Davis History Today

More State Shaping of Davis Life: An Unsanitary Town, 1914-15 (43)

2012-02-28T07:23:00.000-08:00

Post Number 39, on the state pressuring Davis regarding itssubstandard jail in 1937, brought to mind the equally if not more dramaticepisode of state pressure in 1914-15 to change the entire town’s profoundlyunsanitary condition.

I report this episode in two parts. One, I quote the briefsummary I gave in my book Davis. Two,I reproduce the original state report. (In the hope of greater clarity, thereproduction is of my marked up copy.)

Demolition and Replacement of the C & 4th Fraternity House (42)

2012-02-23T07:13:00.001-08:00

Item 9A of the HRMC February27th meeting is a proposal to demolish and replace the fraternity house at Cand 4th streets.

HRMC Agenda, Feb. 27 Meeting (41)

2012-02-22T18:16:00.001-08:00

HRMC Minutes, Jan. 23, 2012 Meeting (40)

2012-02-22T17:28:00.002-08:00

State Regulations Have Long Driven City Actions: The City Jail in 1937 (39)

2012-02-19T08:27:00.000-08:00

(UCD Special Collections)

I recently ran across a Davis historical tidbit thatreminded me that current Davis government angst over state regulation of suchmatters as redevelopment, water quality, and public schools is hardly new.

Instead, the state “mandate” has long been, perhaps, a majordriver of local government.

The tidbit reminding me of this is a 1937 letter from astate agency to Mayor Covell informing the City that its jail is “unfit forhuman habitation” and should be replaced.

1. Aside from the role of thestate seen here, we are learning that the fabled “old boy” government thatreigned in Davis from incorporation to after WWII seemed content withtolerating a brutally primitive detention facility in the town.

2. This pressure from thestate also suggests a different perspective on the construction of what is nowcalled “the old city hall” at 3rd and F streets. The impetus to construct itmay have come in good part from state pressure to build a new jail (which wasin fact a portion of the new city hall).

If we did not know about this pressure from the state, we mightthink that civic pride, town boosterism, or such prompted building a city hall.But this letter tells us that there were perhaps less of those kinds of carrotsthan of the sticks wielded by the state.

Feb. 27 HRMC Hearing on 337 D Street (38)

2012-02-16T17:30:00.000-08:00

Enterprise, 2-16-12

Public Davis History Exhibits: # 1, Davis Ace Housewares Building (37)

2012-02-12T08:56:00.000-08:00

This is the first in aseries of posts on Davis history exhibits in public locations in Davis.

The walls of the stairway to the second floor of the DavisAce housewares building at 240 G Street are covered with a rather complicated setof photographs, other graphics, and framed artifacts related to the history ofwhat used to be called “Davis Lumber.”

The photos numbered 1 through 4 show the exhibit as one movesup the stairs and turns to the right moving further up into the second floor. Bya rough count, there are some 75 items.

As can be seen, many of the images show early Davis Lumberbuildings and scenes, but others involve the homes of members of the Andersonfamily and even Davis history more generally, as seen in image 5.

Minutes of the Sept. 19, 2011 HRMC Meeting (36)

2012-01-18T17:33:00.000-08:00

Agenda, HRMC Meeting, Monday, Jan. 23 (35)

2012-01-18T17:20:00.000-08:00

Historic Resources Commission To Hold Hearing on University Avenue Historic Home (34)

2012-01-12T18:27:00.000-08:00

Monday, January 23rd, the Historical Resources Management Commission will be asked to approve a substantial expansion of the historic home at 339 University Avenue. The details are given in the public notice reproduced here.

This house is of some interest because it was, for many years, the home of the historic resources manager for the City of Davis. This person was key in the functioning of the Historic Resources Management Commission.

Mirrors within mirrors, perhaps.

Slideshow on “Tiny Davis, CA: Small Size & Slow Growth From Founding to WWII” (33)

2012-01-02T09:04:00.000-08:00

Page 1 of 37

A slideshow version of a 37 page booklet by me titled “Tiny Davis, CA” is available in the right-hand sidebar of this blog.*

In that slideshow/booklet, I document how very small Davis was from its founding to after World War II.

Three forms of evidence are reviewed: 1) the number of people, 2) the number of buildings and 3) how the village looked from the air in 1924, 1936, and 1939.

Page 7 of 37

Because Davis was so unlike many other California places in its size and slow growth, I then ask: why was it so stagnant?

I offer three reasons: 1) concentrated land ownership that “land-locked” the village; 2) conservative culture that discouraged in-migration; and, 3) student-townspeople tensions that kept possible newcomers away. There are likely, of course, several additional reasons, some of which I mention.

Page 8 of 37

I have felt it necessary to do this analysis because of the tendency of some historically minded people to depict pre-World War II Davis as a much larger place than it was.

Instead, I think the evidence is clear that Davis was a surprisingly tiny place.

Page 12 of 37

Page 18 of 37

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* The url is:

https://picasaweb.google.com/110278657375889577976/TinyDavisCA#slideshow/5687125736040191266

The “Christmas Festivities” Display at the Hattie Weber: As Much About Us As About 1898 Davisville? (32)

2011-12-26T14:33:00.000-08:00

For a number of years, a snippet from a Davis Enterprise story dated December 30, 1898 has been prominently displayed at the Hattie Weber Museum of Davis during the holidays.

Titled “Christmas Festivities,” the Christmas Eve scene and performance at the Presbyterian Church are described, as can be read in four reproductions of it in this post (images 2 through 5).

This year, the large-size version of it has even been placed in a kind of altar to the holidays. (Image 1)

Its long-term veneration and the resonance it seems to have prompts me to reflect how items do or do not achieve such iconic status.

Let me try to address this puzzle through recalling a few principles of historical narrative. I will then apply them to the snippet.

One, the raw material of history consists of infinite episodes, snippets, and whatever.

Two, because no narrative can capture everything, representations of history are extraordinarily selective. Any narrative is a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny piece of what could have, and might have, been reported.

Three, the items appearing in narratives are not random samples. Instead, selection is guided by the selector’s knowledge, preferences, feelings, and other factors.

Four, in view of these three principles of 1) infinite facts, 2) extreme selection, and 3) human filters, there is a high likelihood that any datum presented to us as “history” communicates as much or more about the “historian”--about “us”--as it does about the people supposedly reported on--the “them.”

Let me now relate all this to the snippet titled “Christmas Festivities.”

Several years ago, Lyn Lofland, Dennis Dingemans and I embarked on a project to “rescue” the 164 “Portraits of the Past” columns Joanne Larkey published in the Davis Enterprise between December 1969 and May 1973.

In the course of this project (which remains uncompleted), we read Larkey’s columns and of course chatted about several of them.

The fourth of the 164, dated December 26, 1969, summarized and quoted 1898 Davis Enterprise reports of Christmas in the village that year. That column is reproduced in Image 2 in the rough, paste-up form we first read it. It is also seen as the top display item in Image 1 and is shown enhanced in Image 3.

The column struck all three of us, and Lyn Lofland in particular, who drew attention to the “Holiday Festivities” quote from the Enterprise, in it. I have boxed it with red lines in Image 2.

That “Holiday Festivities” snippet circulated among people involved in the Hattie Weber. Jim Becket was at one point organizing a Christmas display for the museum. He thought it would be appropriate to display an enlarged version of it next to a tree decorated in the spirit of the tree described in the snippet. He asked me to prepare an enhanced large-scale version of it and of the Larky column and I did. Both are seen in Image 1.

(A reproduction of the original “Holiday Festivities” text as it appears in the Davis Enterprise microfilm is shown in Image 4. The enhancement is seen in Image 5.)

What remains mysterious, at least to me, is why and how those of us reading these (often crudely presented) materials “latched on” to “Holiday Festivities.” Notice that the Larkey column reports a variety of other Christmas activities in the village. And, entire issues of the Davis Enterprise from that 1898 season provide abundant other, candidate materials.

But, no, something about that particular snippet captured attention--and continues to do so. As such, I think it says as much about us as people in contemporary Davis as it does about people in Davisville in 1898.

I am, though, hard pressed to say what it says beyond the obvious things also said about other yesteryear-themed cultural productions--nostalgia, “simpler times,” and all that.

Davis & Yolo-Solano Life in the 1910s as Glimpsed in Two Booster Publications (31)

2011-12-18T08:08:00.000-08:00

I recently acquired a “commercial encyclopedia” of four western states that was published in 1910. The title page is reproduced in Image 1.

Measuring 12 by 15 inches and running to 196 pages, it is a lavish booster compendium featuring photographs from the Southern Pacific Railroad and Sunset Magazine (which is pretty much the same thing).

In addition to capsule profiles of counties and towns, the volume has an 18 by 26 inch foldout map of Northern California.

Inspecting the Davis area on that map (seen in Image 2), I was struck by the number of named places in Yolo and Solano counties that no longer exist. Their names include Batavia, Maine Prairie, Swingle, Merritt, and Mullen. As I understand it, many of these and other locations were at one time not merely names on a map but real, albeit small, villages.*

4. Sunset, 1915

A couple of days ago, an “antique paper” dealer put a page from a 1915 issue of Sunset on e-bay auction. As seen in Image 4, that page is an ad placed by the government of Yolo County that urges people to move to the area and farm--and to expect help from the UC Experimental Farm.

Taken together, the map and the ad provide glimpses into a world of still-small agriculture--almost horticulture (also hinted at in image 4).

At that time, apparently, it could still seem plausible to forge a livelihood with a small farm and to reside near a small village.

Ironically, the historical fact is that the UC Experimental Farm was a major force in sweeping all that away--even as it was proclaimed to be the friend of small-scale agriculture.

The “narrative” seen in that Sunset ad is yet another example of how what can appear possible in one period can seem implausible if not delusional to later observers. (Or is the Sunset text merely cynically manipulative?)

5. Ellis entry on Davis

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* A few years ago, I read descriptions of a robust community in Batavia that made me wonder how many of its buildings might still be there. So, I drove to its location. I could see no evidence there was ever a village there.

Slideshow History of Davis Biking Is Now Online (30)

2011-12-11T08:14:00.000-08:00

In 2007, Ted Buehler, a graduate student in UCD transportation studies, completed an M. A. thesis titled “Fifty Years of Bicycle Policy in Davis, CA.” (Image 1)

At 159 typescript pages, it is a quite fine description and analysis of the bicycle in Davis life over an extended period.

The exposition is made all the more interesting by Buehler taking advantage of the new ease of placing digital images on word processor pages. This practice is illustrated in image 2, which is page 35 of the thesis.

On other pages, rather than simply his account of a news story, for example, we get a reproduction of the actual news story.

Unfortunately, the thesis itself is apparently not now online, although there are two links to it that do not work. But, it is of course available in the UCD library* (and I have a pdf copy I will email to anyone who asks for it).

But, short of the online thesis, it is good now to see that the slideshow he assembled from the thesis is online. A grid-summary of it is here:

http://daviswiki.org/Bicycle_History_Presentation

And the full presentation is here:

http://daviswiki.org/Bicycle_History_Presentation/Full

A sense of the several dozen visually dramatic slides he has worked up is provided, I hope, by images 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Mr. Buehler is himself an interesting figure. Some of his more recent activities are described here:

http://daviswiki.org/Users/TedBuehler

http://portlandafoot.org/w/Ted_Buehler

_____________________

*A 15-page summary is sometimes here: http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/handy/Davis_bike_history.pdf

A History Plaza Is Not a Sprinkler System: Confusing Technical and Value Decisions in the Central Park Remodel Process (29)

2011-12-05T10:13:00.000-08:00

In reflecting on the history of the proposal for a history plaza in Central Park, I have begun to think the problem is that a history plaza is not a sprinkler system, but that it has been treated like one.

This is to say, the history plaza idea got defined as a technical decision of park remodeling when it should have been viewed as a serious issue of values in public policy.

Let me explain this distinction and then apply it to the case of the history plaza.

Decisions in government matters are--simplifying for clarity--of two types. In one type, an official policy is forged out of diverse viewpoints. There is open presentation of divergent alternatives and conflicting values are accommodated. A course of action is achieved by some manner of voting.

In the other type, a policy matter is thought to be technical, meaning that the first and basic decisions are assigned to (ceded to?) presumed specialist experts. These experts devise a science/technology driven course of action and present it to policy-makers. Because only one course of action is presented--the technically best course of action--decision-makers decide to “approve” or “adopt” the proposal or not. Commonly, approving an “expert proposal” is not a problem. The City Council “consent calendar” is studded with decisions of this second type.

So what does this have to do with the current Central Park remodel?

1. The Central Park remodel process has proceeded on the technical decision model. A landscape design firm was contracted, came to Davis to observe and interview, went away, and then came back with an expert plan. The images accompanying this post include examples of technical elements of that plan. (The plan was devised by Royston, Hanamoto, Alley & Abey--aka RHAA.)

2. It seems to me that the bulk of RHAA’s plan is, in fact, technical in character. Or, at least, I certainly hope the design of, for example, the public restroom is driven by effectiveness and efficiency standards rather than by the politics of competing visions and values.

3. The technical decision model would have worked just fine if all the decision-situations RHAA faced in fact fit it.

4. Alas, at least one set of decisions did not--and does not--fit. As the RHAA people moved through the work of remodeling Central Park, they of course came to the WPA utility facility and to the question of what to do with it and with its current location. In complete good faith, I believe, RHAA designers likely said (in my imagining): “Aha! Because we are demolishing a building next to a history museum, let’s put in a plaza and call it a history plaza. Even better, let’s put a colored-concrete map of Davis exactly where the building stood.” And this they did.

5. With these actions, RHAA moved from the category of making technical decisions to the category of making value decisions. In my view, they went far beyond the proper scope of their work when they began to tell us in Davis how we are to regard and conceive Davis history. It is as though the expert specialists who proposed lawn sprinklers at 3rd & E in Davis were also empowered to propose Natsoulas’ "The Joggers" at the same comer. It is an excellent proposal, certainly, but not appropriately the work of irrigation contractors.

6. This might not be so bad if the City processed RHAA’s history plaza proposal as a value rather than a technical decision. But it did not.

7. Instead, the plaza/colored concrete map was (and is) the only plan presented. Giving the RHAA proposal the status of singularity served to clothe it in the mystique of technical justification and therefore of superiority and inevitability (the silent signals of “this is the best”).

As Anne Brunette reports in her chronicle of the process (published in Post # 26 on this blog), this one plan was presented to various audiences, including commissions and the Council itself, as having the same status as, for example, upgrading the park fountain. “Do you want your malfunctioning fountain upgraded?” “Well, of course.”

8. Information presented in a technical decision frame tends to cue the same frame--the same mindset--in viewers. Presenters and viewers are trapped together in that frame. They may be uncomfortable about what is happening but find it difficult to articulate what is amiss. (This, at least, was my first response to the RHAA plaza proposal.)

(The slowness of Davisites to begin to resist RHAA’s plaza is testimony to the power of frames. Resistance is made even harder by the “this is obvious” confidence exuded by some city officials.)

9. So what is the problem here? What is wrong and why should we care? Why not let an anonymous RHAA designer at a Mill Valley corporate headquarters decide how we express our sense of history and identity in Davis?

10. The answer is: Because this place is ours, not RHAA’s, and we have both the responsibity and the right to decide through deliberation if we want a “history plaza” or not and what will be on and in it. A plaza in that location is about who we think we are. Only we can best figure that out. We cannot--or ought not--cede representation of our local history and our artistic sensibilities to an out-of-town landscape corporation.

11. If we are to have a history plaza (itself a value question), a value-decision process should start, I think, with a request-for-proposals for conceptual treatments. The proposals should be publicly deliberated and a democratic selection made. There are several ways in which that process can be organized and I am ready to trust the City Council to devise a valid course of action.

12. Fortunately, it is not too late to do this. The point of no return is close, but it has not yet been reached, I surmise.

13. As everyone knows, a WPA financed building constructed in 1937 now stands on that site. In my view, any plan for adaptively reusing it should make it an element of a more general Davis history plaza. And it should compete with other plans for the area.

14. My main argument is that there should be an open process that leads to valid deliberation and a fair decision. If such a process takes place, it might well conclude with adopting the RHAA proposed color-concrete map of Davis. So be it. If that happens, that plaza will at least then be an authentic expression of Davis, not the “hypocrisy plaza” it is now.

15. I must follow the logic of value versus technical decisions to another outcome. Events could develop such that the Council votes to have no plaza at all. I do not favor that, but I recognize that political divisions might make it the most reasonable resolution. Let’s hope it does not come to that.

California Women Suffrage Centennial Exhibition at City Hall (28)

2011-12-04T09:01:00.000-08:00

The display case near the City Manager’s office in City Hall currently has an exhibition titled “Celebrating California Women Winning the Vote.”

I call attention to this exhibition because it features events in Davis that were part of that campaign. It is thus “Davis History” and not simply history.

We read, for example, that Jeanette Rankin herself spoke in Davis “to an audience as large as was ever drawn by either one of the great parties . . . .”

A sign in the lower-right of the display case says the exhibition was mounted by the League of Women Voters.

This League action suggests a more general practice.

Davis has a great many organizations of all kinds. Each of them has a distinctive history in Davis and approach to history featuring Davis.

Like the League, any and all of these other groups could organize interesting Davis history exhibitions featuring themselves and/or the particular history in which they are interested.

There are several venues in Davis where such exhibitions can be displayed. These include accessible display cases at City Hall, the public library, and the Davis Senior Center.

But most especially, I would think the Hattie Weber Museum of Davis might take the lead in soliciting and helping to organize exhibitions by Davis groups.

And, let me not neglect to mention the HW encouraging exhibitions by Davis individuals, especially those who taken prominent roles in Davis public life.

Posts on the Central Park “History Plaza” Delivered to the City Council (27)

2011-12-01T08:23:00.000-08:00

Monday morning, I hand-delivered to City Hall one hard-copy for each Council Member of each of my three “History Plaza” posts. (These are posts numbers 18, 22, and 24.)

The posts were assembled under a cover-memo explaining why I presented these to them and the two requests I make of them. That cover-memo is reproduced here.

Questions & Answers About the History of the Proposed Central Park “History Plaza” (26)

2011-11-30T10:48:00.000-08:00

Questions

In thinking about the odd “history plaza” being proposed for installation next to the Hattie Weber in Central Park, I began to wonder about the manner in which it proceeded through the City process of review and evaluation.

To help figure this out, I formulated some questions about that process and sent them to Anne Brunette, one of the lead city staff in the overall Central Park project.

Very promptly, she sent me an account of the process.

Because of the bearing these questions and answers have on the status of the “history plaza,” I publish both of them here.

Actually, I am, at her request, publishing what seems to be a slight revision of her original account.

In a future post, I will offer an analysis of all this.

Answers

The Vanished World Along the Tracks North of the Depot (25)

2011-11-27T08:46:00.000-08:00

None--I mean none--of the structures originally next to the Davis railroad tracks north of the train depot are there today. Everything in that area was demolished and replaced by about 1955.

This makes it hard for me--and I assume other people--to make sense of photographs taken of that area prior to, broadly, World War II. With no current points of reference visible in old photographs, we have no anchors, so to speak. Instead, we are peering into a virtually foreign country.

For this reason, I have been especially interested in the three photos of the Thorne army of the unemployed taken on March 18, 1914. They give us a rare “ground level” perspective on what was along at least some of the track north of the depot. Correlated with other images and maps, we can begin to form a firmer sense of the early world along the tracks.

I published two of those March, 1914 images in post # 21, November 13th. Recently, David Herbst graciously sent me a scan of a third photo taken that same day in that area.

3. (David Herbst)

Now, all three can be looked at in geographical sequence. Numbered 1, 2, and 3, they move northward up the track from north of Second Street toward Fourth Street.

4. (UCD Special Collections)

Image 1 is taken just south of Third Street. We are looking west at the backs of buildings fronting G Street in the 300 block. The building that looms large on the left in Image 2 is just glimpsed to the right in Image 1. In Image 2, the train is turning at Third Street. In Image 3, we are fully into the 300 block. Fourth Street is in the distant right of the image.

5. (David Herbst)

All of this should begin to make more sense when you see at all the buildings on the right of the track (from our viewer perspective) from the air. Such a view is provided in Image 4 (which was taken in 1939). Most of the buildings seen in Images 1-3 are still there in this photo. We are looking east with Fourth Street on the left and Third Street on the right. The buildings seen in Images 1 through 3, run from right to left across the image.

For further orientation, look now at image 5. This is a 1910 Shinkle postcard looking north up the tracks. Third Street crosses the tracks in the middle-distance. The main buildings in the first four images are seen lined up on the left along the tracks.

6. (CA State Archives)

Yet a different view is provided by Image 6, which is an excerpt from a 1909 map drawn by the Southern Pacific Railroad. Third Street is at the bottom, Fourth Street is at the top. The buildings to the left of the track between Third and Fourth streets are those glimpsed or seen in the previous five images.

For completeness, here is the reverse side of
Image 3 (David Herbst)

Toward an Authentic History Plaza in Central Park, Part II: Design Objectives & Actions (24)

2011-11-22T07:53:00.000-08:00

This is the second of a two-part post. The first part (#22, Nov. 19, this blog) focused on design aspects of adaptively reusing the historic WPA building as a signal feature of an authentic History Plaza. This post focuses on design of the area more generally.

I think there are at last three design objectives of an authentic History Plaza and at least seven actions that can be taken to achieve them.

These are the three design objectives. One, the area should convey an open and spacious feeling (which it does not at this time). Two, even while spacious, it should communicate physical unity, integration, and wholeness. Three, design features should promote a sense of, and the reality of, personal safety and security.

Notice that I have not mentioned conveying history as an objective. This is because the memorial garden and WPA building already begin to go a long way along that road. We need more history work in a new plaza, certainly (such as signage labeling it a “History Plaza”). But we also need to think about other objectives qua plaza.

Here are seven suggested design actions.

l. Remove the trellis from the WPA building. I think this alone will do wonders for opening up the area. (Images 1, 2, 3.)

2. Take down the fence with the vines on it between the memorial garden and the WPA building. (Images 1, 2.)

3. Rethink all of the landscaping around the memorial garden in terms of relating it to the WPA building. For example, just how much of that hedge, if any, is needed? Does the hedge fronting C Street separate the plaza from the street too much? (Images 1, 2.)

4. How might the benches in the memorial garden be redone so as to better relate to a more comprehensive and unified scheme of seating that encompasses the entire plaza? Or, are those benches, or any benches, needed?

5. Consider carefully how all the plaza trees might or might not be pruned at the lower limb levels to “lift” the “ceiling” of the area.

6. Create a unified plaza surface treatment. (Image 5.) In good Davis fashion, a new and unifying plaza surface should be permeable, textured, natural, and a color found in nature.

7. Take out: 1) the wooden bench around the tree north of the WPA building; 2) all the white, iron fence next to the HW Museum; and, 3) the landscaping hedge next to that fencing and in that area generally. (Images 5, 6, 7).

Over the last 15 years (since 1996), I have spent an enormous number of hours in and around the HW Museum as a researcher, exhibiter, docent, and “hanger outer.” “Being there,” I have observed the “problem population” that has tended to congregate at the bench around the tree at the rear door of the HW. (Image 5.) The white iron fence with its hedge provides screening from the street for anyone who sits or lies down between them and the HW building. I have seen people sleeping even on the north (5th Street) side of the HW, shielded by the iron fence, hedge and air conditioner there. (Images 6, 7.)

In my view, the WPA building is only a modest contributor to homeless congregation at the rear door of the HW building. Instead, equal or more important contributors are the tree bench, fence, and hedge. Taken together, these features create a nice outdoor club gathering space for people with highly constricted options for hanging out.*

All those features should be removed and replaced with lawn or new History Plaza surface, as appropriate.

(An aside: the tree-bench, fence and hedge constellation at the back door of the HW is yet another example of a design notion that seemed a good idea at the time, but did not work. Over 15 years, I have only rarely seen it used--and not because of the “homeless problem.” It simply did not augment life at the HW.)

Sorry to go on so long about item 7, but it is key, I think. This, though, ends my list.

It is in the nature of drawing up plans that I have failed to list critical considerations (e. g. video surveillance, lighting, police foot patrolling) and I propose things that are obvious nonsense when rightly understood. Other minds have much work to do.

Many thanks for your patience in reading through this post.

____________________

* Of course these factors massively fade in import compared to the causal role of the availably of public toilets. If one really wants to deter homeless gathering in Central Park, one has to close the public toilets, I think. That will not happen, of course, so design features become all the more important. Even so, there are limits. After all, it is a public park.

Earliest Images of the WPA Building In Central Park (23)

2011-11-20T08:03:00.000-08:00

1. (UCD Special Collections)

One of the meanings of Davis being a tiny, rather no-place, town before World War II is that visual records of what it “was like” are available but not abundant. Some few things were rather lushly documented, certainly, in particular, the train depot, which was (and is) something of a photographer’s obsession (this blog’s post # 8, September 4, 2011).

But, many other places and buildings that have been of interest in recent years are difficult visually to document.

2. (UCD Special Collections)

3. (UCD Special Collections)

Such is so far the case, for me, regarding the utility building constructed in 1937 by the Works Progress Administration in what was then called the Davis City Park. One might think that such a joint federal-city project would be an occasion for pictures, but it apparently was not. Nor did it stimulate other photographs, so far as I know.

The consequence is that we have to scratch around in odd ways to find early images.

4. (UCD Special Collections)

Such scratching led me to look through the 1930s-40s snapshot albums the Calpha fraternity donated to UCD’s Special Collections. That group occupied the large house at the south-east corner of 4th & C streets in the late ‘30s & early ‘40s. Members sometimes took pictures of one another outside the house on the sidewalk and in the street. A few of these snapshots show the newly built Davis City Park in the background and include the WPA utility facility.

5. (David Herbst)

Image 1 is an example of such a snapshot and it is of interest because of what we see in the distance behind the two boys. Image 2 is an enlargement of that background and shows four buildings. We see, from the left, the WPA facility, 309 Sixth Street, 603 C Street, and, in the right far distance, 335 Seventh Street (the home of Clement Phillips, an important contributor to developing Monterey Jack cheese).

6. (UCD Special Collections)

Image 3 is an enlargement of the WPA building itself in that same snapshot. It appears to have an opening--a door-- in its south wall. There is a small extension to the west.

Image 4 is an enlargement of the background in another snapshot and shows the east wall of the facility. That wall seems to have one door and one window.

A few years after construction, a postcard printer made the park a subject in a view that includes the building, as we see in image 5.

Scratching further, the WPA building is sort-of visible in the background of a few aerial photos of the UCD campus that I also found in UCD Special Collections. Image 6 is an excerpt from one of them. It shows a new and raw Davis City Park in which the building stands alone. Its most clear feature is an extension to the west from the main structure.

These images are, of course, rather pathetic. But they do show the shape of the original building--which remains the same.

__________________

My thanks to UCD University Archivist John Skarstad for his help in researching WPA building images.

Toward an Authentic History Plaza in Central Park: Part 1, The WPA Building (22)

2011-11-19T09:10:00.000-08:00

1. East Side

This is the first of a two-part post proposing an authentic, not hypocritical, history plaza north of the HW Museum in Central Park. The plaza would feature adaptive reuse of the WPA building there now. This post focuses on the building. Part II will focus on the plaza.

The other day I went over to Central Park and walked around the WPA building (aka restrooms) with the “problem” of that structure in mind.

As I looked at the structure from each of its four sides and in its context, it became clear to me that Dennis Dingemans and Mary Lee Thomson were on to something when they suggested that the openings in the building could be made into display windows (post 16, October 20th, this blog). Let me embrace that idea and elaborate on it.

In order most effectively to visualize display openings in the building, one should go there and, as a first matter, engage in the mental exercise of removing the horrendous trellis that masks the structure (which is seen in all the images in this post).

2. South Side

In addition, one needs mentally to remove the east-side vine-covered fence that separates the brick-paved seating area from the building. It is seen in Image 1.

When those two structures and some other landscaping are taken away, you can see an open plaza punctuated by the brick-paved seating area next to the C Street sidewalk and the small WPA building with three exhibit windows on the east wall (Image 1).

In my mind’s eye, at least, it is a very pleasant and inviting possible-plaza. Of key importance, the WPA building is not very large! It becomes a modest structure in an open expanse.

The three openings on the east wall can be made into display windows that are invitations to look at exhibits in the three other walls.

3. West Side

Images 2, 3, and 4 show the other three walls (as well as how small the building is in the context of a larger plaza in which it would be situated).

In a new plaza context, the WPA building is not an obstacle or obstruction. Instead, it is an attraction inside an expansive plaza that features several now more visible and majestic redwood trees.

Sounds nice, but where is the money for this?

4. North Side

Well, it happens that the larger Central Park rehab plan already has actual and place-holder appropriations for the 1) WPA building demolition and the 2) construction of an inauthentic “History Plaza” (aka “Hypocrisy Plaza”).* Surely, redoing an existing building is somewhere in the same range of cost as destroying a building and installing a colored brick map of Davis in the ground where it stood.

In any event, I urge the reader to go by the WPA building in Central Park and to engage in the mental experiment I describe above.

_______________

* See Bob Dunning, “City Is Contemplating a ‘Hypocrisy Plaza’,” Davis Enterprise, November 11, 2011, which is at:

http://www.davisenterprise.com/opinion/dunning/dunning-friday/

See also, this blog, #18, November 3, 2011

An Army of the Unemployed in Davis, March, 1914 (21)

2011-11-13T07:37:00.000-08:00

I post here a second passage written for but not included in the book, Davis. The account uses Davis Enterprise editor William Henry Scott’s report to provide a summary of dramatic events in Davis on March 18 & 19, 1914.

As chance would have it, a couple of years ago I happened onto two “real photo” postcards made at the events on March 18 and that someone named Alex acquired and sent to a Mildred Moore in San Francisco. (Making and selling such picture postcards at events was apparently not unusual at that time, although few such cards have, seemingly, survived.) They are reproduced with this post.

Davisville & the Pullman Strike of 1894 (20)

2011-11-06T06:53:00.000-08:00

I am a member of a listserv focused on the life and works of Jack London. Recent events in Oakland have inspired London fans on that list to recall that 800 participants in Kelly’s Army (a western wing of Coxey’s Army) occupied an Oakland plaza in April, 1894.

Making Oakland’s current mayor look meek, the 1894 Oakland mayor called out the militia, deputized 1,200 new police deputies, and deployed a Gatling gun. The 800 protesters were rousted onto boxcars heading east.

This event is relevant to Jack London listserv people because, “JL,” at age 18, was a participant in Kelly’s Army and traveled across the country with it.

The train on which the 800 protesters were put was headed to Sacramento--and therefore going through Davisville. I wondered if some of them might have disembarked in our town and become an event of note (as a later Kelly’s army surge did in 1914, about which I will blog later).

I could not find evidence of such an event in 1894, but I did find that the great Pullman Rail Strike, a little later that same year, was eventful in Davis.

I post here text I wrote about that strike and Davis for inclusion in Davis (2004). But, for want of space, it was not included. So here it is.

Mayor Krovoza Supports Postponing WPA Building Demolition (19)

2011-11-03T14:04:00.000-07:00

This video is a 2 minute 19 second excerpt from Davis Mayor Joe Krovoza's City Council remarks in support of postponing demolition of the WPA building in Central Park.
For a full screen view, click in the lower right-hand corner.
This video can also be seen on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctI8A4nBF6Y

Hypocrisy Plaza: The Plan to Replace Authentic With Sham History in Central Park (18)

2011-11-03T12:45:00.001-07:00

We have all heard variations on the joke describing developers destroying authentic, historic places in order to replace them with ticky-tacky housing and strip malls.

The joke part is that developers sometime--in an ironic perversion--name a development for the place they have just destroyed. A demolished real thing is exploited to legitimize a shoddy new thing.

Thus, a housing development might be named “Spring Lake” because it is built where a spring-fed lake was drained and filled in order to build “Spring Lake.”

Or, a town might be dubbed “Elk Grove” because it is built on land cleared of both Elks and groves in order to construct “Elk Grove.”

I call attention to these developer exercises in sham in order to provide a framework for appreciating the new level of ironic inauthenticity to which the City of Davis aspires.

This week, the Davis City Council voted to demolish the 1937 WPA building in Central Park and to install a “History Plaza” on the site where that building now stands.

In his dissent from the Council majority, Davis Mayor Joe Krovoza too politely captured the hypocritical contradiction of these two actions:

The idea of tearing down a structure of WPA heritage to create a history plaza just doesn’t quite jibe with me. I tend to leave the history that’s there before tearing it down to create a plaza for that . . . . We don’t have a lot of history in this town . . . and while it may not qualify as a historic resource, I think it is a real touch point for the community.

Said differently, the plan is to destroy an authentic Davis history structure in order to replace it with an ersatz and contrived “history” space that, in fact, has nothing to do with history.

Twisting the knife after insertion: there is even talk of commemorating the demolished WPA building itself in the “History Plaza.” The idea seems to be to revere the building without the inconvenience of showing it any regard by allowing it to exist.

Should this plan be carried out, the City of Davis is surely a contender for the hypocritical sham and inauthenticity prize. It will have taken the perversion of the authentic to a new level.

But, there might still be an odd form of poetic justice in this. The “History Plaza” might itself become renowned for its inauthenticity. It might well become famous as a shining encapsulation of the hypocrisy of which Davis is so often accused. In good folk-name cynicism, ordinary people might call it “Hypocrisy Plaza.”

The Big Bike at Russell & Anderson: Once Proud But Now Virtually Invisible Icon (17)

2011-10-30T09:29:00.000-07:00

In 1976, a metal shop class at Davis High built a some 12-foot tall metal sculpture of a high wheeler (“penny-farthing”) bicycle that was installed in the median of Russell Boulevard just west of Anderson Road.*

The landscape there was open at that time and the sculpture was therefore a quite dramatic object. So dramatic, in fact, that a post card company made a card of it titled “The Big Bike,” as shown here.

Ordinary people posed by it, as seen in the second image, a photo dated December 1976. (I acquired this snapshot from the Miriam Hummel estate courtesy of Elisabeth Sherwin.)

Despite the fact that Davis has become ever-more focused on the bike as a cultural, ecological and whatnot icon, the powers-that-be and were have allowed the Big Bike virtually to disappear into the landscaping.

As a matter of curiosity, I went out and photographed this forlorn sculpture from the angles of each of the two photos taken in 1976.

___________________

* These are the plaques at the base of the sculpture:

Dingemans & Thomson Letter to the Rec & Park Commission Regarding the Central Park WPA Restroom Building (16)

2011-10-23T08:30:00.000-07:00

October 20, 2011

TO: Parks and Recreation Commission (please distribute to commissioners).

FR: Dennis Dingemans, Assistant Director of Hattie Weber Museum of Davis; Mary Lee Thomson, Projects Director of Hattie Weber Museum of Davis

RE: October Agenda Item – Retain WPA Restroom Building Including Additions

Why are we writing this memo? We are the two HWMD board members most involved in creating exhibits and managing the material artifacts of the Museum.

Both are out of town for the week and can’t attend the P&R meeting at which you are discussing the retention of the WPA building (where non-destruction would be a change in the current plan). We both spoke twice at the City Council Meetings (November of 2010 and then Summer of 2011) at which the Council Member majority seemed sympathetic to our request; this P&R agenda item is a direct result of council direction to staff to explore further our HWMD proposal to retain the WPA building as a object of veneration (a historical resource) and to utilize the WPA building as storage and display space for HWMD artifacts and for exhibits created by HWMD staff for viewing by the public (exhibits to be in back-loaded display cases occupying many of the buildings current 4 windows and 4 doorways). Of particular interest to the City Council members seemed to be whether, in the P & R commissioners’ minds, retaining the historic WPA building would constitute an unacceptable level of clutter in Central Park.

What do we propose? We ask P & R to find that retaining the old WPA building (formerly built and used as restrooms and as space to support park maintenance) and its two sympathetic additions (built to store and stage the equipment for park staff activities). In the interim (5 years?) we propose NO MAJOR CHANGES and no major expenditures. We suggest that the modifications be proposed only after seeing how the current crude interior space serves our needs (for storage and staging space). We would also be designing for further review the adaption of some of the four doorways and four windows to serve as backside-serviced display areas (for security purposes, we believe the rear access is best). Our concept is that we would spend the next five years fund-raising to implement a couple of display spaces (windows first) as demonstration spaces. Further, the need for conditioned space and/or built-in storage shelves would be evaluated. We will learn whether odors and leaks need to be abated in order to drop below the nuisance level. We are encouraged to see that the couch and other human comfort features used in the building indicate that the parks staff found the building’s interior to be appropriate for happy human use. Like the parks’ staff, we would expect to observe the pattern of minor roof drip areas and respond appropriately to protect what we store there. Summary: no immediate changes or expenses would be requested.

Why the building is not an eyesore and its retention is not crowding. No one we know thinks the building and its appended sun shade/trellis is ugly. It was a low cost structure but it is decorated honestly and sturdily. Its exterior appearance is as neither a shack nor a shed. The foot-thick walls were of concrete block walls covered with quality workmanship in the application of textured heavy stucco layers, in the coving of many corners and door/window surrounds, in the application of decorative roof vents, and in the thick shingling. Under our plan the object of disapproval (the interior of the two restrooms that constitute less than half of the current building’s space) would not be seen because the tacky men’s room would be closed to the public. It is important to remember that a third or more of the building has been storage space for over fifty years and storage space was a 10% part of the original reason for building the structure in 1937. The Hattie Weber Museum operates with a very disadvantageous shortage of secure storage space – in large part because we are not allowed to lock the storage area in the back 40% of the museum where our public restrooms inside the rear of the building must be left available at all times. Adding storage space to the existing building – whether with city funds or funds raised by the HWMD management team – would result in a much, much more expensive project and much more disruption than would our proposal to simple retain the attractive WPA building and its appendages (two small wings and the shade trellis). We ask you to consider favorably our logic: save the WPA building and the city will not be having to come later to ask for an expanded Museum building that takes up new space in your park. From the point of view of human perception, retaining an old cottage-scale structure appears to be less of a cluttering of the park than does the construction of a new storage building or new addition to the museum building itself.

The park plan under consideration currently proposes that a new utilities service structure/tower be built, yet the location and the design is nowhere identified in your documents. Retention of the WPA building would allow the efficient non-replacement of the current gas, electricity, and water service infrastructure that is within the storage parts of the building and is visible along the southern part of the north and east walls. In evaluating whether the retention of the WPA building constitutes clutter and “too much crowding” you need to consider that if you tear it down then a new structure must be built for the utilities! In our concept, our proposal includes sharing storage space with other park users who already (or newly) find the structure useful. YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MANY CLOSETS.

The building has an ecologically beautiful relationship with several of the large redwood trees planted nearby. The roots and branches embrace the foundations and the sides and parts of the roof of the building. The structure has a low profile visibly because of its proximity to the trees. Removing the structure and particularly removing the foundation where it is entwined with major redwood tree roots might be disruptive to the trees. Old North Davis Neighborhood Organization has a board member who is a certified arborist and he joined the unanimous ONDNA Board in endorsing the Museum’s proposal – both because they belief the building is a historic artifact worth preserving and because the health of the redwood trees is likely best protected by NOT DISRUPTIVELY REMOVING their close neighbor (the WPA building).

The HWMD team takes pride in that our building is the real thing, an historic artifact dating to the 1920s when the most important additions and changes were made to the old library building that later, successfully adapted its functions to become a museum. We fear that the new “history plaza” will, if it displaces momentum for preserving the WPA building, do damage to a potential success story for preservation on a scale just a bit smaller than the success story that is our museum building’s history. No absurd synthetic place such as the public will recognize the history plaza to be can substitute for the satisfaction from encounters with the real thing -- a preserved an adaptively re-used building that communicates our town’s understanding of how we came to be what we are.

Why are we so late in this proposed preservation and utilization of the existing bulding? The HWMD staff was late in having the brainstorm that is our current proposal. Simply, no one had believed that it was possible for city staff to be proposing the tearing down of such an obvious historical resource. When we learned that the staff and the consultant had persisted in their proposal to remove the entirety of the WPA building and its additions, we were motivated to think hard about how our well-recognized storage needs might be met within a feel-good historic preservation project. The HWMD team of docents and officers has only been assembled within the last three years and we were inexperienced when we collectively and individually failed to attend the park design workshops. BUT GOOD IDEAS SHOULDN’T BE REJECTED JUST BECAUSE THEY COME INCONVENIENTLY LATE. Like most museums staffed with volunteers, we are mostly a senior citizen crowd. We sometimes don’t act as quickly as we should. But we think we have it right, now. And, it might be mentioned, as senior citizens we docents and officers of the museum have mobility impairments that make the close proximity of our new storage to be a plus (the staff has suggested we need only 10 square feet – much to small for manipulation and storage of our collection – and that we could get this minimal storage space in a locker located a mile away). How much more efficient it would be for our storage and staging (and display) spaces to be just 15 feet away and not 1500 yard away.

Thank you for responding to the City Council’s insistence that historic preservation values be given a full and unbiased hearing. As we understand the venue and scope of your interests, we hope you articulate a reasonable metric by which to judge the degree of overcrowding represented by our proposal to prevent further construction by using an existing (historic and even mildly attractive) building to serve needs that otherwise in the near future will require, justly, new construction. This is an aesthetics proposal as well as a green proposal: the building adds antique texture to the park and embodies the historical evolution of the park while deflecting future pressures for additional construction.

PS: the dimensions of this modest building are such that any effort to remove the 70 year old and 60-year old additions would be taking away valuable storage space as well as being disruptive of the trees and the human desire for finding comfort in continuity. The original 1930s structure was 20 feet n/s and 20 feet e/w [400 square feet]; the 1940s addition was 8 feet by 12 feet (adding 100 square feet to the north side) and the 1950s addition was 18 feet by 8 feet (adding 140 square feet to the west side). Since the 1950s, storage space was 240 square feet (all of the additions space) and 10% (40 square feet) of the original building’s footprint. For 60 years now the building has contained 640 square feet of space – 360 square feet of restrooms and 280 square feet of storage.

Davis Odd Fellows Dubiously Claim To Be the “Oldest Organization in the City” (15)

2011-10-16T08:53:00.000-07:00

1. Excerpt from the DavisWiki

I. Some years ago, the fading chapter of the Davis Old Fellows Lodge (DOFL) was taken over by a new set of people who began, among other things, to claim that the DOFL was the oldest continuously existing organization in the Davis area, or at least in the city.

Based on my research, I think this claim is dubious at best and almost certainly false. There are at least five older such organizations in the city and six older when considering the wider area. In August, 2010, I researched the list of the seven seen in image 1, checked it for accuracy with specialist historians, and posted my findings on the Davis History and DavisWiki websites.*

At that time, I also communicated the error to the head--the “Noble Grand”--of the DOFL.**

I received a polite thank you note from him. Then some months later, I saw the DOFL was again making its erroneous claim. I drew the Noble Grand’s attention to the error again, but received no reply.

Now, in the October 13th Enterprise, we see that the DOFL continues its claim despite presumably knowing its validity has been questioned and declining to respond to that questioning (image 2). What is even stranger, this falsehood is also now featured on its website (image 3).

2. Davis Enterprise, 10-13-11

3. Excerpt from DOFL website

The declaration that “you are entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts” apparently does not apply to the DOFL.

II. It is in this context that I notice that the DOFL is also engaged in claiming to have created the world’s longest bike parade (or something of that sort involving bikes).

This focus on “est” (read best) prompts me to wonder if being “est” is not a central value for this group--as in old-est and long-est.

III. Indeed, if we go back to the group’s formation in Davis in 1870, we find it was “est” fixated even then. At that time, the “est” took the form of being the richest, as David Vaught reports about the DOFL in his book After the Gold Rush. (A key excerpt from Vaught’s account is given in image 4).

4. Vaught, After the Gold Rush, p. 138

IV. What next? DOFL-ers parading and chanting, perhaps along these lines?:

We are the best!

Rich-est! Old-est! Long-est!****

________________________________

http://www.davishistoricalsociety.org/1-1-davis-history-as-a-whole/oldest-davis-area-organizations/

http://daviswiki.org/Oldest_Davis_Area_Organizations

** http://davislodge.org/

***

http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/odd-fellows-to-reopen-refurbished-upper-hall/

****

Here are more examples of DOFL fixation on “est,” this time expressed as “set the record:”

Addendum to the "Pugh Beer Letters," Post #9 (14)

2011-10-10T10:40:00.000-07:00

In post number 9 (September 12), I published detailed scans of three of the four known Pugh "beer letters." Having now acquired the fourth letter, here is a detailed scan of it. (A calculation on the back of the letter shows through.)

Reflections on Reading the 1977 Davis Senior High School Yearbook (13)

2011-10-09T07:46:00.000-07:00

Recently, a 1977 Davis High yearbook was auctioned on E-Bay. I collect DHS yearbooks and, not having that year, I bid on it and won.

I find it helpful to peruse the senior class pictures of these books in terms of who is later seen in Davis public life.

My impression, from looking through many such yearbooks, is that virtually no DHS graduates remain in Davis. Or, if they do, they are not part of Davis public life so that I would know about them.

Instead, I am guessing that a major Davis export product is the DHS graduate.

The irony of this is that these graduates have especially solid educations, attend the more influential colleges in high percentages, and therefore become involved in cosmopolitan occupations that take them far from Davis in affluent careers.

Some stay and become part of the public life of Davis, of course.

In looking over the pictures of the 350 or so members of the DHS class of 1977, I spotted four who are evident participants in Davis (or larger) public life: Jim Belinis, John Brinley, Tony Natsoulos, Cathy Speck. (Their names are given here as they appear in the 1977 DHS yearbook.)

I am sure there are more. But even if there are a hundred more than I have identified, this is still massive out-migration.

This year-after-year exodus raises interesting questions of implications for community functioning. Since at least the 1960s, almost no members of the political and economic elites of Davis were born and raised in Davis. What difference, if any, does that make?

Consider the political area, in particular. So far as I can determine, only one graduate of Davis High School has ever been elected to the Davis City Council.* Is that odd? Or not?

____________

* Davis history trivia question: What is the name of that graduate?

Davis Heritage Building Demolition/Survival Report Now On This Blog (12)

2011-10-02T08:21:00.000-07:00

The booklet in which I report the year 2000 demolition/survival rates of 1945 Davis buildings is now a slide-show appearing in the right side-bar of this blog.

This is a step forward in making it accessible. The booklet is out of print and previously stored online deep in the davishistoricalsociety.org site. At that location, it is in an “assemble-your-own-booklet” form.*

All 20 pages are now separate and in sequence.

For purposes of speedier loading, the slide-show resolution is reduced, which means less detail in the photos. But the davishistoricalsociety.org version is still there & has higher resolution. The physical booklet is available in local libraries and at the Hattie Weber Museum. (The photos themselves are viewable--with scans available--at UCD’s Department of Special Collections.)

When the slide-show is clicked on, one is taken to a site called Picasa, which is Google’s “let’s put up pictures” site for the public. I have set up the pictures so that anyone can view them as well as download them.

This is one of eight Davis history “albums/slide shows” I now have on Picasa. All are publicly viewable and downloadable. (Two of them are of all the images on this blog and the Old North Davis Chat blog.)

_________________

* Here:

http://www.davishistoricalsociety.org/4-davis-historic-preservation-resources/davis-heritage-buildings-how-many-to-begain-with-how-many-left/

Collecting Davis History Artifacts: Some Vicissitudes (11)

2011-09-25T08:10:00.000-07:00

One of my hobbies is collecting artifacts of Davis history. I look for such items in several places, including “antique” paper shows and shops, estate sales, and E-bay auctions.

I have found that I am often the only person who cares to own such arcane items and prices are therefore low--mostly in the range of a few dollars or less.

Indeed, I reckon I am the only person who collects Davis-focused history artifacts in a sustained way, although I know three other people who have a more casual interest and there is the “yolo yo yo,” the wild card collector of Yolo artifacts who is also called “Mr. Yolo.”*

This does not mean, though, that such objects are always cheap. This is because an artifact can be classified in multiple ways and can thus also be an item of interest in some other world of collectors.

This is the case for postcards and other pictures of the Davis train depot. It seems that a lot of people collect pictures of train depots! And these folks are willing to pay real money for those pictures.

Image 1 shows an unusual postcard picture of the Davis depot recently put up on E-bay. Image 2 shows the nine bids elicited, ending in a high bid of $56.00. (I have seen other Davis depot pictures bid into the hundreds.)

I knew this item was bound to sell far above what I was willing to pay, so I did not even bid in this auction. And I also suspected that the zealot collector of Yolo County history artifacts would likely bid, which we see at the top of the list, where he is “y***o,” which is short-hand for his E-bay name, “Yolo Yo Yo.”

Fortunately, Yolo Yo Yo only desires one each of all Yolo County history artifacts and he already owns pretty much all there are, so we rarely have an active interest in buying the same item.

________________

* Woodland Daily Democrat & Davis Enterprise profiles of Mr. Yolo can be found here:

http://www.davishistoryresearch.org/private-collectors-collections

A Reminder of the 1950’s “Out With The Old” View of the Built Environment (10)

2011-09-18T08:59:00.000-07:00

Browsing at an estate sale recently, I happened onto an original copy of the August 27, 1953 issue of the Davis Enterprise. I bought it for 25 cents.

I like to waste my time reading this sort of thing and in doing so I encountered an editorial by Chelso Maghetti, the fellow who bought the Enterprise from William Henry Scott and appears also to have purchased Scott’s outlook.

As you can read in the graphic, Maghetti thinks the historic California governor’s mansion--which is now a state park-- is a “gingerbread high-ceiling” “monstrosity” and “eyesore.”

The sooner we “don’t have to look at it,” the better. It was built in 1878 and in 1953 “looks everyday of it.”

Instead, we need something “more modern.”

Given that we commonly think of the 1950s as a decade of conservative reaction following WWII and the era of “the man in the grey flannel suit,” it is easy to forget that in some respects American beliefs and actions in that period were really quite radical.

Specifically, there was a broad rejection of pre-WWII conceptions of how towns and cities should be organized and homes should be built and appear. In many places, this meant massive demolition of the existing stock of buildings.

During the 1950s and subsequent decades, Davis got rid of 43% of all the buildings that were in the entire town at the end of WWII.

This zeal was even stronger in what we now call the Downtown, where 63% of the buildings were demolished, moved out of the area, or reconstructed into “more modern” form.*

This is especially humorous and ironic when viewed in current Davis policy perspectives that stress the importance of Davis “historical” and merely “old” buildings as elements of a program to attract people to come to Davis for its charming character.

Too bad these policy advocates were not around to express such sentiments to Chelso Meghetti.

___________

* See: John Lofland, Davis Heritage Buildings. Woodland, CA. Yolo County Historical Society Booklet 7, 2000, page 7, table 1.

This publication is available online at:

http://www.davishistoricalsociety.org/4-davis-historic-preservation-resources/davis-heritage-buildings-how-many-to-begain-with-how-many-left/

History By Dribbles: The W. R. Pugh Beer Letters (09)

2011-09-12T20:36:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, a seller of “antique paper” in Michigan put a 1913 letter by W. R. Pugh addressed to the El Dorado Brewing Company of Stockton up for auction on E-bay.

I bid the required minimum, no one else bid, and I got the letter. It is reproduced here as Image 1.

Several aspects of this letter are interesting to me.

>> I asked the seller how he came to have this letter (and three others by Pugh addressed to the same company, also buying beer or returning empties). He told me they came from a trunk in a basement in a Michigan house. He had bought the truck for “the paper” and he knew nothing more.

>> It happens that there were a number of other letters addressed to the El Dorado Brewing Company of Stockton dated 1913 or close to it.* Someone in Michigan was saving the business correspondence of that company. Such are the oddities and dribbles of new history items.

>> Warren R. Pugh was born in 1877 and died in 1945. He operated a barbershop on G Street in the ‘10s followed by pool rooms there over the ‘20s and ‘30s. Some were partnerships, which included Pugh & Loftus, Pugh & Grady (Image 5), and Pugh & Nickerson.

>> Of considerable interest, Pugh was one of the small set of men who dominated the Davis Trustees/City Council from its forming in 1917 to WWII. First elected to a two-year term in 1918, he was re-elected to four-year terms in ’20, ‘24, ’28, ’32, and ’36 (Image 4). This is 6 terms spanning 22 years.**

>> Pugh’s four letters to the El Dorado Brewing Company in the spring and summer of 1913 show him buying cases of beer and returning empty bottles.

This fact would be of little note were it not also the fact that retail sales of alcohol were banned in Davis in 1911 (by a state law crafted to protect wayward students, we are told).

Mr. Pugh might have been fond of Valley Brew Lager from the El Dorado Brewing Co. and consumed cases of it privately.

Or, in the clubby chumminess of some G Street barbershops and pool rooms, could some people buy a beer despite the law?

___________

* A listing of letters & associated documents not already sold is at:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/godrules60/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=25&_trksid=p3686

** The Davis “old boy”/G Street clique of the ‘10s-’30s is described at:

http://www.davishistoricalsociety.org/1-1-davis-history-as-a-whole/city-council-candidates-and-voting-results-1917-2006/13%20-%2022%2C%20text.pdf/view

Davis History Art (08)

2011-09-04T08:53:00.000-07:00

I am sometimes intrigued by the idea of “Davis history art,” by which I mean art objects that display Davis history in some fashion.

>> I use the term “art” in two ways, narrowly and broadly. Narrowly, “Art” with a capital a is about such objects as paintings, sculptures, photographs, short stories, poems, and other such productions labeled art by credible claimers.

More broadly, art is about “crafts,” or objects of ordinary life rendered especially well, as in pottery, apparel, and various other utilitarian or decorative objects.

>> Perhaps the most famous piece of Davis history art has been the mural of the Davis Arch painted on the side of the long-gone Terminal Hotel building, as shown in image 2.*

One of the most viewed pieces of Davis history art is the mural painted by Ted Puntillo Sr. on walls of the Davis Post Office. And, of course, a Davis history art painting hangs in the Community Chambers.

Some years ago, the Discoveries shop commissioned a throw (a small blanket) that featured a set of Davis icons (image 1). I think it illustrates Davis history art in the broader, “craft” sense.

3. Photograthers' Obsecession

>> At one point, I was so intrigued with the idea of Davis history art that I gave it a try. Struck by the large number of photographs made of the Davis SP Station, I was moved to adopt the device of the photo collage as a way to treat those pictures artistically. That collage is reproduced here as image 3 and is titled “Photographers’ Obsession.”

A skeptical reader should ask: Is image 3 really art--Davis history art or not?

One answer is that art is whatever credible claimers say is art. So, to help answer the question of “Photographers’ Obsession” being art, I entered it in an art competition judged by people said to know art.

As seen in image 4, “Photographers’ Obsession” won an award in that competition, which I suppose makes it, by definition, art.

>> It might be an interesting to enumerate as many items of Davis history art as feasible and then to think about staging a public exhibition of some of them.

That exhibition might be at an art gallery or a history museum--I not sure which--or perhaps at both.

______________________________

* Image 2 might itself be claimed to be an instance of Davis history art--or of at least book cover Davis history art. A person interested in intellectual vertigo might begin to enumerate the levels of meanings within meanings within meanings contained in and associated within image 2. Some claim such vertigo is very much what "true" are is about.

Davis Autobiographies as Davis History Resources (07)

2011-08-28T07:49:00.000-07:00

Members of the large cohort of Davisites who are growing older have begun to write autobiographies. Most recently, we have Joan Callaway’s It’s An Ill Wind, Indeed. Somewhat earlier, there was Howdy Howard’s, Saved By Bedbugs!

These authors likely do not conceive their books as “Davis history,” nor do Davis history buffs ordinarily see them as works of Davis history.

Even so, I think there are at least two angles from which such autobiographies are important resources in writing Davis history, especially as regards perceiving deeper structures and larger patterns in that history.

The first angle is that of the person’s life as a kind of “representative specimen.” Although perhaps not intended by an author, we readers are learning about, for example, the social class and ethnic milieu in which that person lived and the ethos of the political and economic groups of which the person was a part. Simple descriptions of homes, acquaintances, traumas, joys, games, outings, and the like are reports of “life in Davis.” Such reports are the raw stuff from which Davis history is constructed.

Some of these autobiographies might be written by very well known and accomplished people who have lived in Davis all their lives, but nonetheless say little or nothing about Davis. As an academic town, we are likely to see a number of these. But this lack is not, to me, a fault. Instead, it is data. It suggests that Davis is the kind of place that has prominent people who are not especially oriented to or known in the locality. What might we make of this fact in Davis history perspective?

The second angle is more conventional. People who write autobiographies are likely to have had active social involvements and many of these probably involve the kinds of groups considered meat-and-potatoes subjects of Davis history. For example, Joan Callaway was very much involved in the founding, operating, and other aspects of Bereavement Outreach, The Mental Health Association, Yolo County Care Continuum, and Friends of Allied Non-Profits, among other organizations. She does not say a lot about these or other groups, but, as a key participant, what she does say is of note.

These two angles suggest to me that institutions such as our local public libraries and history museums ought to make an effort to have at least one copy of all these autobiographies in their collections. So gathered, they are more accessible to researchers and other searchers. JL

New Exhibit at the Hattie Weber Museum (06), by Mary Lee Thomson

2011-08-22T10:28:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy Shilling Robotics. Their equipment
helped locate & explore the Titanic & was used in the
mapping of the bottom of Lake Tahoe.

On Saturday, August 27^th, the volunteers at the Hattie Weber Museum of Davis will open a new exhibit:
Davis Industry: Windmills to Robotics, Phase II
The exhibit will feature Davis industries, large and high tech to small and artistic, from Armco Steel to Z-world.
An opening reception will be held at the Museum from 2 to 4 pm and will include wine tasting from local wineries. All are invited & admission is free.

The Tragic Story of the Dresbach Tank House: Better Demolition Than Degradation? (05)

2011-08-21T08:19:00.000-07:00

1. Excerpt from Eastman B-4705, 1946

Some people seem pleased that the Dresbach Tank House has moved to a commercial establishment on a county road near Davis. I am not.

To me, this move is another sad episode in a long series of degrading events. And that series adds up to a tragic, degradation story.

The Dresbach Tank House story reminds me of the King Kong story. A creature minding its own business is captured, enslaved, and paraded in chains on a stage for the amusement of ticket-buying audiences.

Its story also reminds me of bears and similar mammals made to perform for audiences in circuses and on other stages. In this process, proud creatures are degraded.

Here is how a King-Kong/Dancing Bear degradation narrative applies to the Dresbach Tank House.

2. Excerpt from Eastman B-4706, 1946

Dignified Creation. The Tank House began life in the 1880s as a dignified structure behind the Dresbach Mansion. It had a flat roof (images 1 and 2) on which a round water tank sat. Because the tank supplied water to the second floor of the Mansion, the platform had to be at least a few feet higher than the home’s second floor. The tank house and the tank together were therefore about as tall or taller than the Mansion. The “roof” or tank deck was constructed of heavy timbers to support the weight of the tank.

Our local historian of Dresbach matters, Valerie Vann, has counted structures on the earliest Sanborn maps of Davis and determined that in 1911 there were 19 residential tank houses or stands in a population of 120 dwellings. There were many fewer tank houses/stands than dwellings because they (with windmill--, or later gasoline--, powered pumps) were expensive to install and maintain and relatively few families could afford them. Tank houses were a sign of urban or at least town sophistication--meaning relative wealth and higher class standing. Signaling that the structure was not merely utilitarian and rural, the Dresbach Tank House was outfitted with an Italianate cornice that matched the Mansion and with four gothic medallions.

(Vann reports that originally it had no second story or stairs, and only a single door and window. The tank was probably accessed when necessary by a ladder, and the windmill to power the pump may have been mounted either alongside the tank or on a separate structure.)

Dignity Crisis. No matter how dignified and class-superior tank houses were, they became almost instantly obsolete in towns when mandatory city water systems were implemented. In Davis, that was 1919.

So here were these tank houses: Proud symbols of over-class home water delivery systems suddenly rendered useless. Almost all of them were soon torn down. They only survived at homes with odd ownership histories, like the Dresbach Mansion.

After being virtually frozen-in-time for decades, when the last resident member of the Hunt family finally died in 1973, the way was opened for rethinking the Dresbach Mansion property. In a complicated series of actions, the lot was split and the Mansion Square shopping complex seen there now was built.

Degradation: Stage One. As part of these changes, the tank house was relocated to the orange orchard next to the mansion. This move brought to light that the structure was rotten at the bottom, which was removed. In this way, it became a kind of stunted cripple (Image 3).

3. View after the historic orange grove has been cut down

Degradation: Stage Two. Over the 1970s-90s, there were several unsuccessful attempts to repurpose it to house a small business. These ill-considered “remodelings” damaged it even more. In the later 2000s, it was discovered that the City, which had owned it since 1994, had allowed it to rot in some serious ways (thus breaking its own preservation ordinances).

Degradation: Stage Three. Pressure to build on the land where it stood mounted in the later 2000s. Despite its now increasingly decrepit condition, it was moved to the other side of the Mansion in May, 2010. Structural studies made regarding that move brought to light yet more maladies and infirmities.

Degradation: Stage Four. And then there was perhaps the ultimate indignity of decapitating it--rendering its body asunder--before actually removing it from its home (image 4).

Degradation: The Final Stage? City of Davis officials rid themselves of this battered, torn, and literally decapitated structure by giving it, essentially free, to a Disneyland-like farm characterizing itself as “rustic and quaint” that plans to paint it red and install it beside a recently “raised” building called “Grandpa’s Barn.”

4. Decapitated removal, August 5, 2011

So, it seems to me that a once proud and dignified urban tank house is in the process of being made a dancing bear in a circus, metaphorically speaking.

Years ago, I thought demolition was the building’s most dignified fate. I continue to think so.

Better demolition than degradation?

Ironically, decapitation may be de facto demolition. Reassembly likely presents an insurmountable challenge that will lead to abandoning the project or to constructing an essentially new structure that uses only decorative remnants. Either way, the Dresbach Tank House would have at last been put to rest. JL

__________________

Valerie Vann reviewed this post in draft and made excellent suggestions for changes and additions that I have adopted without specific attribution. I thank her very much for her help.

__________________

Sources:

DavisWiki. “Dresbach-Hunt-Boyer House.”

http://daviswiki.org/Dresbach-Hunt-Boyer_House

_________. “Tank House.”

http://daviswiki.org/Tank_House?action=info

Vann, Valerie. “Windmills, Tank Houses & Related in Davisville, 1888.” Davis Historical Society Davis History Website.

http://www.davishistoricalsociety.org/2-2-farming-1872-90/sanborn-maps-tank-house-survey.pdf/view

___________. “Windmills, Tank Houses & Related in 1911 Davis.” Davis Historical Society Davis History website.

http://www.davishistoricalsociety.org/2-4-restarting-1905-16/sanborn-maps-tank-house-survey.pdf/view

____________. The Henry Stelling Family of Davisville: A Dresbach-Hunt-Boyer Mansion Family, Davis Historical Society Paper on Davis History Number 6.

http://www.davishistoricalsociety.org/papers-on-davis-history-series/Henry%20Stelling%20Family.pdf/view

The Davis Welcoming Arch Lives! (04)

2011-08-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

I recently received a request from an historian of Northern California, Mike Lynch, for images of, and information on, the Davis Arch. He is preparing a publication on welcoming arches on Route 99, of which there appear to have been many, and wants to include the Davis Arch.

Davis history buffs will be interested to know that Mr. Lynch’s publications include California State Park Rangers (Arcadia, 2009) and Auburn Images: The Mel Locher Memorial Photo Collection (2004). He is a 35-year veteran of California State Parks as a field ranger, supervising ranger, and superintendent. The California Law Enforcement Historical Society named him Police Historian of the Year in 2006.

In exchanges with him on welcome arches, I learned there is a 1993 book by one Bernard Winn titled Arch Rivals: 90 Years of Welcome Arches in Small-Town America. This book profiles on the order of 100 such arches across the U. S., featuring those in California.

There is almost a full page on the Davis Arch in Winn’s book. His text seems drawn entirely from Larkey’s account. I reproduce it here with the caveat that the content is roughly but not fully accurate. (For example, the Arch was taken down in February, 1924, not “sometime in 1920.”) JL

The Yolo County Archives Needs Your Help (03)

2011-08-07T08:23:00.000-07:00

Yolo County is required by law to retain certain records, which is why it has a unit called an “archives.” However, and like good packrats everywhere, many years ago interesting items not required by law also began to accumulate at the archives. Some were county records whose retention dates had expired. Others were items citizens donated and officials accepted.

Budget crunches arrived and the County chose to restrict funding to records required by law. A funding shortfall ensued and has continued for decades. Interested Yolo citizens created the Friends of the Yolo County Archives as a private organization dedicated to filling this gap.

The gap varies from year to year and has ranged from four to sixteen thousand dollars.

Each year, the Friends go begging for money. This is that time of year.

In this post, I reproduce a solicitation letter written by Friends president Ted Smith, a copy of the form one can fill out and send in, and the address on the envelope where one can send money.

I have done research at the Archives many times over the years and I think it has one of the three most important collections of Davis history materials--if not the most important collection. It is an extremely valuable resource that I support and I hope you will also. JL

UPDATE: After posting this note, I read of Virginia Isaacs' passing. As indicated on the letterhead above, she was a member of the Friends Board of Directors. Indeed, she was a Friends mainstay for a great many years--as well as a key participant in many other civic activities. She is herself very much a part of Davis history and will be missed. JL

2nd Street 600s History (02)

2011-08-01T21:26:00.001-07:00

An exhibit by me titled The 2nd St. 600s Over 15 Decades is currently on display at the Hattie Weber Museum of Davis (5th & C streets).

Using varied photographs, the display strives to show major moments in that block's transformation from only four homes into a complex retail mecca.

The exhibit is also available as a slideshow in the right-hand sidebar of this page. Double-clicking on the slide-show image will take you to a "gallery" where you can open a full-screen show that you can control click-by-click over the 38 slides. JL

Hattie Weber Museum Profiled in the July 31st, 2011 Enterprise (01)

2011-07-31T11:52:00.000-07:00

In its July 31, 2011 issue, the Davis Enterprise publishes a very positive and informative account of the Hattie Weber Museum of Davis.

Written by Museum volunteer Mary Lee Thomson, the account is certainly a “Davis History Today” event and properly signaled as such on this blog. The complete text appears after the jump. JL