” Despite its flaws, this survey represented many hundreds of volunteer hours, and marked a shift to a more pro-active, data driven form of preservation. This information still forms the basis for the HRI that is currently used by the

Planning Division.78

Napa Landmarks continued to focus on disseminating preservation awareness and on saving threatened buildings. In 1978 Landmarks was first involved in the preservation of a downtown commercial building when the Oberon Bar was slated for demolition. This

Art Deco building, a rare architectural style in Napa County, was not only historically significant in its own right, its preservation laid the groundwork for Landmarks’ involvement in the preservation of other landmark downtown buildings, such as the effort to rehabilitate the Opera House. In the early 1980s, the organization faltered as city grant money dried up, but after a fallow period Napa Landmarks re-organized and continued its activities. In recognition of the symbiosis of rural and urban in Napa County, and in response to historic resources outside city limits that were under threat, the organization changed its name in 1986 to Napa County Landmarks. In the past two decades Landmarks has purchased and seismically retrofitted buildings, as well as working to receive NRHP recognition for Napa County’s historic stone bridges.79

The restoration of the Napa County Opera House, though more high-profile than most individual buildings, is illustrative of how the different interested local parties can work together to save a historic resource. Built in 1879, the Opera House sustained serious

78 Ibid.; San Buenaventura Research Associates of Santa Paula, California, “Napa City-Wide Survey,” (Prepared for the City of Napa, 1995), 2.

79 Napa County Landmarks website, http://www.napacountylandmarks.org/popUps/aboutUs/historicTimeline.html, accessed 31 October 2009.

50 damage in the 1906 earthquake and had been closed by 1916. By the 1970s the Opera

House had already been given up for lost by many locals, few of whom could remember a time when it was not boarded up and decrepit. Even consultant Charles Hall Page suggested that the Opera House could not realistically be preserved and predicted its eventual demolition. In 1985 a non-profit organization formed to save the Opera House.

Seed money from Landmarks got the ball rolling, but the restoration process was extremely painstaking and expensive. In 1997 $2.2 million from Robert and Magrit Biever

Mondavi spurred the project on, and it was finally completed in 2003. Today, the Opera

House is taken for granted as an irreplaceable community resource. One of the last remaining second story theaters west of the Mississippi and a beautiful exemplar of nineteenth-century Italianate architecture, it is also a unique functional performance space in a community that, even today, lacks other resources of this type.80

The Formation of the Cultural Heritage Commission

The City Council of the redevelopment era, in response to public pressure to preserve rather than demolish buildings, created its Cultural Heritage Commission (CHC) in 1975. Its duties included maintenance of the HRI, nomination of historic buildings and districts, advising the council on historic preservation, and public education regarding history and cultural heritage. The CHC is still an important advisory board for Napa City government. The volunteer board performs design review for Napa’s CLG, advises the

City Council, and informs the public regarding historic resources. Three members of the

80 Charles Hall Page & Associates, Urban and Environmental Planning & Design, San Francisco, “The Semorile and Winship Buildings,” (Prepared for the City of Napa, 1976), 16; Napa County Landmarks website, http://www.napacountylandmarks.org/popUps/aboutUs/historicTimeline.html, accessed 31 October 2009; Napa Valley Opera House, http://nvoh.org/index.php/venue/history, accessed 31 October 2009.

board must be architects or preservation professionals, while any member of the

interested public may fill the other two positions.81

The establishment of the CHC, the formation of Landmarks, and the effort to create

an HRI together constituted a watershed after which Napa’s preservation has been more

active and robust. Various preservation measures have followed the initial burst of energy

from the 1970s. Among the most important are various survey efforts including, 1978,

1988, 1993, 1994, 1995, and 1998. Some of these projects were in-depth intensive level

surveys focused on particular neighborhoods, such as the 1993 survey of the Fuller Park

District, which documented the neighborhood on a house-by-house basis and determined district eligibility to the National Register. The survey presented to the CHC by consultant

San Buenaventura in the beginning of 1995, by contrast, attempted a broader but less detailed windshield assessment of a much larger area and updated the HRI.82

The 1995 updated HRI was a considerably more sophisticated planning tool than

the one created in 1978. The consultant attempted to use quantitative methodology, and

ranked individual buildings based on architectural quality, age, and integrity. They also

solicited local opinion, in the form of CHC input, regarding which buildings were most

important. San Buenaventura evaluated over 6,000 properties, including nearly half of

those they looked at in contiguous Historic Resource Planning Areas (HRPAS). The

number of buildings deemed significant by the consultant was substantially greater than

81 City of Napa Website, http://74.205.120.199/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=561, accessed 31 October 2009.

82 Ibid., http://74.205.120.199/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=361&Itemid=602, accessed 31 October 2009, San Buenaventura Research Associates, 1 – 2.

52 those listed on the earlier HRI or on city estimates. The survey was adopted by the city in 1997, and the new HRI replaced the 1978 HRI.83

The surveys have been instrumental in city designation of two historic districts: the

Fuller Park/Abajo district, which was listed on the National Register in 1996, and the

Calistoga Avenue district, which was accorded local landmark status more recently. Fuller

Park contains over 600 resources, nearly half of which are considered contributing.

Calistoga Avenue is a smaller district of only two dozen or so resources, but both neighborhoods have had considerable success in preservation and enjoy broad community support. The CHC adjudicates certificates of appropriateness when property owners in these neighborhoods wish to make alterations.84

Despite local successes in preserving individual landmarks, creating protected districts of houses, and documenting local resources, preserving historic resources in Napa continues to require vigilance and hard work. Though an HRI is an essential planning tool,

Napa’s HRI is once again outmoded and difficult to use effectively. HRI documentation in

Napa has never kept pace with current methodology, and though this HRI is an improvement on the original, it still features many lacunae. There are resources and even whole neighborhoods that are potentially eligible for National Register listing and that have never been documented. Many build dates are incorrect. Still other buildings have aged into historic significance in the fourteen years since the survey was adopted.

83 Ibid., 3 – 7; Page & Turnbull, Inc., San Francisco, “Heritage Napa City-Wide Historic Context Statement,” (Prepared for the City of Napa, 2009), 5.

84 Ibid., 5 – 6.

The most serious flaw in the HRI, however, is the fact that determinations of

historic significance were based on a scoring device termed “Visual Evidence of

Significance” (VES). Apparently developed by consultant San Buenaventura, VES and

construction dates were combined to arrive at a map score (MS). This methodology

assigned high scores primarily to architecturally stunning buildings from the nineteenth

century. Only buildings in historic districts that were assigned a “one” or a “two” in this

survey are required to undergo design review before architectural alterations are

performed. Many significant vernacular and twentieth-century resources have been ignored

completely, though most were designated “three’s.” Though they constitute a majority of

Napa’s historic building stock, these “three’s” exist in a sort of twilight zone in which they

are officially unprotected though many individuals acknowledge their significance.85

An example or two will serve to illustrate the types of resources that fall through

the cracks of this HRI. Two nearly identical Craftsman houses stand side-by-side across the street from Fuller Park, in the heart of Napa’s most important historic district. The

National Register nomination form lists them as non-contributing due to the fact that they were built in 1919, “too recent, by a year or two, to contribute to the character of the district.” Another example is that of a vernacular house built circa 1906 in Spencer’s

Addition. Though this neighborhood features resources from as early as the 1860s, most of the houses are small and modest, and it is not widely considered a historic neighborhood.

The early twentieth-century cottage, featuring original siding, roof-line, and windows, is

85 San Buenaventura Research Associates, 3 – 4.

54 virtually devoid of visible alterations. Nevertheless, it is listed as a “three” on the HRI, meaning that an owner can make any changes desired with no CHC review required.86

Preservation Awareness in Napa

The local preservation movement has done an extraordinary job of raising awareness and support for the retention of landmark buildings. The Opera House, many nineteenth-century downtown commercial buildings, the oldest churches, and the impressive Queen Anne and Italianate mansions in central Napa are widely agreed to be significant community resources. At this time they do not appear to be threatened by demolition, neglect, or inappropriate renovation. However, while the scope of the larger preservation movement has expanded considerably, public opinion in Napa seems to be running in place, grounded in an earlier era’s concern with architecturally impressive landmark buildings.

Napa’s Cultural Heritage Commission, however, along with some of the Planning

Division staff with whom they work closely, is familiar with current preservation standards and practices. Over most of the last decade members of the CHC have worked to expand the number and types of historic resources that are formally protected by the City of Napa.

This has often been an uphill battle. Though Napa boasts thousands of historic houses and dozens of potential historic districts, the public is not really aware of the value of these resources. Many owners of historic houses choose to preserve the architectural integrity of their buildings yet do not want to become part of a historic district because they fear excessive regulation. The very age and architectural quality of Napa’s oldest

86 Napoli, National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet, #47 - #48; San Buenaventura Research Associates, “City of Napa Combined Historic Resources List,” Revised 5 September 2003, 3.

neighborhoods has set the bar extremely high for what is considered historic locally.

Local people who support historic preservation are often surprised to learn that an early-

twentieth-century building can be historic. A suggestion that mid-twentieth century resources may merit preservation, for instance a humble cinderblock subdivision built shortly after World War II, tends to be met with incredulity. Many other California towns less rich in historic resources than Napa have far more robust preservation programs. One example is the preservation program in Ontario, near Los Angeles. Though its historic resources are far less extensive than Napa’s, Ontario boasts several successful historic districts.87

This laissez-faire attitude toward preservation is a holdover from an earlier era,

when Napa was a fairly small town, oriented towards its county’s agriculture rather than

the larger world. Like many well-preserved older towns, Napa was for a long time a place

that the modern world left largely unchanged while other more urbanized areas underwent

radical transformation. The agricultural preserve has certainly been a force that held

growth and suburban sprawl partially at bay in Napa County. The Napa River also slowed

development for many years, as repeated catastrophic flooding made the low-lying historic sector of the town unattractive to investors. Until the advent of the serious flood-control work begun a decade ago and still underway, few developers were willing to risk funds in

Napa.

87 City of Ontario website, Historic Districts, http://www.ci.ontario.ca.us/index.cfm/22683/4636, accessed 1 November 2009.

Historic Context Survey

Because of the rather feverish pace of development, particularly downtown, the

CHC over the past five years has become more urgently focused on the need to update the

HRI. This led the Planning Division to bring a Public History graduate student intern on staff at the start of 2007. The intern was assigned to act as a liaison between the CHC and staff, to attend CHC meetings, and to work on OHP grant applications and other preservation projects. The CHC decided, after discussing local needs with city staff and

OHP, that a historic context statement for the City of Napa was an essential building block for the updated HRI they sought. The student intern prepared the grant application in consultation with city staff and the CHC. This required soliciting the input of the CHC members electronically and at meetings, soliciting input from the Planning Director, and carefully studying the OHP grants manual. As with any grant, the absolutely essential task was to follow the instructions of the granting institution, in this case OHP, and to provide

OHP with the information they were looking for. With so many people intimately involved in the project, however, it was difficult to incorporate each person’s suggestions and opinions while fulfilling OHP’s requirements. In the Spring of 2007 the City and CHC submitted the grant application to OHP. (See Appendix A) OHP funded the grant for a city-wide survey and Historic Context Statement study for grant year 2008 – 2009. The city put out a request for proposals, and staff reviewed the submitted proposals with input from members of the CHC. The City of Napa ultimately awarded the contract to San

Francisco consultant Page & Turnbull.

Page & Turnbull began work on the survey in the fall of 2008. After meeting with city staff and the CHC to discuss the timeline and project activities, the consultant held an informational meeting at Napa City County Library. The purpose of this meeting was to inform the public regarding the purpose, schedule, and scope of the historic context survey. Page & Turnbull also used this opportunity to solicit information, photographs, and input regarding the history of Napa from interested members of the public. The consultant then proceeded to perform library research, for which the student intern acted as both resource guide and research assistant. Page & Turnbull utilized the document library at the

Planning Division, the public library, and the historical society’s Goodman Library, as well as documents from repositories located outside the county. Sources consulted for background research included county maps, city maps, Sanborn insurance maps, first- person histories, Planning Division documents, previous surveys, local history books, and

California histories.

After background research had been completed, the consultant proceeded to survey the city. A team of two architectural historians from Page & Turnbull canvassed Napa by car to survey various historic neighborhoods. The student intern, who is a Napa resident intimately familiar with its neighborhoods, also frequently accompanied the consultants in order to guide them toward specific neighborhoods and resources. The architectural history team looked only briefly at established districts, such as Fuller Park, and neighborhoods that have recently received intensive survey attention, such as St. John’s. Though this was primarily a windshield survey and detailed information like that required for DPR 523 forms or National Register Nomination forms was not collected, the consultants frequently

left the vehicle behind and walked around neighborhoods in order to get a full visual

sense of buildings and streetscapes. While walking neighborhoods, the three team

members would head in different directions in order to canvas a larger area, taking

photographs of houses as they walked. The intern also later surveyed and photographed

some sub-areas alone.

By the end of 2008, the research and surveying portions of the study were winding

down, and the consultant was engaged in producing the Historic Context Statement. In

mid-January, Page & Turnbull provided the City of Napa with a Draft Historic Context

Statement. Each member of the CHC, the student intern, and the Interim Planning Manager all provided input to Page and Turnbull regarding content, facts, emphasis, and writing of the context statement. The draft was also posted on the City’s website, and the public was invited to comment on its content. The student intern received all the comments on the daft and collated them into a single document for Page & Turnbull’s use, who then incorporated the suggestions into their final Context Statement.

Though both city staff and volunteers involved in this project were quite satisfied with the document produced by the consultant, the process after January did not go as smoothly as anticipated. The Context Statement was a fifty page history of Napa from the pre-historic era up to 2008. The Planning Division and CHC were happy with the quality of the research, writing, and content, and felt that it would be a useful building block in the effort to update the HRI. OHP, however, did not agree, and rejected the Context Statement.

The primary criticism voiced by OHP was that there was not enough connecting the history of the town to the property types found in its built environment, and that this aspect

of the report needed to be much more explicit. Page & Turnbull made revisions at least

twice, and were obviously struggling to meet OHP’s requirements. The revision process

stretched into the summer. After several changes in direction and emphasis, OHP finally

approved a draft of Page & Turnbull’s Historic Context Statement. Final Draft of the HCS

was released to the public on September 1, 2009. The final document is much longer than

the original and incorporates a discussion of property types, along with photographs of

sample historic resources in each neighborhood, into its chronology of Napa’s history.

Though the CHC is pleased to have a Historic Context Statement on which to base

further surveys and future long-range planning, there was another important document produced by this effort. Possibly the most significant and useful product of this survey is

the Sub-area prioritization memo, which was not released to the public. Working with the

Global Information System (GIS) department at the city, Page & Turnbull created a

detailed map of the city showing each parcel color coded according to build date. They

used these maps, along with survey data they collected, to divide the historic portion of

Napa into 33 distinct neighborhoods. The consultant, after collaborating with city staff

regarding planning priorities, created five levels of prioritization for future intensive neighborhood surveys. This prioritization is based on significance of resources, level of threat from neglect or development, and length of time since the last intensive survey of the neighborhood. For example, though its historical significance is high, Fuller Park was given the lowest priority as it is already well-documented and well-protected. Alta Heights, on the other hand, is a somewhat newer neighborhood, but it has never been fully surveyed, so it is high on the priority list. Due to the vast numbers of resources in the town

and the daunting task the attempt to document them presents, this prioritization memo

should prove to be an essential tool over the next few years as the CHC attempts to survey

more neighborhoods and comprehensively update the HRI.

Historic Homes Workshops

The CHC performs design review for contributing resources that fall within the boundaries of Napa’s two historic districts. Many property owners are supportive of the historic district’s restrictions, but for some homeowners and their architects the certificate of appropriateness process is a bureaucratic hassle they see as unnecessary. Perhaps unsurprisingly, elected officials are often uncomfortable with a process that is unpopular with some constituencies and perceived as anti-development. At times the city council has questioned the necessity of the CHC, and preservationists have feared it would be disbanded. Because the board can be viewed in this negative light, the CHC for the past two years has actively sought ways it can generate positive publicity. While the survey effort was gearing up in the fall, the CHC, staff, and intern decided to offer a series of

Historic Homes Workshops.

The decision to offer the workshops was easily agreed upon, and reached by consensus of everyone in attendance at the October CHC meeting. The planning, however, turned out to be extremely complex. It was a simple enough matter to set dates and arrange for use of the City Council Chambers for two Saturday mornings. Choosing and recruiting speakers, however, took a much more sustained effort. In addition to the five CHC members, Interim Planning Manager, and intern, City Council member Juliana Inman took part in planning the workshops. Inman is also an architect, owner of a historic downtown

61 home, and current President of Napa County Landmarks. The individuals planning the workshops brainstormed a list of topics, then each member volunteered to line up speakers based on previous connections. The topics and speakers changed several times, as not every desirable speaker was available. The speakers were volunteers and the city provided the space for free, so the only expenses in putting on the workshop were publicity and a modest coffee service.

The intern took on publicity for the event, which involved a press release, a calendar listing and advertisement in the local paper, an announcement on the city website, and a postcard mailer. Writing and designing the postcard, advertisement, and press release were simple matters. What was more difficult was deciding how to distribute the postcard.

There was no pre-existing database of owners of historic homes, so the intern and Planning

Manager made the decision to use the HRI as well as a list of historical society members.

The database generated by the HRI consisted of nearly 5,000 records, and often reprinted the same address multiple times. Editing this list and sending out thousands of cards represented many hours of labor. However, as dozens of homeowners showed up for the event, and many others expressed interest, the time invested in publicity was well-invested.

(See Appendix B)

In the end, the workshops took place on January 17 and February 7, 2009. They were well-attended not only by local homeowners, but also by contractors as well as planning professionals from nearby communities. For the January session, Juliana Inman spoke on chimney and wood window maintenance and repair, while contractors and representatives from suppliers gave talks on subjects that included green building for

historic homes, HVAC, foundations, and Home Energy Resource Specialist rating. Two

weeks later Juliana Inman spoke on roofs and gutters, a representative of the Napa

Building Department talked about the State Historic Building Code, and CHC members

covered materials reuse. Speakers also talked about historic landscapes, and gave a

presentation on asbestos and lead encapsulation. The members of the public who attended

the workshops were engaged, asking questions and taking notes, and the CHC got a very

positive response. They met the dual goals of this endeavor, helping individuals to preserve

historic properties while raising the positive public profile of the CHC. The CHC plans to

offer two more workshops this winter, recapping some of last year’s information while

addressing new subjects. (See Appendix C)

California Preservation Foundation Conference

In April 2008 the California Preservation Foundation (CPF) held its annual

conference in Napa. “Balance and Complexity: the Vineyard and Beyond” offered upwards

of 50 sessions, study tours, and educational workshops that “emphasized the unique culture

and heritage of Napa. . . as well as best practices in preservation.” This was a crucial

opportunity for local preservationists and staff to network with experienced professionals

from around the region and state, as well as to build pride by showing off Napa’s unique

resources to people who could truly appreciate them. For the intern, this week was packed

with learning opportunities. Sessions attended included a tour of Napa architect Luther

Turton’s nineteenth- and early twentieth-century buildings, and a field trip to study the use of Rehabilitation Tax Credits at Charles Krug Winery and other locations. Interim

Planning Director Marlene Demery was called upon to give a talk on local historic

landscapes in the City of Napa’s historic districts. The intern was assigned the task of

preparing Demery’s PowerPoint presentation. Preparation of this presentation provided a

wonderful opportunity to engage directly with central Napa’s historic landscapes. The

intern walked around the Fuller Park district taking photographs of historic landscape

features. She compared these photographs both to historic photographs of the

neighborhood and to the historic district’s landscape regulations in order to examine what

aspects of landscape preservation were working well in Napa and which needed

rethinking.88 (See Appendix D)

The Future of Preservation in Napa

The past two years have seen significant progress in Napa’s preservation environment as led by the city’s CHC. The massive number of local resources, the ambivalent local attitude, and the relaxed regulatory environment, however, combine to create a situation in which preservation of Napa’s architectural heritage will require significant labor and vigilance. The CHC has several ongoing projects that attempt to address these issues.

After the successful completion of the Historic Context Statement and

Prioritization Memo, the CHC wanted to keep its momentum on surveying the city moving forward. Thus, they repeated the process of applying for an OHP grant for 2010 – 2011.

The City Council set aside some matching funds, and the intern prepared another grant application, this time for an intensive level survey of two important, under-documented

Central Napa neighborhoods. West Napa and Spencer’s Addition were both developed

88 California Preservation Foundation website, http://www.californiapreservation.org/about_2008.shtml#navtop, accessed 2 November 2009.

gradually beginning in the 1860s, and each boasts a large number and diverse types of

historic houses. They are close to downtown and the existing historic districts, but have no

historic preservation regulations at this time. The neighborhoods were among those given

the highest priority for surveying by Page and Turnbull. This grant has also been funded by

OHP, and the City is in the process of receiving consultant proposals. (See Appendix E)

In addition to the ongoing survey effort, the CHC has decided to apply to become a

Preserve America City. This would add prestige as well as another potential source of

funding, as Preserve America awards grants for local preservation projects. The CHC

hopes to create a self-guided historic walking tour of downtown and adjacent

neighborhoods if Preserve America funding ever becomes available. An effort to create an

awards program, possibly modeled after the City of Ontario’s, is also underway. The CHC

is discussing how best to dovetail its potential awards program with the awards program

already administered by Landmarks. The efforts to preserve Napa’s architectural heritage

involves negotiation between public values and private property, between growth and

conservation, and requires a delicate balance between government and individual efforts.89

Conclusion

Like most other forms of collective remembrance, historic preservation can

engender strenuous controversy. Local historic districts can give rise to battles over

whether to preserve buildings, and which buildings to preserve. These local fights

traditionally pit preservation interests against development and property rights. Outside the

89 City of Ontario website, http://www.ci.ontario.ca.us/index.cfm/4298/52517, accessed 2 November 2009.

politics of local districts, cultural conflict over the meaning of historic preservation also

abounds.

The changes that have occurred in Napa’s preservation movement over the years

reflect the evolution of the nation-wide movement in much the same way that local history dovetails with broader themes. In the 1970s Napa’s local government official believed that economic survival required replacement of historic buildings. Over the next two decades they, along with residents of many other large and small cities across the nation, came to the realization that historic architecture was not only irreplaceable but had economic value.

Gradually historic preservation has gone from being perceived as an unaffordable attachment to the past to seeming more like an investment in the future. Donovan

Rypkema and other preservation economists have widely disseminated information regarding preservation’s economic benefits. The proponents of urban conservation are successfully making the case that economic revitalization and architectural preservation are compatible goals, and more and more communities are using programs like Main Street to reap economic benefits.

The historic preservation movement, however, still has its critics, though they are not the same voices that were calling for a replacement of the past in the 1970s. Some critics assail historic preservation for not paying attention to history, despite its name.

David Hamer has pointed out that historians, by the same token, have largely ignored the historic preservation movement, and argues that the reason is that historic districts do not disseminate stories that mesh with professional historians’ sense of the real past. Part of the reason for this disconnect is surely the tools of the academic history trade. University

historians work with words, written in books, spoken in seminars, electrical impulses

on the internet, but always words. Stories written in wood and stone are not the stories that

historians have been trained to read. In his fascinating and still-relevant history of the development of the American city, America Becomes Urban, Eric Monkonnen makes a statement that seems to sum up many historians’ lack of interest in the built environment.

A focus on buildings when studying urban areas, Monkonnen argues, constitutes looking at

“seashells rather than the sea.” This can be interpreted as a wounding rebuke to those for whom the study historic architecture holds fascination, but ultimately it is a statement that says more about its speaker than its subject. Surely, to extend Monkonnen’s metaphor, a seashell can provide information about the sea that gave birth to it.90

Many of David Hamer’s reservations about historic districts, however, are worth

serious contemplation. Historic districts have generally not been good at representing

change, though change over time is what history is about. Districts tend to be organized

around a chosen period of significance, and often seem to be attempts to freeze time at that

point. History continues to unfold after the era of interest, but in a historic district the

temptation is to ignore ongoing change. An example referred to above from Napa’s Fuller

Park District nomination serves as an illustration of this fallacy. Historic buildings with

near-perfect integrity were considered non-contributers to the district because they were

built in 1918, and the arbitrarily chosen period of significance ended at World War I.91

Hamer is particularly critical of the Main Street program’s contradictions. Historic

downtown districts, the author maintains, are about helping municipalities neutralize

90 Hamer, vii; Monkonnnen, 14. 91 Hamer, 116.

contemporary problems, and not about history at all. One of these problems is ugliness

and visual chaos. Historic districts often regulate aesthetics, and many critics have argued

that normal life is blocked by such restrictions. Architectural integrity, Hamer points out,

has usually been interpreted to mean order and harmony in the visual environment, and

there is a natural bias in district formation toward the homogenous area. Some

preservationists, such as Norman Tyler, have suggested that contextualism, a sensitive

approach to adding compatible contemporary architecture to historic districts, as a solution

to this tendency. The preservation community is increasingly paying attention to the

history behind the architecture. Historic Preservation in Small Towns, by Arthur P.

Ziegler. Jr. and Walter C. Kidney, however, demonstrates the late twentieth-century preoccupation with aesthetics. The authors’ knowledge of community preservation practices is encyclopedic, but this is a work which demonstrates this consistent valuation of aesthetics over all other preservation values. The authors criticize a 1969 streetscape, for example, because of the visual clutter caused by signs in the downtown era, despite the fact that aggressive signage was often an element of historic downtown areas.92

Preservation is invariably a local pursuit, so perhaps it should not be surprising that

its concerns have been so close to those of traditional local histories. Carol Kammen, in On

Doing Local History (2003), discusses what anyone who has read nineteenth-century local

histories already knows: “Local historians have rarely touched on topics that concern

change,” but prefer to focus on stories that build community pride. Kathleen Neals

92 Hamer, 107; Ibid.,, 100; Ibid., 33; Arthur P.Zeigler, Jr. and Walter C. Kidney, Historic Preservation in Small Towns: A Manual of Practice. (Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1980), 11.

Conzen, in “The Past Before Us”, adds that these old local histories are flawed by their

failure to tie into themes that interest anyone outside the community. These critiques can

apply equally well to historic preservation when pursued myopically.93

The urban boosterism of the nineteenth century informed not only the happy stories

that communities disseminated about themselves, but also the original development of the

downtowns that would later become historic districts. This was true in the case of Napa, as

speculators began marking off and selling lots in new neighborhoods in the town’s first

decades. It is no accident that, as Hamer points out, the era of significance in an urban

district is often the town’s peak of success and boosterism. Monkonnen has pointed out

that this speculation based on population growth was a new, revolutionary activity in the

nineteenth century, and that it created many a town and many a fortune. No wonder the

urban boosting spirit informs so many historic districts in these nineteenth-century towns,

creating a nearly irresistible impulse to include only the brightest stories in district

histories.94

Heritage tourism, Hamer has pointed out, is another double-edged sword. Though it frequently provides a nearly unassailable economic logic for building preservation, it also puts pressure on a community to simplify and sanitize its history. This can be seen in Napa with the tendency to gloss over the painful local history of mistreatment of Indians,

Chinese, and black Americans, especially in relationship to the diverse population of Napa

93 Carol Kammen, On Doing Local History, (Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 2003), 32; Kathleen Neals Conzen, “Community Studies, Urban History, and Local History,” in Michael Kammen, ed. The Past Before Us: Contemporary Historical Writing in the United States, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), 271.

94 Hamer, 107; Monkonnen, 14.

69 tourists. Hamer could have been talking about Napa when he said of Salem,

Massachusetts, “a furious simplifying process is constantly at work under the intense pressures associated with catering to mass tourism.” Heritage tourism is an opportunity for preservation, but also presents a danger to resources and to the truth in our stories about who we are.95

95 Hamer, 87.

APPENDIX A

Grant Application, 2009

1. PROJECT SUMMARY The City of Napa is in the process of completing a citywide historic context statement with the aid of funding from an OHP grant. Consultant Page and Turnbull has assisted the city in defining neighborhood subareas and prioritizing them for future intensive surveys. They have assigned Downtown the highest priority, and this area will be the subject of the earliest intensive survey. This project is consistent with the State Historic Preservation Plan.

2. PROJECT SCOPE “The identification, protection, enhancement, perpetuation and use of buildings, structures, sites or areas that have important associations with past eras, events and persons important in local, state or national history” is a primary objective of the City of Napa’s municipal code regarding Historic Preservation and Neighborhood Conservation. A further objective is, “The enrichment of human life in its educational and cultural dimensions in order to serve spiritual, as well as material, needs by fostering knowledge of the living heritage of the past.” Goals include the identification of types of resources and geographic areas that have been inadequately docu-mented in earlier historic resource surveys. Historic resources, including archeological sites, which played a specific role in the development of the City of Napa will be identified. Other objectives include the designation of individual historic resources and historic districts. An intensive study of Napa’s traditional commercial core is an essential step in the City of Napa’s long-term program to systematically catalog and protect its historic resources.

The effort to update the existing Historic Resources Inventory (HRI) and more consistently protect historic resources has led the City of Napa to undertake a phased survey process. The development of the citywide historic context, which is currently being completed, is the first step of a projected several year effort. As a component of the historic context survey, subareas to be intensively surveyed over the following three years have been identified. As the citywide historic context survey nears completion, the city will also undertake a Redevelopment Agency funded survey of the East Napa neighborhood. This work will include a historic context statement for East Napa and development of a survey field guide/survey template, which will serve as a model for all future survey work. After completion of all survey work, the HRI and Preservation Plan can be updated based on the new information gathered by the survey.

As well as meeting the objectives of the City’s Historic Preservation Plan, an intensive level survey of Downtown is a planning priority. The Fuller Park/Abajo and Calistoga Avenue historic districts enjoy substantial success under current preservation regulations required by the Municipal Code and overseen by the CHC. The historically significant,

architecturally impressive buildings near Fuller Park have been particularly well preserved, and the historic fabric of the neighborhood retained. However, though the uncertain economy has lowered property values and home sales slowed in the short term, development pressure continues to affect Central Napa. A new parking garage has recently been completed Downtown, and at least three commercial development projects in the area are nearing completion. Recently completed nearby projects include new retail outlets such as the Oxbow Public Market and hotel projects such as the Westin. Many adaptive reuse and restoration projects are also underway. In addition to ongoing commercial development and flood control, Mervyn’s Downtown and Copia at the nearby Oxbow have closed in the last year, contributing to the atmosphere of flux in Central Napa. The original Historic Resources Inventory was undertaken in 1969, and updates or additions have taken place in 1978, 1988, 1994, 1995, and 1998. An expansion of the HRI, both in geographical area and types of properties included is also critical, as many significant buildings were overlooked in earlier surveys that were focused on architecturally high- style properties. The contemporary interest in community resources and contexts amplifies the importance of documentation and evaluation of new potential resources and districts.

Napa’s traditional Downtown, is at the geographical core of the historic city. It consists of commercial buildings built beginning in the late nineteenth century up to the present, as well as some nineteenth and early twentieth century houses that have been converted to commercial uses. Napa’s Downtown area contains some of Napa’s most significant historic resources, many of which are listed on the city’s historic resources inventory. However, the Downtown neighborhood has never been systematically surveyed at the intensive level, and infill development over time has affected integrity. As future development has a high potential for degrading Downtown’s historic resources, the consultant has assigned it the highest survey priority.

Project Activities The City of Napa will, through an RFP process, contract with a consultant who meets the Secretary of Interior’s Professional Qualifications and specializes in preservation planning, historic research, and field inspection. The consultant will perform and intensive level survey of the Downtown area of the City of Napa, Prior to preparing the district context and commencing fieldwork, the consultant will be expected to perform archival research of primary and secondary sources, review the City’s existing historic resource documentation, and meet with residents and property owners of the area.

Based on the information contained in the existing HRI, Downtown Napa includes at least 100 historic resources. The rough boundaries of the area are: the Napa River to the East, Third and Division Streets to the South, Jefferson Boulevard to the West, and Clay, Pearl and Clinton Streets to the North. The consultant will perform a pedestrian survey of the area, photograph each building, research building histories, and produce a DPR 523 form for each historic resource.

The public will be involved in informational meetings prior to the field work and will be invited to contribute historic photographs. The survey findings will be presented to the public at a meeting of the City Council. Information about the project purposes and survey activities will be provided on the City’s website, and the City will notify property owners by mail prior to commencement of field work.

Deliverables . DPR 523 forms for each historic resource . Preservation Recommendations for Downtown area . Information Management Plan

The survey will be used to identify potential district boundaries for adoption by the local government as well as assess potential National Register of Historic Places eligibility for individual buildings. No National Register nominations will be generated by the survey. Properties within a locally designated district are subject to design guidelines.

3. ADMINISTRATION A. Personnel: The proposed project will be managed by city staff, with input from the volunteer members of the CHC and other members of the public interested in and knowledgeable about Historic Preservation. Work will be accomplished by a consultant team. Resumes attached. City of Napa Staff and their duties include:

Marlene Demery, Interim Planning Manager, City of Napa: administer project, administer consultant contract, provide background and resource materials for consultant team, assist in setting up meetings with affected neighborhoods, review draft and final work product for conformance with contract.

Carolyn Van Dyke , Secretary, Planning Division City of Napa: Clerical support, mailings, filing, typing, copying, telephone calls, maintaining volunteer logs, minutes of meetings.

Jennifer LaLiberte, Project Manager, Redevelopment Agency, City of Napa: provide background and resource materials to consultant, provide information to affected neighborhoods, review draft and work products.

Kara Brunzell, Graduate Student Intern, City of Napa: administer project, provide background and resource materials to consultant, meet provide information to affected neighborhoods, review draft and final work product.

Wendy Ward, Historian, Cultural Heritage Commissioner, City of Napa: assisted in developing grant application and scope of work, participate in study sessions, meet with residents, review draft and final work product.

Marie Dolcini, Historian, Cultural Heritage Commissioner, City of Napa: assisted in developing grant application and scope of work, participate in study sessions, meet with residents, review draft and final work product.

Sarah Van Giesen, Architect, Cultural Heritage Commissioner, City of Napa: assisted in developing grant application and scope of work, participate in study sessions, meet with residents, review draft and final work product.

B. Schedule:

1. Request for proposals (RFP) – City June 2009 . Prepare RFP . Submit to OHP for review and approval . Prepare list of qualified consultants . Mail OHP approved RFP . Publish RFP 2. Select consultant – City August – October 2009 . Preview proposals . Interview consultants . Select consultant . Obtain OHP approval . Prepare contract . City Council, manager execute contract 3. Study session – City and Consultant October 2009 . Study session with consultant, Cultural Heritage Commission, and staff to finalize work program and schedule . Prepare introductory letter for neighborhood work – consultant . Progress report to OHP – City 4. Background research – Consultant November 2009 . Archival research on history and prehistory of City of Napa . Identify potential for archeological sites . Review Downtown’s existing historic resource documentation . Meet with Napa residents, property owners, and neighborhood associations – identify potential information sources and residents with special knowledge . Create Downtown context statement 5 Downtown Napa Intensive Level Survey – Consultant December 2009 . Complete sufficient fieldwork to document information on each historic resource . Prepare DPR 523 forms for each historic resource . Review draft Downtown context statement 6. Conduct survey / compile data – Consultant January, 2010 . Generate preservation recommendations for Downtown area . Identify historic resources within survey area 7. Review Survey Data – City and Consultant April, 2010

. Organize survey data . Conduct public workshops . Progress report to OHP – City 8. Draft Final Products July 2010 . Final Draft Downtown Context Statement . Copy to OHP for review . DPR 523 forms to OHP 9. Final Products – Deliverables September 2010 . Downtown Napa Historic Context Statement –final . DPR 523 forms for Downtown Historic Resources . Information Management Plan . City deliver to OHP

4. BUDGET

A. Amount of federal funds requested $ 25,000 Minimum local match $ 16,667 TOTAL $41,667 B. Source of Non-federal Local Match (1) Donor: City of Napa (2) Donor: City of Napa Source: General Fund Source: Volunteers Kind: Cash Wages and Expenses Kind: In-Kind Services Amount: Amount:

C. Budget details Cost Rate used to Cash Categories calculate cost from Other In-kind ($ per hr. x #hrs) grant cash

Marlene Demery, Special Projects Manager Project admin: 10 hours Provide background info: 5 hours Meet with residents: 5 hours Review draft and final contexts: 10 hours Review survey results: 10 hours $110 x 40 hours $4,400

Carolyn Van Dyke, Secretary Clerical support, mailings, filing, typing, copying, telephone calls, maintaining volunteer logs, meeting minutes, etc.: 30 hours $52.81 x 30 $1,584

Jennifer LaLiberte, R.A. Project Coordinator Provide background info: 10 hours Meet with residents: 5 hours Review draft: 10 hours Review survey results: 10 hours $84.75 x 35 $2,453

Kara Brunzell, Graduate Student Intern Project admin: 60 hours Provide background info: 45 hours Meet with residents: 5 hours Review draft: 20 hours Review survey results: 20 hours $12 x 150 $1,800

Budget details Cost Rate used to Cash Categories calculate cost from Other In-kind ($ per hr. x #hrs) grant cash

Contract Consultant Conduct survey, submit reports, and perform other project activities per contract; deliver historic context for City of Napa. Flat fee $25,000

Volunteer and In-kind Contributions

Wendy Ward, Historian, Commissioner Participate in study sessions: 15 hours Meet with residents: 5 hours Review draft and context: 15 hours Review final survey: 5 hours $80 x 40 $3,200

Marie Dolcini, Historian, Commissioner Participate in study sessions: 15 hours Meet with residents: 5 hours Review draft and context: 15 hours Review final survey: 5 hours $80 x 40 $3,200

Sarah Van Giesen, Architect, Commissioner Participate in study sessions: 15 hours Meet with residents: 5 hours Review draft and context: 15 hours Review final survey: 5 hours $80 x 40 $3,200

Supplies, copying, postage, etc. $300

TOTALS $25,000 $18,553

5. BONUS POINTS

6. REQUIRED SIGNATURE: 

APPENDIX B

Publicity Materials for Historic Homes Workshops

The City of Napa & its Cultural Heritage Commission are proud to sponsor two workshops to assist homeowners and contractors with preserving and maintaining historic homes. Workshops will be held in the City Hall Council Chambers.

January 17 9:00 AM until noon Topics include:seismic retrofittingchimney repairwood window maintenanceenergy efficiencygreen historic buildings

February 7 9:00 AM until noon Topics include: State Historic Building Codehistoric hardscapes & landscapesmaterials reuse

Join us for these free workshops to find out how you can enhance your property value while preserving Napa’s priceless heritage.

The City of Napa’s Cultural Heritage Commision is pleased to announce an upcoming series of free educational workshops to assist homeowners and contractors with the preservation and maintenance of historic homes.

The workshops will be held in the City Hall Council Chambers on: • January 17th, 2009 from 9 am - noon • February 7th, 2009 from 9 am - noon

The goal of the workshops is to share information with the public on how to: • preserve the character of historic houses • increase property value • incorporate modern features

Speakers include: • City of Napa Councilmember & Napa County Landmarks President Juliana Inman • Cultural Heritage Commission Chair Sarah Van Giesen • Armando Navarro of PG & E • Bob Massaro of Healthy Buildings USA

Topics include: • State Historic Building Code • green historic buildings • wood window preservation and maintenance • energy efficiency • lead and asbestos encapsulation

These workshops are being offered by the city FREE to the public. For a complete schedule follow the link below. To reserve your seat at one or both workshops call the Planning Division at 257-9530 or email [email protected].

[hyperlink to schedule]

APPENDIX C

Historic Homes Workshop Schedule

CITY OF NAPA CULTURAL HERITAGE COMMISSION WORKSHOPS

Session 1: Structure Basics January 17, 2009

9:00 General Welcome and Councilmember Juliana Inman- AM Introduction City of Napa; Chair Sarah Van Giesen - CHC 9:10 Seismic Upgrades and Retrofitting Mike Wright Simpson Strong-Tie 9:30 Foundations Yi Yang- Summit Engineering, Inc. 9:50 Chimney Repair Juliana Inman- Juliana Inman, AIA 10:10 Green Building Techniques for Bob Massaro- Healthy Buildings Historic Buildings USA

10:30 Wood Window Maintenance NOT Juliana Inman replacement 10:50 HERS- Home Energy Resources Randy Hogg- Specialist Duct Pressure Specialists HERS Rater 11:10 Energy Efficiency Armando Navarro- PG&E 11:30 HVAC Mark Kamrath- Bell Products; Randy Hogg - Duct Pressure Specialists HERS Rater 11:50 Questions Panelists

Session 2: Exterior and Finish Materials February 7, 2009

9:00 General Welcome and Introduction Councilmember Juliana Inman- City AM of Napa Chair Sarah Van Giesen- CHC

9:10 State Historic Building Code- Steve Jensen- City of Napa Building

General info. and application Division

9:30 Fixtures and Material Reuse Commissioners Sarah Van Giesen,

Marie Dolcini, Jim Scoggin 9:50 Roof and Gutters Juliana Inman- Juliana Inman, AIA

10:10 Lead and Asbestos Encapsulation Joe Winograde-

Napco Painting

10:30 Historic Hardscapes and Landscapes Rue Zieglar- California Heritage

Research

10:50 Historic Landscapes Denise Wiles Adams & Rue Zieglar 11:10 Questions Panelists

APPENDIX D

Historic Landscapes PowerPoint Presentation

Slide 1 Downtown Napa Napa’s earliest road, and its circa 1905 principle commercial district for its first 50 years.

Slide 2 Main Street Napa looking North from Third, circa 1887

. Commercial buildings front the sidewalk

. Covered walkways

. No landscaping or street trees

Slide 3

Napa County Courthouse circa 1900

. Exception to Downtown Landscaping Scheme

. Surrounded by paths, lawns, and trees

Slide 4

Napa County Courthouse circa 1906

. Note the growth of palms and other trees

. Telegraph cables have been installed

Slide 5

Landscape Design Standards in Napa Historic Districts

Slide 6

Landscape Design Policy: “Historic landscape features that survive should be preserved when feasible. In addition, new landscape features should be compatible with the historic context.”

Slide 7 Note the hitching post at the curb in this photo Fences

. Preserve original fences.

. A replacement fence should be similar in character to that of original fences seen in the neighborhood.

. A new fence should have a “transparent” quality.

Slide 8

. Historic photographs portray fence heights at a much lower level than sometimes used today.

Slide 9

. A painted wood picket fence is an appropriate replacement in most locations.

Slide 10

. A simple metal fence, similar to traditional “wrought iron” also may be considered.

Slide 11 Here is a case where traditional materials, (a hedge), have been used, but the effect is rather unfortunate. Note the height of the hedge, which towers over the pedestrian in the left

. Transparent elements are appropriate side of the frame. This mansion is one of the most architecturally impressive houses in Napa, and it cannot be seen from the sidewalk.

Slide 12 Sidewalks

. The historic scoring pattern of the sidewalks should be preserved.

. Sidewalks should be separated from the curb with a planting strip.

Slide 13 Planting Designs

. Preserve planting designs

Slide 14

. If a row of street trees is an established historic feature, this should be preserved.

Slide 15

. Existing trees that are in good condition should be maintained.

Slide 16

Slide 17

Slide 18 . Early gardens or formally planted areas should be preserved in place.

Slide 19

. Provide a front yard that is similar in character to those seen traditionally.

Slide 20 Driveways & Parking

. Garages should not dominate the street scene

. Driveways should be located to the side of a primary structure

. Parking areas should not be visually obtrusive.

Slide 21 Dealing with cars in 19th and early 20th century Historic Parking neighborhoods is perhaps the Areas most difficult aspect of preservation planning. As this photograph illustrates, these neighborhoods were not built to accommodate motor vehicles. Many creative solutions are employed, some more successful than others

Slide 22 This type of solution isn’t perfect in that it is so visible, however we have to remember that this is a neighborhood, not a museum. Adaptive reuse means living with the realities of modern life, and cars are one of those realities.

Slide 23 Obviously, this is not the ideal parking solution for a historic district. (There is a historic house directly to the rear of these apartments.)

Slide 24 This mansion is now an inn, and the side yard has been converted to parking. Despite paving much of the yard, the character defining features of this historic landscape have been preserved. Adaptive Reuse

Slide 25 The overall effect can be stunning when attention is given to all aspects of historic landscape preservation.

Slide 26

Napa, 1905 Fifth and Division Streets, looking east

Slide 27 This street scene looks Napa, 2008 remarkably like it did a century ago. The most noticeable changes are the paved streets and the cars parked along them. (Although there’s a truck that looks like it’s been there since the first picture was taken.

Slide 28 Adaptive Reuse

. Residential to Commercial

. A Napa case study

. The Old Greenwood Inn Project

Slide 29 This house was built circa 1890 and has been maintained virtually . Demolition of historic garage to make way for two story addition unchanged for over a century. Nearly a mile from the commercial center at Division Street and the Napa River, . Conversion of single family home to Inn and Deli

. The addition is designed to look different from the this neighborhood was strictly house while respecting its historic character residential when it was first developed. Over the past 80 years, however, downtown has gradually grown to the west, and eventually enveloped this property. It is surrounded by commercial

properties, some constructed for that purpose and some adaptive reuse.

Slide 30 Some of the best preserved . Residential to Commercial conversions in the Old Greenwood Inn neighborhood and maintained houses in this immediate neighborhood are currently in commercial use.

APPENDIX E

Grant Application, 2010

1. PROJECT SUMMARY

The City of Napa proposes an Intensive Historic Resource Survey of its West Napa and Spencer’s Addition neighborhoods. Located adjacent to Napa’s historic downtown as well as its two existing historic districts, these neighborhoods feature a high concentration of unrecorded or incorrectly documented historic resources. This proposed project is consistent with the State Historic Preservation Plan. Because Napa Creek, which has repeatedly flooded over the years, separates the two neighborhoods, the project merits bonus points for disaster preparedness.

2. PROJECT SCOPE

Even with broad public support for local preservation and two established historic districts, bringing the City of Napa’s historic preservation program up to date is a major undertaking. The most pressing local need is an update of the Historic Resource Inventory (HRI). The original HRI survey was performed in 1969, and though partial updates have taken place and new areas have been surveyed over the years, current preservation methodology and practice dictate a thorough overhaul of the document. Not only have many new properties become historic in the forty years since Napa was initially surveyed, preservation standards and guidelines have altered significantly. The City of Napa has committed to a multiple-year process of systematically surveying its historic neighborhoods in order to update its HRI and better protect significant buildings.

The City of Napa, in conjunction with consultant Page and Turnbull, is nearing completion of its Citywide Historic Context Statement Survey, which was funded by a 2008 OHP Grant. One of the primary goals of the current project has been to define Napa’s neighborhood subareas and prioritize them for future intensive surveys. The neighborhood prioritization was based on the consultant’s assessment of areas that contain concentrations of resources at highest risk due to development pressures and areas with insufficient cultural resource inventory listings. Among the more than 30 distinct neighborhoods identified by the study, two areas which were assigned high priority for survey were West Napa and Spencer’s Addition. These neighborhoods contain many of the oldest unrecorded historic buildings in the City of Napa. Because of the high concentration of historic resources, as well as proximity to the central downtown district, the City of Napa has chosen these neighborhoods to be the first to undergo the intensive survey process.

The development of the citywide historic context was the first step in the phased process the City of Napa and its Cultural Heritage Commission (CHC) have undertaken. Currently, an intensive level survey of the East Napa neighborhood is underway, funded by the Redevelopment Agency as part of its East Napa/Soscol Gateway Redevelopment Project Area. This work will include a Historic Context Statement for East Napa, and development of a survey field guide/survey template which will serve as a model for all future survey work; including that proposed in this grant application. This year’s projects will lay the foundation for the long-term effort to update the HRI.

Completing intensive level surveys for the neighborhoods selected is a planning priority, and obtaining updated inventory data will meet the objectives of the City’s Historic Preservation Plan. The Napa Abajo/Fuller Park and Calistoga Avenue Historic Districts enjoy substantial Comment [KB1]: This was inconsistent. success under current preservation regulations required by the Municipal Code and overseen

93 by the CHC. The historically significant, architecturally impressive buildings near Fuller Park have been particularly well preserved, and the historic fabric of the neighborhood retained. However, despite the current economic uncertainty, Central Napa has been under intense development pressure for several years. Though the downturn has slowed the pace of development in Napa, adaptive reuse and infill development projects continue. Public and private investment in Central Napa, including flood control, new commercial development downtown, and new downtown-adjacent projects such as the Oxbow Public Market and Westin Hotel, are likely to stimulate renovation projects and gentrification in Napa’s surrounding historic neighborhoods.

An expansion of the HRI, both in geographical area and types of properties included is also critical, as earlier surveys were focused on large and architecturally impressive buildings, and many significant properties were passed over. In addition, the contemporary interest in community resources and contexts amplifies the importance of documentation and evaluation of new potential resources and districts.

West Napa is located directly adjacent to downtown, and borders the Napa Abajo/Fuller Park Historic District on its west. A map which includes the best “built date” contained in the city’s current records is included as Attachment 1. The subarea boundaries are Jefferson Street to the east, Pine Street to the south, Highway 29 to the west, and Napa Creek to the north. The neighborhood contains a high concentration of resources built between the 1890s and the 1940s, many of which are listed on the City’s current HRI. Development peaked around the turn of the century, and the area includes mansions on the principal streets as well as modest single family homes throughout the neighborhood. Page and Turnbull consultants have found the neighborhood eligible for historic designation, and recommend intensive level study and local protection.

Spencer’s Addition is also located close to downtown, between West Napa and Napa High School. A map which includes the best “built date” contained in the city’s current records is included as Attachment 2. Spencer’s Addition is bounded by Jefferson Street to the east, Napa Creek to the south, California Boulevard to the West, and Lincoln Avenue to the north. The neighborhood, like West Napa, contains a high concentration of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century resources. Though Spencer’s Addition was annexed to the City in 1872, construction of the high school and inter-urban railroad spurred development, and the bulk of properties date from the 1890s through the 1930s. This neighborhood also contains a 1950 subdivision. In contrast to the mixture of mansions and cottages in other parts of downtown, most of the houses in this neighborhood are modest single-family homes. Many parcels are listed on the HRI, although the neighborhood has been subject to only reconnaissance level surveys. Page and Turnbull consultants have found the neighborhood eligible for historic designation, and recommend intensive level study and local protection.

Due in equal parts to the assistance of OHP in 2008 and city budgeted funds, community focus on preservation efforts has intensified. Both the Redevelopment Agency and the City General Fund are slated to supplement these efforts in the Fiscal Year 2009/10. The proposed budget includes funds to match the work requested as part of this year’s grant application. We have requested funds to build on the efforts of this past year in order to effect a long-term strategic Comment [KB2]: I double checked, this should approach to preservation in Napa. The Redevelopment Agency has already funded the definitely be spelled “effect” here. development of design guidelines for the Downtown Area as part of a Downtown Specific Plan which is currently underway. These guidelines will allow the City of Napa to assure that future development adjacent to historic downtown buildings complements important existing resources. The proposed West Napa/Spencer’s Addition project meets the goals and objectives outlined in the Heritage Tourism and Land Use Planning Sections of the Statewide Historic Preservation Plan.

Project Activities The City of Napa, through an RFP process, will contract with a consultant who meets the Secretary of Interior’s Professional Qualifications and specializes in preservation planning, historic research, and field inspection. Prior to preparing the district context and commencing fieldwork, the consultant will be expected to perform archival research of primary and secondary sources, review the City’s existing historic resource documentation, and meet with residents and property owners of the area.

Based on the information contained in the existing HRI, the West Napa and Spencer’s Addition neighborhoods contain roughly 600 historic resources. The consultant will use a pedestrian survey to study each resource within the proposed project area. The consultant will generate DPR 523A and DPR 523B/D forms for each building.

The public will be involved in informational meetings prior to the field work and will be invited to contribute historic photographs and respond to a brief questionnaire to be used in preparing the survey. The survey findings will be presented to the public at a meeting of the City Council. Information about the project purposes and survey activities will be provided on the City’s website and property owners will be notified by mail prior to the consultant conducting field work.

Deliverables . DPR 523A and DPR 523B/D forms . Survey maps and graphics . Survey data spreadsheet . Neighborhood historic context statements – draft and final . Survey report/recommendations

The survey information will be used to identify potential district boundaries for adoption by the local government. Properties within a locally designated district are subject to design guidelines.

3. ADMINISTRATION

A. Personnel: The proposed project will be managed by city staff, with input from the volunteer members of the CHC and other members of the public interested in and knowledgeable about Historic Preservation. Work will be accomplished by a consultant team. Resumes attached. City of Napa Staff and their duties include:

Marlene Demery, Special Projects Manager, City of Napa: administer project, administer consultant contract, provide background and resource materials for consultant team, assist in setting up meetings with affected neighborhoods, review draft and final work product for conformance with contract.

Carolyn Van Dyke, Secretary, Planning Division City of Napa: Clerical support, mailings, filing, typing, copying, telephone calls, maintaining volunteer logs, minutes of meetings.

Jennifer LaLiberte, Senior Project Coordinator, Redevelopment Agency, City of Napa: provide background and resource materials to consultant, provide information to affected neighborhoods, review draft and work products.

Kara Brunzell, Graduate Student Intern, City of Napa: administer project, provide background and resource materials to consultant, work with the consultant in the field work, provide information to affected neighborhoods, review draft and final work product.

Wendy Ward, Anthropologist, Cultural Heritage Commissioner, City of Napa: participate in study sessions, meet with residents, review draft and final work product.

Marie Dolcini, Historian, Cultural Heritage Commissioner, City of Napa: participate in study sessions, meet with residents, review draft and final work product.

Sarah Van Giesen, Architect, Cultural Heritage Commissioner, City of Napa: participate in study sessions, meet with residents, review draft and final work product.

B. Schedule Timeline

Request for Proposals (RFP) – City of Napa (City) June 2009 • Prepare RFP • Submit to OHP for review and approval • Prepare list of qualified consultants • Mail OHP approved RFP • Publish RFP

B. Schedule (Con’t) Timeline

Select Consultant - City August – • Preview proposals October • Interview consultants 2009 • Select consultant • Obtain OHP approval • Prepare contract • City Council/Manager execute contract

Study Session – City and Consultant October • Study session with consultant, Cultural Heritage Commission and 2009 staff to finalize work program and schedule • Prepare introductory letter for neighborhood work – Consultant • Progress report to OHP – City

Background Research – Consultant November • Archival research on history and prehistory of West Napa and 2009 Spencer’s Addition neighborhoods • Identify potential for archeological sites • Identify boundaries of area to be surveyed • Review Napa’s existing historic resource documentation • Meet with Napa residents, property owners, and neighborhood associations – identify potential information sources and residents with special knowledge

Neighborhood Context Statements – Consultant December • Complete sufficient fieldwork to confirm sub-area context 2009 information • Prepare draft sub-area Historic Context Statement

Conduct Survey / Compile Data – Consultant December • Complete fieldwork necessary to intensively survey 2009 – neighborhoods January • Produce 523A and 523B/D forms for both neighborhoods 2010 • Identify historic districts and historic resources

Review Survey Data – City and Consultant April 2010 • Organize survey data • Conduct public workshops • Refine neighborhood context based on survey outcome • Progress report to OHP – City

Draft Final Products July 2010 • Final draft neighborhood context statements • Final draft 523A and 523D forms for both neighborhoods • Copy to OHP for review

B. Schedule (Con’t) Timeline

Final Products – Deliverables September • Neighborhood Historic Context Statement – final 2010 • DPR523A and 523B/D forms • Survey maps and graphics • Survey data spreadsheet • Survey report/recommendations • City deliver to OHP

4. BUDGET

Amount of federal funds requested $25,000 Minimum local match 18,970 Total $43,970

Source of non-federal local match (1) Donor: City of Napa (2) Donor: City of Source: General Fund Napa Kind: Cash Wages and Expenses Source: Amount: Volunteers Kind: In-kind Services Amount:

BUDGET DETAILS CALCULATION CASH COST HOURS RATE FROM OTHER IN- CATEGORIES ($/HR X # GRANT CASH KIND HRS)

Marlene Demery, Special Projects Mgr. Project Admin: 20 Provide background hours info: 10 Meet with residents: hours Review draft/final 10 $6,600 contexts: hours $110 x 60 hrs Review survey results: 10 hours 10 hours

Carolyn Van Dyke, Secretary Clerical support, mailings, filing, typing, copying, telephone calls, maintaining volunteer

logs, meeting minutes, 30 $52.81 x 30 $1,584 etc. hours hrs Jennifer LaLiberte, R.A. Senior Project Coordinator 10 Provide background hours info: 5 Meet with Residents: hours Review draft: 10 $84.75 x 35 $2,966 Review survey results: hours hrs 10 hours

Kara Brunzell, Graduate Student Intern 45 Project admin: hours Provide background 30 info: hours Meet with Residents: 5 Review draft: hours $16 x 120 hrs $1,920 Review survey results: 20 hours 20 hours

Contract Consultant Conduct survey, submit reports, and perform other project activities per contract; deliver historic context for City Flat Fee $25,000 of Napa.

VOLUNTEER AND IN-KIND CONTRIBUTIONS

Wendy Ward, Historian, Commissioner 10 Participate in study hours sessions: 5 Meet with Residents: hours Review draft and 10 $80 x 30 hrs $2,400 context: hours Review final survey: 5 hours

Marie Dolcini, Historian, Commissioner 5

Participate in study hours sessions: 5 Meet with Residents: hours Review draft and 5 $80 x 20 hrs $1,600 context: hours Review final survey: 5 hours

Sarah Van Giesen, Architect, Commissioner 5 Participate in study hours sessions: 5 Meet with Residents: hours Review draft and 5 $80 x 20 hrs $1,600 context: hours Review final survey: 5 hours Supplies, copies, postage, etc. $300

TOTALS $25,000 $18,970

5. BONUS POINTS

The City of Napa is applying for bonus points because the West Napa and Spencer’s Addition intensive survey information will assist the Planning Department in the protection of historic resources from natural disasters. The survey will allow city government to update its resource inventory in order to protect specific significant resources in the event of flooding. Periodic flooding has affected these areas as well as Downtown Napa throughout its history. Both neighborhoods are located adjacent to Napa Creek, on which flood control work is not yet completed.

6. REQUIRED SIGNATURE:

100

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Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. Reel 37. Montague – Nelson, City of Napa Begins at 707, covers 1886, 1891,1901,1910,1923. Pelham, New York: Sanborn Map Company, Inc.

Thomas Brothers Maps. Napa County Map. 1940 – 1945.

------Napa County Map. 1950 – 1955.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior. Population Schedules of the 7th Census of the United States, 1850: California. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1964. Microfilm.312.09794. Reel 37, Montague – Nelson, City of Napa beginning at 707. ------Population Schedules of the 8th Census of the United States, 1860: California. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1964. Microfilm.312.09794. Reel 37, Montague – Nelson, City of Napa beginning at 707.

U.S. Superior Court. Napa, California. Case Index of the Criminal Court.

Wise, Henry Augustus. Los gringos; or, An Inside View of Mexico and California, with Wanderings in Peru, Chili, and Polynesia. Paris: A. & W. Galignani. 1850.

Vallejo, Platon Mariano Guadalupe. Memoirs of the Vallejos: New Light on the History, Before and After the “Gringos” Came, Based on Original Documents and Recollections by Platon Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. San Francisco Bulletin, January 26, 1914 – February 17, 1914.

Yount, George C. George C. Yount and his Chronicles of the West. Denver: Old West Publishing Company. 1966.