Santa Cruz cottage that grew into a castle
Dr. Francis M. Kittredge gave up a 20-year medical practice to come west during the Gold Rush in 1849, then settled that year in Santa Cruz. He lived in a cottage on Beach Hill with his wife, Almira, 10-year-old son Ruel, and sister-in-law Harriet Mead. The doctor worked as a wharfinger for the harbor’s first wharf at the end of Bay Street, built in 1849 by Elihu Anthony to ship potatoes. In 1853 Kittredge was elected to the State Legislature, and in 1858, joined other community leaders in constructing the “Santa Cruz Turnpike,” the first graded toll road over the difficult Santa Cruz Mountains (now called Old San Jose Road).
In 1859, Harriet fell in love with Judge William Blackburn, whose sprawling orchard and farm lay just north of Beach Hill. The wedding took place in Blackburn’s whitewashed cottage (still standing at 101 Cedar Street). Sadly, Kittredge’s 24-year-old son died of tuberculosis in the Civil War in 1863, followed a year later by Judge Blackburn’s 2-yearold son. The judge also died in 1867.
That year, Kittredge hired John Morrow to build a Greek Vernacular cottage at the corner of Third Street and Pacific Bluffs (now the foot of Front Street). This was the small cottage that, unlike his son and nephew, was destined to growup.
Hotel
In 1874, local railroad interests negotiated with Harriet Blackburn to build a rightof-way through her orchard, and through a gulch between Blackburn Terrace and Beach Hill known as the Slot. Station houses were built at the current sites of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Center, and Las Palmas Tacos. Kittredge left his Beach Hill house to Harriet Blackburn, who in 1875 converted it into a railroad hotel called The Kittredge House, adding an Alpine Stick-style wing by Philbrick & LeRomer.
Harriet leased the property to hotelier Albion Paris Swanton (whose 13-year-old son Fred would later build the boardwalk). Two years later, complaints about the railroad running up Pacific Avenue were addressed when this was turned into a less-obtrusive horse-trolley line, and a new rail route was built through Blackburn’s orchard east of Blackburn Terrace, up Chestnut Street, and tunneling under Mission Hill. In 1883, A.P. Swanton left to run a livery company between Santa Cruz and Pescadero, with his own hotels at either end.
Trolley-owner Elias J. Swift envisioned something similar in Santa Cruz. In 1883, he
leased the Pope House Resort on Mission Hill (at Mission and King streets), plus the first class Pacific Ocean House hotel at Pacific Avenue and Plaza Lane, as well as the Kittredge House on Beach Hill, each served by the same trolley line. Swift improved the Kittredge House by moving the original cottage back, and adding a $5,000 threestory wing, in Alpine Stick style with a Mansard roof and castle-like towers. He also ran the Racetrack Hotel at Bay View Racetrack between Swift and Fair streets, where Swift raced his trolley horses. Permission to extend Swift’s trolley line to the racetrack wasn’t given until after the track had closed in 1887, rendering the extension unneeded. But as this very industrious young man was finding other ways to improve his holdings, he died in 1889 at age 45.
Private villa
In 1890, the Kittredge House hotel (briefly called “The Castle”), was bought for $24,500 by millionaire James Philip Smith, who converted it back into a private home. His wife named it “Sunshine Villa” after her silent but smiling husband, nicknamed “Sunshine Jim.” With architect Daniel Damkroeger, the building was thoroughly and elegantly remodeled inside and out, and finished with a vivid vermillion mansard roof. A round Queen Anne tower was added to the side of the building for a solarium under a round porch.
The pasture between the house and second avenue was converted into magnificent landscaped botanical gardens of rare plantings with serpentine trails, statues and fountains, resembling the gardens of Monterey’s Del Monte Hotel. In 1893, the Smiths saw the Chicago World’s Fair, then toured China and Japan as well. When they returned to Santa Cruz, a 16-foot-high dragon fountain from Yokohama was installed outside the billiard room window, exotic plants from their travels were added to the gardens along with a Japanese gardener. Asian antiques and Victoriana filled their Oriental Room in the Anglo-Asian style, with bamboo spandrels over the bay windows.
The now grown Fred Swanton brought electricity to Santa Cruz in 1889, prompting Smith to partner with Swanton to electrify the trolleyline. This had been a failure in San Jose in 1890, so Swanton & Smith had to electrify the Mission Street line first to prove that the technology was reliable. Santa Cruz County Bank president, attorney Wm. T. Jeter, was called “the Peacemaker of the Electric Trolley,” helping guide it to success in 1891. In 1894, Jeter went to Sacramento as Lieutenant Governor of California.
A terrible 1894 fire leveled downtown’s Tricorner Block, Front Street Chinatown, and Cooper Street Civic Center. While reconstruction was moving along swiftly in 1895, there was concern the tourist season would be lost, so Smith proposed a publicity stunt, holding a week-long Venetian Water Carnival on the San Lorenzo River. The event included decorated boat promenades, band concerts, balls, water Olympics, hijinks, and fireworks, and was so popular it was repeated annually.
Upon his return from Sacramento, Jeter, with his wife and father-inlaw, became residents of the Sunshine Villa. The Smiths were off tending to their interests in New York and Paris when the 1906 Earthquake struck. Their daughter, Anita Gonzales, was in San Francisco at the time, and her fate was unknown for 12 days. At last it was learned she had fled the flames, and stayed with friends near Golden Gate Park. In 1907, the Jeters moved into their own Beach Hill home at 407 Cliff St., where they replicated the Sunshine Villa’s solarium tower.
By now, the Villa had become more of a summer home, with Edward West and cement company chemist Llewellyn Bachmann as guests. Bachmann invented a type of cement for sealing oil wells. Sunshine Jim is believed to have died in 1926.
Decline
In 1927, John and Kate McCray purchased the estate. They placed stucco over the wood siding to reduce maintenance, built a wing of apartments in the back for an auto court, and named it “McCray Manor.” The Great Depression hit with the stock market crash in 1929, and the McCray slowly changed from a resort hotel, to a boarding house. Kate ran the hotel after John died in 1936.
During World War II, soldiers on leave made up a large percent of the guests, but if they got back late after an evening of bars and night clubs, or the brothel across the street, they’d find the doors locked. In 1942, Elwood Beckmann was a soldier visiting the Santa Cruz Boardwalk with his Navy buddies. They tried to sleep on the beach, then looked for a place still open where they could get a warm bed. They headed toward the neon “Hotel McCray” sign and knocked on the door. A gruff-mannered woman answered, and they said they only had $17 between them, but could they have a room for the night. She snatched their money, and told them they could have a room on the top with one bed, but they couldn’t get under the covers, and had to remove their shoes. They huddled together on the bed, shivering most of the night, until they decided they’d look for an all-night coffee shop to warm up. Elwood could never have imagined then that one day he’d be glad to return and call the old hotel his home!
After the war, the emerging car culture preferred motels landscaped with parking lots, and by the 1950s the McCray was shabby and the gardens overgrown. Alfred Hitchcock had a second home in Scotts Valley, and was inspired by the dilapidated condition of the McCray, to use its configuration on a high promontory with the adjacent motel, as the inspiration for the mansion in his 1960 movie “Psycho.”
By 1960, it had become the dilapidated McCray Manor, attracting Alfred Hitchcock as a possible film location. (Contributed)
Revival
In 1985, local restoration specialist Michael O’Hearn recognized the hidden potential in this Victorian diamond in the rough, prominently visible from many parts of town. Yet, with its history of drug dealing, O’Hearn feared it would be demolished as a public nuisance, then replaced with something modern and massive to get the most out of the site. He purchased the property in 1987 for $4.5 million, demolishing the rear additions. The main gem was the front wing, but he discovered it was built of obsolete balloonframe construction, framing two floors at once with 20-foot uprights that had warped. It might have deterred his purchase if he had know, but the funds were committed at this point, with no going back.
He put the mansion on railroad ties, to roll it back for basement excavation. Two days later, the Loma Prieta Earthquake struck in 1989. If the earthquake had struck while the house was on the ground, it would have been destroyed. O’Hearn wanted his modern addition closer in style to the historic wing, but because he was partly using public funds, the state required a more severe differentiation in style between old and new. Yet this was not an issue with the interiors, designed for home-like qualities and Victorian ambiance throughout. O’Hearn renamed it “the Sunshine Villa” after its heyday, opening as an assisted living facility in 1991.
For years after, O’Hearn and I did lectures together on the history and restoration involved in this wonderful landmark. O’Hearn elevated everything he touched, no matter how humble, and the only reason this landmark survives, is because of O’Hearn. His death on Aug. 2, 2011 at age 71, was a shock, losing someone who, in old and new construction, upheld the humanist character of Santa Cruz.