But this is Chico, too

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.