OurHome

Discovery

The Estudillo house heritage

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

By Ted Crittenden

The courtyard of the Estudillo house, located in Old Town San Diego, now serves as a time capsule. It is here that Ranchero style was preserved for later Anglos to copy and paste all over the Southern California landscape.

It’s 3:15 p.m. on a quiet Sunday. The tourist season is over, and the locals are watching the Chargers play in the valley. A mustached docent watches me suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. I often sit down and relax in the cool afternoon shadows of the Estudillo house.  Although not encouraged, it is easily some of the most enjoyable lounging in San Diego.   

The cool air collects in the u-shaped courtyard of one the earliest luxury California homes. Thick adobe walls and handmade roof tiles keep the interior rooms 10-15 degrees cooler than the surrounding streets. It is easy to see why this home was the grandest and most stately homes in the region when Jose Maria Estudillo, a wealthy landowner with cattle interests, constructed it in 1827.

Early Yankee visitors resented the Mexican lifestyle. In account after account, Eastern visitors wrote of the lack of work ethic of the local inhabitants, they were disgusted by their dancing, music and bullfights and especially appalling was the lack of clothing worn by their women.

It was until the novel “Ramona,” by Helen Hunt Jackson, that Yankee cultural differences could manifest into appreciation rather than contempt of early Southern California culture.

Helen Hunt Jackson had only visited Southern California twice, when she wrote “Ramona” in New York City in 1884. She was trying to do for Native American peoples what Harriet Beecher Stowe did for African American people with “Uncle Toms Cabin.”

While failing to give voice to the plight of native peoples, what Jackson did achieve was write a powerful love story about a half white, half Indian woman in a tale of forbidden love. Tame by today’s standards, the novel was such a sensation that many readers took it to be fact. Soon tourist destinations all over Southern California were popping up with supposed ties to Ramona. To some it seemed Southern California finally had a history worth hanging a hat on.

The Estudillo home was renamed Ramona’s Marriage Place, conveniently the last stop on the trolley from downtown. There is no evidence that Jackson ever visited the Estudillo home, but that didn’t really matter. The gift shop in the home was selling postcards by the dozen, tourist were flocking in and soaking up the rich ambience. Along with the aging missions, the Estudillo home gave white America a taste of the exotic, a taste many would bring into their own homes.

The greatest salesman of Estudillo style was born in 1908 at the high water mark of Ramona fever. His name was Cliff May, a San Diego architect who was the Great-great grandson of Estudillo.

May did not become a licensed architect until late in life. From age 18 until age 26, he led his own music ensemble, the Cliff May Band. Music was his passion.  It was not until the depths of the depression that May took a job of building furniture. It was by designing his own furniture that May received his first notice as a designer. He furnished a home with his early California furniture. The home sold immediately based on the furniture.

Soon May was designing homes all over Southern California including Los Angeles.  His Ranchero and Ranch style homes are clearly based on Estudillo fundamentals — from the floor plan circling a central patio, to details in windows and breezeways. Touring one of May’s San Diego homes, it is easy to imagine the May as a child, soaking up every nuance of the Estudillo estate. The only detail that isn’t present in May’s work is the pergola, which sits atop the roof so that the family could watch bullfights. The pergola was removed prior to May’s childhood because it did not conform to the Ramona novel, which described the structure as a low humble adobe structure.

Walking under the coverings of the courtyard, we get to appreciate how much of a jewel the home is. What was extravagant luxury of 1850’s San Diego became middle class vernacular just 100 years later. The Estudillo home is a touchstone to California history and style.

(0) Comments | Leave a comment