With a real estate man-about-town for a partner, I do enjoy the exposure to all sorts of different styles of home and garden here in Sonoma and neighboring Marin Counties. And while it's the heritage homes that West Petaluma is particularly renowed for, it's not too often that a showcase model from the Victorian era hits the market.
When Timo and the owners of Heritage Home Award Winning 100 Prospect Street asked me to research the history of the home, I jumped at the chance to travel back to the 1880s for a slice of the Petaluma lifestyle of one of its most prominent historical families.
First, I turned to 100 Prospect Street's homeowners for a pile of past feature articles on this intriguing house. Next call was to Sonoma County Local History and Geneology (Sonoma County Library) Historian and author, Katherine J. Rinehart to pick her considerable brains and records for copies of newspaper clippings and other information from 1885. My next step was a tour of the home from an historical/restoration perspective.
It is easy for me from a reporter's perspective to become obsessed with the lineage of a home, though easier to sleuth when there is plentiful documentation handed down from generation to generation, if a home stays in one family for a while. In this case, there was a surprising number of questions as to the exact details of a home owned by only five different title holders in 129 years.
100 Prospect Street, built by D.B Franklin and designed as a grand 'painted lady' in the Old San Francisco-style, by renowned architects, Samuel and Joseph Newsom (yes, former Mayor, Gavin Newsom is a descendent) was renamed "Sunshine", for its vibrant return to grace, by its present owners, after an intensive restoration between 2000 and 2002.
It is the oldest surviving home to have been owned by the prestigious McNear Family. Several newspaper and magazine reports over the past few years attributed its original ownership to businessman George Plummer McNear, who, it was reported, had the house built for his in-law's, elderly Mr. and Mrs. George Bailey, Williams.
However, G.P McNear was not their son-in-law, but the Williams' only surviving grandson from their late daughter Clara's marriage to John A. McNear. On closer study and inspection, it seems unlikely that even his father, John A. McNear, George William's second cousin as well as son-in-law (both from New England) would have been involved in the home's construction. And a newspaper report from 1885 clearly stated that the house was built by Williams.
George Williams and his wife, the marvelously-named Mehitable Lilly, were amongst the first non-native Petalumans to arrive in 1850. George, a farmer from Maine, had been fairly successful in the Mother Lode and came to Petaluma after being a partner in the building of a hotel in San Francisco. He built The American Hotel, Petaluma's first, on Main Street, selling that and building a second, The Washington Hotel on Washington Street (both would be destroyed by fires). It was George and his wife who called for their daughter Clara Williams McNear and her sea captain husband John to join them in California - a master move for the destiny of a Victorian riverfront town.
Clara passed away in childbirth in 1866, a decade after their arrival in Petaluma (her husband established Cypress Hill Memorial Park in his late wife's honor). By the time her parents, the Williams' were building 100 Prospect Stree (then known as Potato Street), completed in 1885, their son-in-law had been remarried for almost two decades.
What seems the logical conclusion is that it was their grandson, G.P McNear who took over title after the passing of George and Mehitable, within three days of one another, in October of 1899.
Over the next two decades, the home was used as a boarding house during weekdays for Petaluma High School female student lodgers from surrounding rural farms and ranches. It would also become a lodging house, for traveling salesmen (not at the same time!).
Chiropractor, Dr. Levi Snow and his optomotrist wife Elsie purchased the property in 1921, utlizing the 3,800 square foot, eleven room house for living quarters and offices. It remained in the Snow Family estate for 56 years, during which time it was home to an assortment of interesting characters, including a known prostitute, a little old lady and a graffiti-scrawling revolutionary.
In 1977 the property was purchased by a Mr. and Mrs. Eliassen, who converted it back into two apartments from four, undertaking several renovation projects over the years.
By the time the current owners took title in 1999, the painted lady was in dire need of a major restoration. Over an 18-month period, the house was lifted, converted back into a single family home and painstakingly preserved for another century. No tiny detail was left untouched. Contractor Brad McNeil and his crew were under strict instructions to treat the home with complete care and respect, as if it were their own.
Historic Home painting pro Don O'Brien produced its new exterior palette of eight colors, a combination that conjured a sunny new outlook over Prospect and Kentucky Streets.
Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the home's history is the fact that it was designed by the Newsom Brothers. Much ink is given to American architects Julia Morgan and Brainerd Jones' influence on Petaluma architecture, but the Newsoms were just as significant.
The Newsoms, who had arrived in the United States from Canada in 1861, as two of eight brothers and four sisters, are best celebrated today for their design of the Carson Mansion in Eureka , regarded as one of the grandest Victorian mansions in the United States and a classic example of the 'Gilded Age'. Built for one of the region's first lumber barons, the Carson Mansion has long-since been used as a prototype in architecture as the Hollywood-style, standard for a haunted-house!
The prestigious pair were responsible for the design of Petaluma's first City Hall (sadly demolished in the 1950s) and Basset Street School House.
The Newsoms produced many styles and types of buildings from homes to churches to public buildings, including Oakland City Hall, The Alameda County Courthouse, The Napa County Courthouse and Napa Opera House.
So much rich history to take in. The house, which went on the market for the first time since 1999, on April 2nd, 2014, offers all sorts of possibilities for the next person who takes its auspicious reigns. For complete listing details and a link to my historical report with pictures click here.
If you have any additional knowledge of the home's history, please do let me know. It has been my pleasure to have helped coordinate the details of its storied past.
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