But this is Chico, too

A couple of months ago I boasted in a blog entry that Chico’s medical facilities had been able to take care of all my health needs.

That ended last week when I had to see a doctor in San Francisco. I didn’t mind going there, but I hated the idea of having to drive around in it, so I worked out a way to take the car as far as Walnut Creek, then use public transportation for the rest of the journey.

I found a cheap motel a block away from the BART station, rode into San Francisco, then took a shuttle bus to my appointment.

I’m far more familiar with San Francisco than I am with Walnut Creek, so it took me a while to find the motel, where my wife and I stayed the night after my appointment before heading back to Chico the next day.

Walnut Creek was a surprise. Like most Bay Area cities, it had grown from a small farming town into a commuter suburb during my childhood. But last week I discovered it had changed again. Our motel, which dated from the suburban era, was surrounded by tall office buildings. Right outside our window, the foundation for another building was being poured. It gave me the feeling that the motel, with its rambling, low-rise profile and reasonable rates, wouldn’t be around much longer. I predict that five years from now it will have been torn down and replaced by a 10-story $250 a night hotel.

I never thought I’d live to see the day when Walnut Creek developed a skyline. Unfortunately, this photo doesn’t quite do justice to the way the city looks nowadays.

Chico and San Francisco are two of California’s oldest cities. They are both important historical centers. They owe their start as thriving communities to the Gold Rush. But as Walnut Creek, which was once a wide spot on the road compared with Chico, becomes more distinctly urban, it resembles San Francisco far more than Chico ever will.

Walnut Creek, I suppose, has become an “edge city,” a term adopted by journalist Joel Garreau in 1991 to describe a dense concentration of office, retail and entertainment activites outside a traditional city in a formerly suburban area.

Whatever the future holds for Chico, it will never become an edge city. It’s too far away from any other city to become its satellite. A hundred years from now Orland or Biggs may have become edge cities, but Chico will remain one of the urban hubs of the northern Sacramento Valley.

Posted by Steve Brown at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The block I featured in my last blog entry has one good building. This block is just the opposite. It has all good buildings except for one glaring exception.

Start this walk around the block on the southwest corner of Fourth and Flume streets. You’re in front of the Lee-Mansfield house, one of the most handsome and best-preserved old buildings in Chico. It follows the 19th-century practice of saving the corners for the most imposing houses. Built in 1884, it fits squarely in the middle of the Victorian era.

Its two best features are its mansard roof, which modern commercial buildings have copied, and the elaborate “gingerbread” work on the front porch.

The house, now used for offices, was built for Wesley Lee, owner of Lee Pharmacy, which became one of Chico’s longest-running businesses.

As you head west on Fourth toward downtown, the next house on your right is as diminutive as the Lee-Mansfield house is grand. This Greek-revival house was built in about 1905 for John Murphy, a former city treasurer.

The final handsome house on this quadrant of the block, like the two before it, has also been turned into a business.

Turn right on Wall Street. Next up on your right is a building that goes by the historical name of Waterland house. John Waterland and his family owned the property from 1874 to 1963. Waterland was a journalist, confectionery and bookstore owner and city historian. Think of him as John Nopel’s early-20th century counterpart. Waterland wrote a series of columns for the Chico Record in the 1930s called “The Old Timer.”

The craftsman bungalow on this property, now a real estate office, was built in about 1916.
The Waterland house’s neighbor to the north — the Mediterranean revival building on the right in this photo — was never used as a residence. It was built in 1931 by Dr. Newton Enloe and became the north Sacramento Valley’s first medical diagnostic center. Because it was on the opposite side of the block from Enloe Hospital, it was well-placed.

Turn right on Third Street after passing another attractive corner building, also used as a business, and pass by a few smaller houses that are still used as residences. In an area so close to a downtown, a mixture of houses and businesses is still common.

At the northwest corner of Third and Flume is the building so ugly it needs no introduction. What can I say? Why did mid-20th century Chicoans decide to wreck this otherwise beautiful block? What really gets me about this building is the weird awning in front of it. I suppose you could call it Jetson’s-style architecture, a reference to the futuristic TV cartoon show of the early 1960s.

Turn right on Flume and pass by this building in a hurry so that you can admire the two mirror-image early-20th century cottages next up on the final quadrant of this block. Chico’s historical core has several sets of cottages, which were the city’s first rental units.

Next up is the empty lot where the old Enloe Hospital stood until it caught fire in 2003. It was burned so badly it had to be torn down. I trust that whatever is built on this spot will take its inspiration from its Victorian and craftsman neighbors and not the Jetson’s-style interloper.

Posted by Steve Brown at 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This walk around the block addresses the same concerns as my last blog, about the Rio Chico neighborhood: how Chico State University is encroaching on old Chico neighborhoods. A lot of conflict could have been avoided if the university had built more beautiful buildings.

We start at the southwest corner of Salem and First streets with Taylor Hall, which took the place of a block of houses about 40 years ago. This ugly building is made much more attractive by John Pugh’s mural that tricks the eye into thinking part of the wall has been removed to reveal Greek columns just beneath the surface.

The university’s master plan calls for this building to be torn down and replaced with two buildings, one of which is to be four stories tall. The plan calls for the architecture of the new buidlings to be compatible with surrounding structures, including the campus’ historic core area.

But what will become of the mural when Taylor Hall is torn down?

As you walk south on Salem the mid-20th century gives way to the 19th century in the brick building that now houses Madison Bear Garden. Originally, this was the home of attorney and land investor Frank Lusk, the man who bought the land from Annie Bidwell that soon became the Rio Chico subdivision.

I have two photos of the building during its tenure as Madison Bear Gardens. The first, taken in 1998, shows how it looks now. The second is from an earlier time when it was painted a lighter color.

The rest of this walk around the block is anti-climactic. Turn the corner and head west on Second and pass beyond the Bear and you will reach Yuba Hall, home of the university box office and the campus police. This is another building that shows that sensitivity for Chico’s history and architecture took a back seat to functionality. Turn right on Normal Avenue, heading north, and you will soon be back at Taylor Hall. This photo shows its entrance from First Street.

Turn right on First. For years this stretch of First has been off-limits to cars, but it still looks like a street. The university master plan calls for it to be turned into “a more pedestrian-friendly promenade.”
Except for the Bear, which is just fine the way it is, this block needs a huge infusion of people-pleasing design elements.

Posted by Steve Brown at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)