St. Hilary's Mission Church overlooks the San Francisco Bay, Belvedere, Corinthian Island and Tiburon circa 1895. The historic stone fence marking the approach to the church from the northeast is clearly visible. The rocky character of the hillside is very apparent.
October 25, 2019 - The California State Historical Resources Commission (Commission) will consider 10 nominations for federal historic designation and one nomination for state historic designation on Thursday, November 7. The Commission meeting will be held at 9 a.m. in the City of San Bernardino Multipurpose Room on the second floor located at 201B North E Street.
Some of the nominations being considered by the Commission include multiple property submissions for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in California (1850-1970) which include the Gran Oriente Filipino Hotel and Japanese Young Women’s Christian Association in San Francisco. Other properties include the Palace Hotel, a destination for Swiss-Italian immigrants who traveled to Guadalupe and the surrounding area in Santa Barbara County—the sole property nominated under the California Register of Historical Resources.
All properties being considered at the meeting include:
National Register of Historic Places Nominations
Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in California, 1850-1970
Multiple Property Submission (MPS)
Multiple Cities, Multiple Counties
The Multiple Property Documentation Form (MPDF) establishes a preliminary framework to identify and designate places in California associated with Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. The MPDF complements and builds upon the national theme study, Finding A Path Forward: Asian American Pacific Islander National Historic Landmarks Theme Study produced by the National Park Service. The initial focus is on those groups who had a significant presence in the state before additional federal laws and policies virtually halted migration from Asia in the 1920s and 1930s. These pioneering groups hailed in successive waves primarily from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines and the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent. The Pacific Islanders discussed in this MPDF—Native Hawaiians, Chamorros from Guam in the Mariana Islands and Samoans from American Samoa—came, like the Filipina/os, from territories controlled by the United States and were not considered immigrants subject to the restrictive laws.
Gran Oriente Filipino Hotel
(Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in California MPS)
San Francisco, San Francisco County
The 1907 three-story-over-basement rooming house is located in South Park, a residential enclave in San Francisco’s South of Market (SoMa) district. Gran Oriente Filipino, a Masonic organization founded by Filipino Merchant Marines in the early 1920s, began renting the property in 1935. Passage of the Luce-Celler Act in 1946 allowed Filipina/os who had arrived in the U.S. prior to 1934 to naturalize and consequently to purchase property in California. The lodge’s purchase of the rooming house marked an important shift from renting to owning property and was a source of pride in the Filipina/o community. The hotel meets the registration requirements of the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in California MPS for property types associated with Community Serving Organizations.
Japanese Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA)
(Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in California MPS)
San Francisco, San Francisco County
Designed in a Japanese-inspired style, the original 1932 building by Julia Morgan received an internally connected addition in 2017. Located in San Francisco’s Japantown, the property is the only building purposely built by and for Issei(first generation) Japanese Americanwomen in the United States. The property is associated with their struggles and accomplishments as well as with the fight for African American civil rights and gay rights. Inspired by the 1980s campaign for Japanese American redress, a multigenerational group of Japanese Americans led a successful legal struggle to regain title to the building so that it could be kept in use for the benefit of the Japanese American community. The building meets the registration requirements of the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in California MPS for property types associated with Community Serving Organizations.
Burro Flats Site (Boundary Decrease and Additional Documentation)
Restricted, Ventura County
This amendment updates a 1976 nomination with additional documentation to establish National Register eligibility in additional areas of significance, including Native American Heritage, Religion and Art, in addition to Prehistoric Archaeology as previously noted. Located in the Santa Susana Mountain Range, the site of both winter and summer solstice observations is eligible for its remarkable examples of prehistoric Native American rock art that are important representatives of the aesthetic and religious values of the Native American groups who created them.
Parker W. Lyon House
(Cultural Resources of the Recent Past, City of Pasadena MPS)
Pasadena, Los Angeles County
As an excellent and early example of the Mid-Century Modern residential architecture of master architect Thornton Ladd, the W. Parker Lyon House exemplifies the tenets of Mid-Century Modern residential architecture identified in the multiple property submission.
Bumann Ranch
Encinitas, San Diego County
This district consists of the remaining historic features of a small ranch established in 1886; of the original 160-acre homestead, 10 acres remain. One of the last remaining, still-active homestead ranches in San Diego County, Bumann Ranch is associated with the exploration and settlement of the Encinitas area by German immigrants via the Olivenhain Colony. The family continued tilling the land via horse-drawn farm equipment until the death of one of two ranch horses, Mollie, in 1965.
St. Hilary’s Mission Church
Tiburon, Marin County
The Gothic Revival style church is associated with the early settlement of Tiburon. Constructed in 1888, the property was deconsecrated in 1954 and restored in 1959 by the Belvedere-Tiburon Landmarks Society.
Founders’ Church of Religious Science
Los Angeles, Los Angeles County
Built in 1959, this Mid-Century Modern church was designed by master architect Paul Williams. The church was constructed of steel and reinforced concrete, capped by a large, domed roof with accompanying flat and pent volumes, with a unique elliptical plan and 14-foot high perimeter wall of perforated concrete breeze blocks.
Church of the Epiphany
(Latinos in Twentieth Century California MPS)
Los Angeles, Los Angeles County
The nineteenth-century Ernest Coxhead Shingle Style chapel received Late Gothic Revival additions by Arthur Benton. During the 1960s and 1970s, the church was the site of community organizing and organization formation for the Latinx community of East Los Angeles. Under the guidance of Reverend John B. Luce, the church became a center for cultural heritage preservation, reflecting the intersection of religion and activism associated with the use of religion, cultural heritage and non-violence to promote Chicano civil rights. The church meets the registration requirements for property types associated with Struggles for Inclusion in the Latinos in Twentieth Century California MPS.
Kelton Apartments
Los Angeles, Los Angeles County
The three-unit building, in the locally designated Midvale-Kelton Apartment Historic District in Westwood, is a complex composition of three levels that track the slope of the lot. Completed in 1941, the property embodies a shift in Richard Neutra’s architectural approach from earlier, purer iterations of the boxy volumes of the International Style. While retaining some key character-defining features of the earlier style, Kelton Apartments embodies a more relaxed, regionally responsive composition with a woodsier palette, and extended terraces and roof overhangs that enable a fuller relationship with nature.
California Register of Historical Resources Nomination
Palace Hotel
Guadalupe, Santa Barbara County
Also known as the Far Western Tavern, the hotel was a destination for Swiss-Italian immigrants who traveled to Guadalupe and the surrounding area. Built in 1912 for Swiss-Italian immigrant Ercolina Forni and her husband Ernest, Ercolina ran the Palace Hotel alone after Ernest moved to Northern California in 1920. The property is significant for its association with the commercial development of the city of Guadalupe and its association with the working life of Ercolina Forni.
The National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program that coordinates and supports public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archaeological resources. California Historical Landmarks are sites, buildings, features or events that are of statewide significance and have anthropological, cultural, military, political, architectural, economic, scientific, technical, religious or experimental value.
All nominations and photographs of properties under consideration are available online.
Notices and agendas for Commission meetings are available online 10 days before a meeting at www.ohp.parks.ca.gov. The public may present oral statements at the hearing at the appropriate time. Inquiries and written comments on the agenda may also be emailed to the Office of Historic Preservation at calshpo@ohp.parks.ca.gov or submitted via mail to Julianne Polanco, State Historic Preservation Officer at Office of Historic Preservation, P.O. Box 942896, Sacramento, CA 94296-0001.
General inquiries on the Commission are handled by Twila Willis-Hunter. She may be contacted via phone at (916) 445-7052 or at the same mailing address listed above.
Office of Historic Preservation
Responsible for administering federally and state mandated historic preservation programs to further the identification, evaluation, registration and protection of California's irreplaceable archaeological and historical resources under the direction of the State Historic Preservation Officer, a gubernatorial appointee, and the State Historical Resources Commission. Learn more at ohp.parks.ca.gov.
Source: CA. Parks
