Ranchito Bendito artwork by Frank Serrano
ranchito-bendito-montecito-magazine-article_fall-winter2010
This story was originally published in Montecito Magazine in Winter 2010.
Restoring Ranchito Bendito: An Edwards and Plunkett Classic
Tag Archives: Montecito Magazine
A Passion for Business Innovation
The Manzo-McKaig Melting Pot
By Leslie Dinaberg
Courtesy Montecito Magazine
Like many immigrant families, the Manzo-McKaig patriarch came to the U.S. to pursue the American Dream.
Mission accomplished. From the Italian Store to the Pan-American Market chain, Enrico’s Deli and Casa Flores Tortillas, to their current successes in entrepreneurial ventures, hard work—and a love of food and family—run deep in the Manzo-McKaig gene pool.
Luigi Manzo came to the United States from Italy shortly after World War I, and together with his wife Luigina, opened the Italian Store, on February 1, 1929, according to a 1956 story in the Santa Barbara News-Press (“Store Will Give Birthday Orchids”). The imported food market was the first of its type in Santa Barbara, says Manzo’s granddaughter, Louise McKaig, The original Italian Store was located at 10 E. Cota St., the historic building that now houses the Palace Restaurant.
In the early days, Luigi and Luigina operated the store themselves. “Specialty and imported groceries and their own make of salumi and sausage brought popularity to the store. With a small truck they delivered orders as far as Santa Paula, Camarillo, Oxnard and Carpinteria,” according to the Santa Barbara News-Press.
“My Grandma always told me she came through Ellis Island [also from Italy] when she was nine,” says Louise. “She said that her father and his brother went to work in the coal mines in Oklahoma.” According to the 1930 U.S. Census records, Luigina arrived in this country in 1915, and classified herself as an “unpaid worker, member of the family” at the “Family Grocery Store” in Santa Barbara.
The Manzo’s son Enrico “Pete” (Louise’s father) also began working at the store at the tender age of seven. “His first job was dusting, straightening shelves, and stacking the bulk eggs into cartons,” says Pete’s wife Dorothy “Dottie” Manzo. “Pete was still in high-school when his father, Luigi Manzo, got sick and handed Pete the keys to the store. ”
Courtesy Montecito Magazine
In 1947, the family moved the store to larger quarters at 802 Chapala St. (now the back side of Paseo Nuevo Mall). Enrico graduated from Santa Barbara High School in 1948, and served as an Army medic during the Korean War. He formally took over the management of the store when he completed his military service in 1953.
He also came back to home to his sweetheart, Dorothy “Dottie” Flores. “She was an elevator girl at the Granada Theatre,” says Louise. Shortly after Enrico’s return from the war, the couple was married at St. Raphael’s Church in Goleta in 1954. “Seven days after we married, Pete put an apron on me and taught me to use the cash register,” recalls Dottie. “I was the head checker and was in charge of training the other checkers. I also prepared the figures for bookkeepers and accountants.”
The Manzo family grew quickly. Michael, Louise and then Louis were born—all three siblings still reside in Santa Barbara. Michael is an architect and Louis and Louise are both real estate agents. Dottie also lives in town and enjoys lots of family time.
The business grew too. In 1955 the store more than doubled its floor space. “At that time there weren’t very many grocery stores in Santa Barbara,” says Dottie.
Unheard of for the time, Enrico also built a 14,000-square-foot paved parking lot in the rear of the Chapala store. “My father was always so innovative,” says Louise. “We were one of the first stores to have a parking lot, which made it easier for people to buy more groceries since they didn’t have to carry them as far.”
Courtesy Montecito Magazine
“I remember we were probably all under ten years old and during the Fiesta Parade one year … our dad gave all of us kids a refrigerated chest full of drinks and sodas and told us to make sure the parking lot was used by customers only, and that we could sell drinks to parade goers in the meantime and keep all the profit from the soda sales for ourselves, says Michael.
“That was probably our first taste of running a business without our parents,” says Louise.
According to the Santa Barbara News-Press report, at that point the Italian Store had 15 employees—including six butchers in the meat department—and stocked more than 5,000 grocery items.
In 1956, they changed the store’s name to Pan American Market, which quickly became a chain of five stores (co-owned with Jack Woolsey), including one on Milpas Street, where Chapala Market is now, one on upper State Street where Bev Mo is now, one in Carpinteria, and one on the Mesa. “Jack was a partner for a while when we opened our second store on the Mesa, where Lazy Acres is now,” says Dottie.
Enrico continued to be creative and pioneering with his stores—which featured state-of-the-art checkout equipment, modernized frozen-food departments and other innovations to make shopping easier. He was also always cutting edge with his marketing strategies.
One such promotion delighted local children. “We had a store in Carpinteria,” says Louise, “and my dad had this friend who was a helicopter pilot fly over the store dressed as Santa for Christmas.” Helicopter Santa also visited the Mesa store, according to Dottie.
This kind of attention-getting stunt wasn’t being done at that time; it was unheard of, Louise says.
“Pete was always coming up with new innovative business ideas, something inherited by our daughter Louise,” says Dottie. “We had special events, guests, or prizes for customers throughout the year especially for holidays and special occasions.”
“One year, my dad brought Engineer Bill, the famous kids TV show host, to our Pan American Market in Carpinteria and publicized it to bring new customers. Engineer Bill would be my kids’ generation’s version of Mr. Rogers,” explains Louise. “Sometimes Dad would hire a photographer to take family photos for customers wanting a keepsake. Creating an experience is an important approach to running a successful business. I’ve tried to follow in my father’s footsteps by implementing a lot of his teachings into my business like by selling a good product but also a good experience. On Mother’s Day he would have orchids given to all the mothers who were shopping at the store.”
Courtesy Montecito Magazine
“Growing up, my brothers, Mike and Louis and I spent a lot of time at the grocery stores. Most of the employees were like aunts and uncles to us,” recalls Louise.
“I remember bagging groceries for customers, stocking shelves, unloading cases of food off delivery trucks and miscellaneous repairs around the stores, ” says Louis.
“There were a lot of good characters and we had a lot of fun times,” says Michael.
“One time there was a butcher who wasn’t very nice to us. My dad suggested we give him ‘Happy Pills.’ So the next time he wasn’t being nice, my brothers and I made a little jar with M&Ms and wrote ‘Happy Pills’ on it,” says Louise.
“After that he was a lot nicer to us,” adds Michael.
The family business ethos was backed up with innovative business strategies. For example, the Pan-American Market was also one of the first grocery stores to have a full service deli on the premises, says Louise. A portion of the Chapala Street store eventually became Enrico’s Deli, which was beloved for its Enrico sandwich with Enrico sauce. “It was olive oil with really finely chopped celery and parsley and salt and pepper and garlic and a few other things—it was just really good,” recalls Louise. “It had just enough strength that you probably didn’t want to go on your first date to Enrico’s, but it was so good! Plus, we used really good Italian meats.”
“Enrico’s Deli was a success because we had great food and quick lunches,” says Louis. “The fast food chains were not in Santa Barbara yet, and for customers that wanted a reasonably priced, quick, hot lunch, such as a meatball, roast beef, turkey or pastrami sandwich on a French roll, Enrico’s was the place to be.”
The folks at the website cartastypepad.com also remember Enrico’s Deli and the Italian Market fondly, writing: “They sold salami, salciccie, cotechini alla vaniglia, etc, as well as ‘delicacies’ of every sort. Many people remember… the extraordinary sandwiches that were made to order, and no matter how long the line was, it was worth the wait. The deli cases were full of cheeses, olives, and meats. The shelves were still stocked with “delicacies” that were hard to find anywhere else – authentic Italian food in colorful packages and tins, and treats from other places, too … France, Germany, Spain …The air was heavy and rich with possibilities. It seemed like the whole city was sad when they closed their doors.”
Of course, the Manzo business doors didn’t stay closed for long.
“My father would retire and then decide ‘I’m too young to retire, I’m not retired,'” laughs Louise. “And then he’d start something again.”
“We sold the stores because we wanted to go into our next businesses,” says Dottie.
That next business was Casa Flores, a brand of tortillas.
“When my dad went into the tortilla business, tortillas weren’t produced and distributed at the level that my father envisioned,” says Louise. “My dad’s idea for Casa Flores Tortillas was to make tortillas the most popular substitute to the American bread industry.”
Prior to that, people either manufactured flour tortillas or they manufactured corn tortillas, she explains. “But this was the first time they were both under same roof. … His goal was to have people think of tortillas like bread.”
“For Casa Flores Tortillas the boys were our route managers, in charge of the trucks and routes while Louise and I ran the day-to-day of the business, accounting, payroll, human resources, scheduling of over a hundred employees, and the office side of things. The main office headquarters were located on Laguna Street,” says Dottie.
“Our family set a lot of standards in the food industry like seeing tortillas in every store with their own section, ‘food best by’ dates, and tortilla delivery schedules that matched the bread schedules, ” says Louise. “These are expected these days but before my dad thought of these things it was relatively unheard of.”
She continues, “He was very smart. He gave people things that no one else was getting. For example, Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing was new then, and he sold a lot of that. One of the first distributors was a family friend. When our family opened the first Enrico’s Deli, people could design their sandwich with a quarter pound of meat, their choice of bread, their choice of toppings, a salad choice plus a side green salad with Ranch dressing. As a child I remember lines out the door every day at lunchtime. The new deli and the new salad dressing were a very big hit in Santa Barbara.”
According to a 1975 story in the Santa Barbara News-Press (“Fiscal Front: Tortillas Abound at Casa Flores”), the wholesale Casa Flores Food Factory, located at 526 Laguna St. (now Santa Barbara Paint Depot), had a million dollar gross per year, turning out 30-40,000 dozen tortillas a day, with a daily fleet of 30 trucks taking tortillas to stores and restaurants between San Diego and Paso Robles. The company was eventually purchased by Mission Foods, which is now the number one tortilla company in the United States.
But back in the day, Louise would travel to various supermarkets and food trade shows to demonstrate how to make quesadillas and other things with the tortillas.
She explains, “At that time, bread was at the center of the American meal, but my dad wanted people to think of tortillas like bread was at the time. As part of our campaign I would travel doing food demonstrations in various grocery stores, which was a new concept but has become a common marketing strategy today.”
She continues, “My father employed a chemist and they would experiment with new formulas to make tortillas but also new ways to use them. … In those days, tortillas were typically fried, which is not as healthy, so I started steaming tortillas at trade shows and it became a big hit. I was running our tortilla booth at a big Smith’s Food King trade show in Salt Lake City and every day we had a long line of people wanting to taste our new healthier method of ‘steaming tortillas.’ This man kept coming up to me saying, ‘You’re more popular than Miss America!’ I finally asked ‘who is that guy?’ It turned out to be Dee Smith of Smith’s Food King, and Miss America was actually there hosting another booth that wasn’t as popular as ours. That impressed Dee Smith. I made so many quesadillas that week and I had so many people lining up to try our ‘steamed tortilla’ quesadillas that I remember making them in my dreams.”
“I love that my grandpa actually came up with the idea and was the first to do a honey wheat tortilla, no one was doing that back then,” says Louise’s son, Samuel McKaig. “It my mom’s idea to have a little bee on the front of the package.”
He continues, “I think something that added to the company was it wasn’t just my grandpa, [the kids] were always running it for him. The kids ran the operations and the corporate side of things and my grandma did the accounting and the payroll. So it was always a family thing.”
“We learned a lot doing that,” says Louise. “Even just the mind set of you either are building skills and what you don’t know how to do you learn to do because you just keep building on your knowledge, and surround yourself with knowledgeable people too.”
Louise—an agent with Village Properties—says her family grew up having family meetings about the businesses. This is a tradition she’s continued with her own family, which includes her high school sweetheart husband Bruce McKaig, a retired Santa Barbara County Firefighter. The couple actually met when they were students at La Colina Junior High. Louise says she still teases Bruce that he’s not really a native Santa Barbaran because he didn’t move to town till he was six months old. They have two sons, Samuel and Ian, and a daughter, Shelby McKaig Rowe.
“My brother and I started in media and film, so we were doing commercials and helping Louise with her marketing,” says Samuel. “My grandfather was always trying to come up with innovative things and that was something he passed on to us, our business meeting family dinners,” he laughs.
In addition to business, the kitchen is also at the heart of this family. “Another thing that we’ve duplicated from my childhood is that we lived three generations together,” says Louise. “So my grandmother would be cooking and we had our chores for how everything would run smoothly, because my mom was working full time. At some point my Uncle Joe came to live with us too. … Now my husband’s mom lives with us. And now with me working full time and my husband retired we sort of switch off making meals.”
“And we all cook different meals,” adds Samuel. “I married a French person, so we got some different cuisine in there. She cooks a lot.”
Along with the international cuisines of the various family businesses, Louise also had another business coordinating internal programs for travelers who came to Santa Barbara. “I learned all kinds of different skills doing that, ” she says. “You have to, especially when someone can’t communicate in your own language.”
The family legacy of creativity and always working to improve oneself continues to live on in Santa Barbara. “That was something he (Grandpa Enrico) was always teaching (my mother) and he was trying to teach me is being innovative and coming up with the next thing that no one has done before,” says Samuel. “He taught that to Louise and that’s what she uses in her real estate and that’s what she taught me… being creative and pushing the limits.”
“My parents and grandparents taught me that if you work hard, provide the best products and great service your customers and clients will keep coming back,” says Louis.
“Dad taught us to treat our employees and coworkers the way you want to be treated. He always made sure that everyone in the company was taken care of,” says Michael.
“As a kid I had learned so much about business and being an entrepreneur from working with my dad. My dad taught me that a successful business is created by long-time personal relationships, by always giving a customized experience, and by providing a better service to your clients than they can get anywhere else. I think these values have always been at the core of our family’s businesses from my grandfather’s first Italian Store in the 1920s to my real estate business and my children’s businesses. He taught by example that to make a business successful you need people to want to work for you. He helped our employees from top to bottom feel like they were an essential part of a team.”
Originally published in Montecito Magazine, Spring-Summer 2015.
If these walls could talk: The hallowed history of La Casa de Maria’s stone house
Photo courtesy immaculateheartcenter.org.
In the Montecito hills, off of El Bosque Road, sits a bastion of peace and serenity in today’s busy world. Heading up the oak tree-lined driveway to the grand stone house at the center of La Casa de Maria, one can’t help but be overcome with feelings of calm and tranquility, as if driving into the distance brought one back to a quieter, simpler time.
This property was originally part of the San Ysidro Ranch, owned by Taylor Goodrich and John Harleigh Johnston. Richard Hogue, of Montana, purchased 20 acres of the ranch in 1886, and named it El Prado Rancho (the meadow). At the time there was an orange orchard on the property, but a few years later Hogue obtained road access and water rights and created the first lemon orchard in the area. Some of those old lemon trees can still be seen in front of the stone estate house that now resides on the property.
In 1924, Hogue sold the property to Emmor J. Miley, a building contactor and one of the pioneers in Kern County oil development. As an oilman, Miley made a sizeable fortune, some of which he planned to show off in his new estate.
Renaming the property Rancho El Bosque (the woodlands), Miley hired architectural designer Mary Craig to design a showpiece house.
Craig was the widow of architect James Osborne Craig, who succumbed to tuberculosis in 1922 at the age of 33. In his short career Mr. Craig played a large role in the development of Spanish Colonial architecture in Santa Barbara, including designs for El Paseo downtown and the Bernard Hoffmann House on the Riviera. Though she did not have any formal design training, Mary had worked at her husband’s side and took over his practice when he died, going on to become a notable architect in her own right, designing Plaza Rubio, the group of cottages below the Santa Barbara Mission; the W.C. Logan Building arcade (222 E. Carrillo Street); the Anacapa Annex to El Paseo; and many private homes in the area.
The 13,000 square-foot Miley home, which remains mostly intact today, features hand-carved teak ceilings, nine distinctive Italian stone fireplace mantels, and courtyard tiles from Spain and Czechoslovakia. It was Miley who put in the monkey tree and star pine tree that now highlight the entrance to the property, and most notably, it was Miley who commissioned hand hewn stone quarried from the fields and banks of nearby San Ysidro Creek for the house and walls around the estate.
“ Mr. Miley used to come up every weekend to see how the work was progressing,” recalls Mary Skewes-Cox, daughter of Mary and James Osborne Craig. “We would go to church on Sunday morning and then from church we went to the Miley’s. They were living in a house on the property and we would go and have breakfast with them and then my mother would go over the work with Mr. Miley. I was just a little girl at the time,” says Skewes-Cox, who is now 87.
“I remember driving around the property. They quarried all that stone for the house on the property. But all of the stonework came right off of that land,” she says.
According to Maria Herold of the Montecito History Committee, “You will see in the inside hall that there are vertical striations of stone. On the inside staircase is where you can see it best. This is a very time-consuming and therefore very expensive treatment of stone that you don’t really need to do, but they went to all the trouble of doing this very special treatment. And of course, the outside is spectacular because of the way the stone is cut. It’s a masterpiece.”
“The beautiful stonework in which the local sandstone was quarried from the place and cut by hand was not done by any particular firm of stone masons, Instead it was done by individuals and very fine stone masons engaged by (building contractors) Snook and Kenyon,” according to a 1985 letter from John de Blois Wack, who later purchased the property.
Pamela Skewes-Cox, the granddaughter of Mary and James Osborne Craig, is working on a book about their lives, along with co-author Robert Sweeney, an architectural historian. In researching Mary Craig, Skewes-Cox found that “she wasn’t outspoken and she didn’t advertise herself in an aggressive way at all, she sort of just kept her nose to the grindstone and she met people and she was very social and people liked her. But it was unusual for a woman in that time to be professionally-oriented.”
She continues, “My mother remembers going up to property with her mother to discuss building this very, very elegant house. They had no lack of money at the time that they were discussing the design and she had free reign to do this elaborate and very expensive home and they were not nervous about it at all because they had money and money to spend and they really wanted a showplace.”
Unfortunately, Miley ran into financial difficulties with the stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, and he was forced to sell the estate before his dream house was completed.
“He literally had to just stop construction,” says Pamela Skewes-Cox. “Fortunately Mary Craig had a mechanic’s lien on the property which meant that if Miley forfeited she and her draftsman, Ralph Armitage, owned the property until they were paid for their work.”
In 1932 John and Ethel de Blois Wack purchased the estate for $100,000. John was a successful Wall Street investor who had come to the area to raise horses and play polo at the Bartlett field in Montecito and the Fleischmann fields in Carpinteria. He later became president of the Santa Barbara Polo Association. His father was the co-founder of Field and Stream magazine and as a young man he was an editor there. John and Ethel were both avid aviators who flew their private plane all over North America, often checking in on their cattle operation in Arizona.
Soon after the purchase, the Wack’s hired architect Chester L. Carjola to finish the estate house. There has been some debate over how “finished” the house was at this point.
Pamela Skewes-Cox would like to set the record straight. “We have determined by looking at the drawings, my co-author and I, that the great majority of the house was completed, even though the Miley’s had not moved in yet. The working drawings that were done later for Mr. Wack by the architect Carjola, those show basically a finished house and you can see on the drawing where it says unfinished. We studied those pretty carefully and so a great deal of the detail, even the ceilings, were conceived by Mary Craig with Mr. Miley’s input. A lot of people say, ‘well it wasn’t finished and Carjola finished it.’ It’s Mary Craig’s house, there’ s absolutely no hesitancy in my saying that.”
Mr. de Blois Wack’s 1985 letter also states, “it is my feeling that Mrs. Craig should be looked upon as the architect.”
“Mary Craig wasn’t asked by the Wack’s to finish it, for whatever reason, but she was friends with the Wack’s,” says Pamela Skewes-Cox.
When the house was completed in 1933, the property included a swimming pool and tennis courts, as well as additional structures, including a little cottage for Mr. Wack’s mother, Mrs. Lillian Wack, which is now called Santa Teresita; the Browning house for Mr. Wack’s piano accompanist and his family; a garage, stables, and a gardener’s cottage later named the Bayberry House. There was also a large studio called the study, which has since burned, where Mrs. Wack, an accomplished artist, painted portraits in oil.
The Wack’s plunged into the local social scene with gusto and became known for their parties. They were music aficionados—Mr. Wack had even done some professional singing—and one of the wings looking out on the rear court was used as a music room with stone walls, high-beamed ceilings and balcony for an orchestra. Many famous musicians performed at the Wack’s parties, including conductor Leopold Stokowski, who did Walt Disney’s Fantasia; Ozzie Nelson and his swing band; Victor Trucco, assistant conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, and the great baritone John Charles Thomas, who served for a year as director at the Music Academy of the West.
Mary Skewes-Cox recalls grand parties at the Wack’s house. “I was in my teens when the Wack’s owned it. They had a coming out party for their daughter Ethel and it was a lovely, lovely party with things going on all throughout the house. I remember the tables were set up on the tennis court and there was music and dancing and it was a wonderful party.”
Held in August of 1941, Ethel Wack’s debutante party had 700 guests; the Royal Hawaiian Orchestra played on the tennis court, which was converted into a terrace for dining and dancing; Ozzie Nelson’s band was in the art studio for more dancing; and there was a sit-down dinner for all of the guests.
The estate was also a site for Pearl Chase’s garden tours. In addition to the citrus orchards and spacious lawns, both Miley and Wack had imported many exotic plants. There was also a “sun garden” with rose and camellia bushes, and a “shade garden” with begonias and ferns.
After a decade in the house, Mr. Wack found that his growing numbers of thoroughbred horses didn’t have enough room on the estate, and the grounds were too rocky for his horses, so in 1942 he put the place up for sale and moved to Hope Ranch to open Yolo Breeding Stables on a 42-acre parcel.
Meanwhile, Mother Eucharia, Mother Superior of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart in Hollywood, asked her cousin, realtor Charles Dunn, to help her find a quiet place for a novitiate, to train their novice nuns. Dunn first looked at the estate ,which later became Marymount School on the Riviera before recommending the Wack estate in Montecito, which the sisters purchased in December of 1942. Because it was during World War II and many estates were up for sale, the sisters were able to purchase the estate for $32,500. On Easter Monday 1943, four sisters moved in, one of them sister Regina McPartlin, and 12 aspiring novices.
They made the upstairs of the main house into a dormitory by dividing the rooms up with freestanding metal frames and curtains, thus the walls and hardwood floors were never marred. “When we stayed in those rooms, because we just had those little cells, we never saw what the whole room looked like. Even though in the morning after we got up and made our beds and got dressed we were supposed to open the cell curtains, when you were in there your curtain was closed. It was really funny because many years later we returned and the cell curtains had all been removed and everything. People were like, ‘Whoa, look at that beautiful ceiling. Was that there when we were here?’ And that was kind of a common experience. All of those teak ceilings,” says Stephanie Glatt, a former novice who is now the director of La Casa de Maria.
“I guess we were busy learning to be nuns and being spiritual and praying and we didn’t spend a lot of time in there. It’s just that it was so strange because everybody felt like the house had been remodeled and it hadn’t, it was just our perception.”
All of the novices (aspiring nuns) and postulants (aspiring novices) had chores assigned to them. Glatt recalls working on the vegetable porch. “There was a big cutting board out there … and of course, we’re supposed to be working in silence. They used to bring the vegetables in newspapers and at that time we’re supposed to be totally sequestered from the world, so we weren’t supposed to read the newspapers. … They would always put the newspapers upside down so we couldn’t read them. It was kind of funny because your eye would catch a part of a headline and you’d kind of try to see what’s going on out there, and then somebody would read the headline and say, ‘Did you see that?’ (Laughs) when we were all supposed to be working in silence.”
The number of postulants and novices continued to increase and under the guidance of Sister Regina the stables were renovated with two dormitories upstairs and two downstairs. A two-story extension was added to the art studio (which burned in 1972) with a recreation and sewing room upstairs and two classrooms downstairs.
The basement entertainment room was transformed into a refectory, where the women would eat all of their meals. “On feast days we decorated tables. Decoration meant the tables, which had blue linoleum tops, and we would get rolls of white butcher paper and roll the roll down and tape it on the underneath side, and then put flowers on. I’m sure every year some group was asked to decorate the tables and every year some group went out and cut poison oak, not knowing it was poison oak because of the lovely color,” laughs Glatt. “They would put it in vases and then someone would go, ‘Oh my god, you got poison oak.’”
The ballroom became a chapel and the musician’s balcony became a choir loft. “You should have heard 90 of us singing in there,” says Glatt. “The choir loft that was pointless because there were 90 of us in the chapel. But the sisters that taught at Mount Carmel lived there and some other visitors would come and they couldn’t fit in the chapel, so they all kind of huddled up there.”
While the aspiring nuns pursued religious life on La Casa’s grounds, the peaceful surroundings were also gaining a reputation in Hollywood. Stars like Irene Dunne, Loretta Young, and Ricardo Montalban came for retreats, holding prayer services in the Novitiate by day, while staying overnight at the Biltmore. In 1955, La Casa de Maria Retreat House formed on the property and became the first retreat center for Catholic married couples.
During the 1960s, there were conflicts between James Francis McIntyre, the Cardinal Archbishop of Los Angeles who oversaw the Immaculate Heart community and the sisters. They eventually shed their habits in 1970 and became the Immaculate Heart Community, an ecumenical group of men and women. Since 1974, the community has operated the Immaculate Heart Center for Spiritual Renewal in the historic old stone house, opening its doors for private retreats for people of all faiths.
With its long and storied history, the grand house still has new stories to tell. “I always feel that somehow that spirit is still there, you know that all those prayers everybody said there weren’t lost,” says Glatt. “It’s like they’re still hanging out.”
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Special thanks to Pamela Skewes-Cox and Maria Herold of the Montecito History Committee for their assistance in researching this story.
Originally published in Montecito Magazine, Fall 2008.
Keeping it Green: Cozy Charm Meets Environmental Friendliness
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Photo courtesy Allen Associates
Combining cozy quaintness with modern conveniences was the goal when Linda and Jerry Gutterman decided to remodel their 1930’s cottage. As much as they loved the homey feel of their tiny, 1,086 square foot abode, they wanted more room, and used their remodel as an opportunity to create a greener, healthier and more energy efficient living space.
It was important to Linda that they maintain the cottage’s cozy feeling. “I wanted a real cottage feel when you came up the driveway, “ she says.
Located on a cul de sac off of Schoolhouse Road, the cottage has a long and storied history that Linda and Jerry wanted to make sure they preserved. The property, which runs alongside a creek, originally belonged to the family of Burr and Beverly Barker, Linda’s former husband and his sister.
Photo courtesy Allen Associates
Their grandfather, William Barker, purchased the five-acre property in 1895 and it became known as Barker Ranch. William had eight children, six sons and two daughters, who lived in the original farmhouse down the street.
“As they grew up he decided to give his children property on the farm so they could build their homes with their spouses when they married,” says Linda. So the property was divided up and Burr’s father Fred built the original cottage with his brothers in 1932.
When Fred and his wife Jeanne passed away in the late 1970s, Burr (then married to Linda) and his sister Beverly inherited the cottage. They bought Beverly’s share and held onto the property. In 1994 the property was deeded to Linda and she moved into the family cottage.
Four generations of Barker children have played among the oak trees that frame the backyard of the cottage, which butts against the grounds of the 11-acre Casa del Herrero estate. Designed by the area’s premiere architect, George Washington Smith, Casa del Herrero is noted as one of the finest examples of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and has been in the hands of its original owners, the Steedman family, since it was first constructed more than 75 years ago.
Photo courtesy Allen Associates
“What we wanted to achieve with this house remodel is to make it feel like it’s always been here,” Linda says, citing her love and appreciation for the older home styles found in Montecito and the Upper East Side of Santa Barbara.
Both of the Gutterman’s like traditional style homes that feel like they have a history. They have a special affection for the cottage, where Linda took residence in 1994. She married Jerry in 1999. “I married her for her cottage,” he jokes.
“I loved the cottage and I enjoyed living in it very much. It was very cozy because I had added all my touches. But the house was single wall construction, and it was cold. The windows were single glass paned…the nice leaded glass windowpanes that came from the old Parma Estate, and neat windows, classic leaded glass windows … but it was just drafty,” says Linda.
Photo courtesy Allen Associates
“They weren’t very energy efficient,” adds Jerry.
“We were burning gas like mad just keeping the house warm,” says Linda.
In addition, the house wasn’t well built. “It wasn’t a home that you could save and remodel. It wasn’t built well enough structurally, because it was built by the kids, by the boys,” she says. Plus, it is located right next to a creek and they had problems with mold and mildew.
“It was almost like it was becoming uninhabitable for health reasons, and so we decided we would build a whole new home. (There was) almost like an underwater lake that was developing under the foundation of the house when you dig down underneath the property,” says Linda.
Jerry explains that the Jell-O-like substance under the house was subsurface water, which had to be excavated in order to rebuild the structure. “We did not want to build over that because we would continue to sustain the same problems,” he says.
Photo courtesy Allen Associates
Working with Allen Associates, a local building contractor that specializes in green construction, the Gutterman’s decided to install a French drain system that collects all of the water runoff from the back of property and the roof and then drains it into the streambed for reuse.
While the Gutterman’s decided to remodel in January 2006, they didn’t actually begin demolition until April of that year. They worked with several architects to come up with a design that would preserve the look and feel of the old cottage while using new materials and technological innovations to go from a 1,086 square foot home to 2,900 square feet. Linda’s father, architect John Roberts, did the initial layout and floor plan.
But because we changed our minds so much, “her father fired us,” laughs Jerry. “Her dad does drafting the old-fashioned way with a pencil and eraser, and with the way Linda and I change our minds, until we figure it out, it was a lot of erasing for him.”
“We became known as Mr. and Mrs. Change,” says Linda. The next architect hired was Melvin Hemmer, who unfortunately passed away before the project was completed. Sophie Calvin took over at that point to complete the plans and get the design through all of the necessary approvals.
While the new home is more than twice the size of the original, from the curb it still looks like a small cottage. “We tried to keep the feel of this home from the front when you drive up to be similar to other homes on the street, to keep that same cottage sense and feeling,” says Jerry.
“When you drive up, it doesn’t look nearly as big as it is,” says Linda. “I kind of like the element of surprise. That is really what I enjoy is coming in to a home and seeing the charming little touches.”
Among the charming touches she preserved are the fireplace mantel from the original cottage, which now graces the master bedroom, and the door of the original 1900s farmhouse from Barker Ranch, which is now the entry to a new garden cottage in the backyard.
“That was important to us to try to keep the traditional integrity as best we could,” says Jerry.
There’s always a concern in older neighborhoods when people hear that there’s a new home going up, says Linda. While she understands the need to update older homes, “what I want is for this street to stay charming as it always has been. ”
Some of the biggest updates were in the area of energy efficiency. Improving insulation is one of the easiest and most cost effective ways to improve the energy efficiency of a house, says Allen Associates Green Resources Manager Karen Feeney. In the Gutterman’s case, they used recycled content non-formaldehyde fiberglass insulation in all of the walls. They also used energy-efficient windows and ceiling fans to improve circulation. An “on-demand” hot water heating system also improved efficiency, as did new Energy Star appliances.
The Gutterman’s selected innovative structural materials for their remodel as well. They used faux stonework for the outside fireplace, which is less expensive and easier to work with because it’s much lighter than real stone. Their backyard deck is a product called EverGrain, made from plastic and recycled wood fibers. This type of decking is extremely low maintenance and not prone to damage from termites or weather.
Linda says she marvels at the many high substitute materials available now instead of wood.
Fire is also a big concern in Montecito, and the Gutterman’s took this into consideration when choosing the EverGrain decking, which is Class A fire-rated, meaning it has a high resistance to fire and a lower probability of combusting during a fire. They also chose to use fiber cement shingle siding manufactured by CertainTeed and a fiber cement roof product called Firefree to address both their environmental and fire safety concerns.
“They were able to achieve both goals, the green goal as well as putting in materials in their home that were not going to be susceptible to fire, so there’s a win win in both areas,” says Feeney.
Their Isokern fireplaces in the living room, the kitchen, and outside on the deck were all designed for energy efficiency. “A lot of times you’ve got your fireplace and three-fourths of the heat is going up. The way that these are designed is that they are much more fuel-efficient and they radiate the heat back out into the rooms so they are more effective,” says Feeney.
In order to improve the air quality and therefore their health, the Gutterman’s—who had custom dining room and office cabinets built by John Willis and purchased their kitchen and bathroom cabinets from Jack’s Kitchens— used formaldehyde-free shelving and cabinet materials, as well as non-toxic sealants, adhesives and oils and zero/no VOC (no emission) paints and coatings throughout the house.
They also installed PEX plumbing, which is made from cross-linked polyethylene. In addition to the cost saving advantage over traditional copper plumbing, this material is more flexible so it doesn’t require welding, it’s more durable under temperature extremes, and there are no chemical byproducts to get into the water supply. “It’s definitely a cost effective green alternative,” says Feeney.
The Gutterman’s were thrilled to be able to move back into their cozy cottage last April, exactly one year and one week after demolition day. They had a hard time picking a favorite room. Jerry says he had a special affection for his office, the bedroom and the living room, while Linda says she loved both the kitchen and the master bathroom, in part because of their beautiful, park-like views, and of course the memories.
“There’s so much memory here of all our family get-togethers under these trees and of all our picnics and all that, so it’s really a very nostalgic thing for us,” says Linda, whose daughters Bryn and Leah now visit often with their own babies.
The structure may be new, but the rumble of the creek, the swish of the trees, and the history of the house still remain.
Originally published in Montecito Magazine, Spring 2008.