The House Will Come Down
For decades the City of Santa Barbara has been unable to decide the future of its Structure of Merit, the Franceschi House. The fate of the house was on the block in the 1970s when Pearl Chase, the person, campaigned against demolishing it. Little has been clarified since then while the unmaintained structure continues to deteriorate.
The original Franceschi version of the house is almost 120 years old and the Freeman version we have today approaches its century mark. The natural elements and ever-deferred maintenance have pushed it long past saving and the house will come down.
The city has struggled with its dilemma: too expensive to restore, too expensive to repair, and too expensive to demolish. Even without guaranteed funding, the city has pressed ahead with public discussions entitled, “Reimagining Franceschi House,” but the preordained outcome remains: there will be no actual house, only an imagined one.
The latest plan imposes a tight perimeter around the house and replaces the entire structure with a viewing terrace to take advantage of the site’s unmatched panoramic city views. It was presented recently to the Historic Landmarks Commission. Architect commissioners struggled with not being presented an overall plan including the parking lot showing visitor access.
They were generally critical of the plan’s lack of accessibility for disabled visitors, the severely diminished proposed terrace from the original house footprint (leaving visitors to wonder, “This was a house?”), and only vague plans for the iconic medallions currently mounted on the house.
Ah, the medallions. Those crazy, disjointed meanderings of Alden Freeman, their donor who would die six years later, demented and penniless. As currently laid out, there is no organized plan for preserving or reusing the medallions, the stained glass, or the statuary within the house, not to mention some historic interior items like ornate woodwork or the pump organ built into the stairs landing.
But the medallions are potentially the most troublesome to address. There are a lot of them. Eighty-five, and in all degrees of condition including abject decay. Can they be saved? Should they be saved? When the house is gone, they will be the only remaining fragments of the Franceschi House as we know it. A viewing terrace will not serve as a remembrance of a house. Nor might medallions.
The historical worth of the medallions might be debatable, but their educational value is unquestioned. Franceschi’s lineage is somewhat represented. Colonial American figures and events are prominent. The American Revolutionary War, our Civil War, and involvement in the Great War (WWI) have several or many medallions each. Freeman’s progressive views of last century are well displayed, as are some little known – but important – persons of that era.
An unscientific categorization of medallion topics might surprise readers. Some medallions fall into more than one category, leading to a list of more than 85, but there are five major groups. History (36 medallions), Social Science (33), Geography (20), the Arts (9), and Science (4).
The demolition (politely called “deconstruction”) of the house is a foregone conclusion. It is not too soon to consider what parts Santa Barbara wants to retain for future generations. And how. Our city had a calamitous rebirth with the 1925 earthquake. Freeman’s own 1926 “Reimagining Franceschi House” was part of that rebuilding. How much of it will we keep? Now is the time.