But this is Chico, too

At the end of the last blog entry, I left you at the northeast corner of W. Sixth Street and Normal Avenue. The building on this corner, which dates from 1929, is one of Chico’s few Monterey revival-style buildings. It serves as office space for Legal Services of Northern California.

Head north along Normal until you get to W. Fifth Street.

I wish I could have walked along Fifth back in the 19th century when it was one of Chico’s finest residential streets, connecting downtown with the train station and lined with the houses of the well-to-do. The South Campus neighborhood is so full of Chico State University students now that it’s hard to imagine a time when doctors, lawyers and business owners and their families lived here.

I regard Fifth as a precursor to The Esplanade, which had its own heyday as a showy residential street. John Bidwell laid out The Esplanade, with its two side streets, in 1869, but it didn’t have many houses on it until the early 1900s. Before that time, it was a country road that cut through his ranch.

The brick building on the southeast corner of Fifth and Normal isn’t as old as it looks. Several years ago, I went on a walking tour led by John Gallardo from the Chico Heritage Association, who said it started out as a grocery store in the 1930s. Looking through the Polk’s city directories that are stored in the reference section of Chico library, I found out there was a Safeway Piggly Wiggly store at this site in 1931.

The corner is listed as “vacant” in the 1929-30 edition. This could mean there was no building at the corner, the brick building had no occupants or a structure pre-dating the brick building was vacant. Chicoans who lived here 77 years ago and whose memories are sharp as tacks would know for sure.

The next building on your right has housed the Grace Jr. gift store since 1974. Its owner, Grace Allread, died last year. This isn’t a vintage structure, but it’s among the one-of-a-kind businesses that give Chico its charm.

Finish the walk back at the Stansbury House. When Oscar Stansbury had the house built for his family, he was apparently worried that it was too far out of town. But I’m sure his daughter Angeline, in the last years she lived there, must have felt that the city was closing in on her.