Facts at a Glance:
Headquarters: Ketcham’s Barn
605 Laurel Avenue, Pacific Grove, 93950
Barn Museum Open Hours: Saturdays, 1:00-4:00 p.m.
Telephone: 831-372-2898
E-mail:
heritagesocietypg@montereybay.com
Annual Membership Dues: Individual-$15.00 Family--$20.00 Senior--$12.00
Mailing address: P.O. Box 1007, Pacific Grove, CA 93950
Publications: Newsletter (Monthly), The Board and Batten (Quarterly)
Annual General Meeting: February (Members and Friends)
Board of Directors Meetings: Monthly, 1st Tuesdays, at the Barn (Open to the public)
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The History of the Heritage Society
of Pacific Grove
The Heritage Society of Pacific Grove is a non-profit organization which was in incorporated 1976.
Purpose:
- To encourage restoration and preservation of Pacific Grove’s historic buildings
- To educate present-day residents about local history and historic preservation
- To instill pride in our community and its architectural resources
- To maintain the beauty and individuality of Pacific Grove
The Heritage Society of Pacific Grove was founded in 1975. It was the brainchild of Dr. David Mills, a local pediatrician, who also served as its first President. The new organization was described as “a citizen’s group dedicated to the recording of Pacific Grove’s historical background and the preservation of its important architectural resources.” A slate of officers and a Board of Directors were approved by the 39 members who attended the first public meeting of the society in February of 1976 in the Community Room of the Christian Church on Central Avenue. The Society now has over 1,200 members.
Since 1981, the Heritage Society has been headquartered in what has come to be known as Ketcham’s Barn at 605 Laurel Avenue. The Barn and the lot to the west of it are leased from the City of Pacific Grove. As part of the lease conditions, the Society agreed to restore the Barn and maintain the adjoining lot. More than $30,000 was raised for this project under the leadership of then President, Lila Staples, with funding coming from three foundations, 12 local businesses, 172 individuals and from Society-sponsored fundraisers. Local architect Ed Bredthauer contributed the specifications for the restoration. Local builder Steve Honegger was the general contractor for the Barn restoration. Ken Hinshaw, a local cabinet maker, built the cabinets and fabricated the front door and the windows. Sirrah Harris oversaw the landscaping of the garden lot.
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| Preservation: The Heritage Society has focused on preservation of Pacific Grove’s architectural heritage and on activities relating to that preservation. Lowell Northrop of the Heritage Society drafted the city’s first historic preservation ordinance which was adopted by the City Council in 1979. Other members assisted in developing the Preservation Element of the City’s General Plan, beginning in 1976. The Society has placed historic markers—the familiar green plaques—on, presently, 679 historic homes in Pacific Grove indicating the date of construction and the first owner. In addition, some 70 buildings have been recognized with bronze Heritage House medallions.
Annually, since 1978, the Heritage Society has presented Heritage House Awards to recognize outstanding examples of historic preservation, restoration, and new construction that reflect our community’s character. Members of the Heritage Society currently serve on the City’s Historic Resources Committee, the Beautification and Natural Resources Committee, its Planning Commission, and the Architectural Review Board. Members of the Heritage Society have also served as elected members of the Pacific Grove City Council. In addition, the Heritage Society is represented on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for the Performing Arts Center -Pacific Grove.
Documentation: Residents who would become members of the yet-to-be-organized Heritage Society worked with City staff beginning in 1975 to inventory for the first time historic homes in the Retreat district. In the next two years, 528 structures were identified and documented—378 single-family homes, 50 duplexes and 100 multiple dwellings. (150 of the buildings were owned by non-residents.) The oldest home in Pacific Grove still standing, built in 1874, is at 142 Pacific Avenue. Then, beginning in 1977, funded by a State grant, members of the Heritage Society and City staff photographed and described 350 homes of historic significance. These records are available in the Community Development Department.
Heritage Society members, under the leadership of Adam Weiland, Editor of The Board and Batten, next undertook to identify and evaluate all the homes built before 1926. (The date 1926 was chosen because the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps for that year could be used to document the existence of the buildings.) This effort led to the creation of the City’s Historic Resources Inventory, a listing of pre-1926 buildings. In 2005, the Heritage Society funded a photographic inventory of the more than 1200 structures on the Historic Resources Inventory. This project was undertaken by Heritage Society Intern Nat Rojanisathira, and the photographs can be reviewed in bound volumes at the Barn.
Public Programs: From its beginning, the Heritage Society has scheduled public meetings focusing on topics relating to the history of Pacific Grove and the surrounding area. The most recent annual meeting brought Thom Steinbeck, the son of Pulitzer and Nobel prize-winning author John Steinbeck, to talk about his recollections of growing up in Pacific Grove. Another early public program undertaken by the Society was a Stevenson Walk on which Heritage Society members led residents and visitors on a walk re-creating the route taken by author Robert Louis Stevenson through the Methodist Retreat in October 1879. Society records show that there were more than 100 participants on some of the walks. Since 1980, the Heritage Society in conjunction with the Pacific Grove Art Center and the Chamber of Commerce, has sponsored a Historic Homes Tour. Every October the public is invited to tour a group of the City’s outstanding historic homes.
In conjunction with the Homes Tour, the Society for the past five years has sponsored the Artists in Chautauqua show and sale. In December the Heritage Society and the Chamber of Commerce sponsor Christmas at the Inns, a two-day event in which the inns of Pacific Grove, all of them in historic buildings, are opened to the public. The Secret Gardens of Pacific Grove, a relatively new but very popular tour, is held each May, opening selected residential gardens to the public. For the past nine years, the Society has sponsored a Summer Lecture Series on topics of historic and architectural interest, reminiscent of the Chautauqua programs of the early days in Pacific Grove. New in 2005 was the Heritage Houses for the Birds, a competitive fund raiser/exhibition of locally-crafted birdhouses on historic themes.
Fund Raising: Membership dues and donations provide significant support for Heritage Society community programs. However, the Society has also engaged in specific fund-raising to support its activities. The Society’s first fund-raiser, which actually started before there was a formally organized Heritage Society, was the publication in cooperation with the Chamber of Commerce of, initially, a Victorian-Era Heritage Homes Calendar in 1975 and 1976 and a re-named Pacific Grove’s Heritage Homes Calendar in 1977. The calendars, sold in local businesses, featured an 8x10 photographically created line drawing of an historic Pacific Grove home for each of the 12 months plus a brief history of Pacific Grove and a map of the town dating to 1875. From 1976 to 1998, the Society, in cooperation with a local Quilters Guild, sponsored an annual Quilt Show in which antique and contemporary quilts were hung for public viewing in Chautauqua Hall. The quilt shows, a significant fund-raiser for the Society, were stand-alone events in some years and in others were coordinated with the Homes Tour or Good Old Days.
The Society’s most extensive fund raising effort took place in 1980-81 when some $30,000 was raised to support restoration of Ketcham’s Barn and the Garden to the west of it. Admissions to the annual Homes Tour, the Garden Tour and Christmas at the Inns are ongoing sources of funding for Heritage Society projects. Another fund-raising event is an annual antique appraisal day sponsored by the Heritage Society in cooperation with local antique dealers at which residents are invited to bring in memorabilia for informal appraisal by local experts. The newest of the Society’s fund-raising events is titled Heritage Bird Houses. Local residents are invited to construct bird houses creatively related to an historic theme, to be displayed, judged, awarded prizes and auctioned off to benefit ongoing Heritage Society activities. Nineteen bird houses were entered in the 2005 competition.
One of the projects yet to be completed is the installation near the shoreline of a replica of one of the glass-bottomed Swan Boats that from the early 1890s to the mid-1970s carried visitors around Pacific Grove’s near shoreline, giving them a glimpse of the sea life below the surface of the Bay. Another is the re-creation of the Asilomar whistle stop structure on the location of the original shelter near the intersection of Pico and Crocker Avenues. The structure re-creation was based on the Southern Pacific Railroad’s design for the original Asilomar shelter and has been modeled by local builder Steve Honegger. It is scheduled to be constructed in 2007.
Publications: From its beginning in 1975, the Heritage Society has published a newsletter for its members. In 1979, the name Newsletter was changed to The Board and Batten although the previous newsletter format was retained. Then in 1983 the format of The Board and Batten was changed from an 8.5x11” or, in some years, an 8.5x14” format to a multi-page, 5.5x8.5” publication. The new Board and Batten, edited from 1983 to 2002 by Adam Weiland, became a respected journal of the history of Pacific Grove. The editor from 2002 to 2004 was John Billstrom. The current co-editors are Betty Aickelin and Sally Aberg. The Board and Batten is scheduled to be published four times each year and is free to members of the Heritage Society.
A Table of Contents and an Index to The Board and Batten are available at the Heritage Society Barn. Back issues of The Board and Batten are currently being scanned and are targeted to be available in electronic format in 2007. Publication of a monthly Newsletter, separate from the Board and Batten, was resumed in 2000 under the editorships of Darlene Billstrom (2000-2004) and Maryanne Spradling (2005-present). In 2005 the Heritage Society sponsored the publication of Pacific Grove, a pictorial history of the City written and edited by Kent Seavey as part of the Images of America series by Arcadia Publishing. Some 200 historic photographs and documents illustrate the history of Pacific Grove from 1880 through the Second World War. Pacific Grove, Images of America, is available from the Heritage Society.
Other History-related Activities: In addition to the activities and programs described above, the Heritage Society maintains an information booth and a display of materials from its Barn Museum at the Chamber of Commerce-sponsored Good Old Days every spring, sponsors a school outreach program in which presentations about local architecture and/or history are offered to elementary school classrooms, and sponsors a Pony League Baseball team each year. In addition, for several years the Society sponsored a Victorian Dinner for its members, often in a restaurant located in one of the city’s historic buildings. In the planning stage is a photography contest open to students from the local high schools with subjects related to local history.
~Authored by Bob Davis
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