Good cookie-cutter houses
Chico’s first cooke-cutter houses were built more than 100 years ago.
How can that be? Those were the good old days, right? Each house was different from its neighbor, wasn’t it?
The problem is that we are quick to use the term “cookie-cutter” in a pejorative way. We think of it as a post-World War II malady. If housing is mass-produced, then it must be mediocre, right? It must be ugly and charmless.
Well, take a look at these three identical houses on Third Street, just east of Flume Street. Cute, aren’t they?
They were built in 1902 as rentals, at what was once the east end of town. It’s just outside the original grid of streets John Bidwell laid out almost 150 years ago. Today, their location places them inside the city’s historical core. They are still used as rentals.They look a little worse for wear, but I bet they’ll be around for a long time to come.
There are four or five other sets of these cookie-cutter houses scattered throughout downtown Chico. Just a half block away on Flume, next to the vacant lot that was once Enloe Hospital, is a set of two look-alike houses.
In our rosy view of the past, we like to imagine everyone owning their own house. But renting was far more common than it is now. People in small towns rented little houses like these, rooms in other people’s houses, hotel rooms or apartments in bungalow courts, or they took up residence in garages, barns and other outbuildings.
The first apartment buildings in Chico began popping up in the early 20th century. A good Chico example is the Waterland Apartments, on Normal Avenue between Third and Fourth streets. The building itself has been around since the 1880s, but it was converted into apartments back in 1914.
In Chico, at least, there’s a lot more to older neighborhoods than grand corner domiciles, such as the Stansbury, Earll, Walker and Barnard houses. Surviving structures show that people of modest means lived here, too.