Seven South Coast house styles, and how to tell them apart
Before a review board asks what you want to build, it asks what is already there. Here is what is already there, drawn.
Choose a style, then a feature; each is numbered on the drawing. They are the features the City of Santa Barbara’s own style guides use to identify a house, nothing more.
Adobe
The first houses of Santa Barbara, when it sat at the edge of the Spanish colonies: thick walls of sun-dried earth, and very little else.
Casa de la Guerra, built for José de la Guerra around a central courtyard, is California Historical Landmark No. 307.
In El Pueblo Viejo, new work must still follow “the adobe, Spanish Colonial Revival or Mediterranean tradition.”
Spanish Colonial Revival
The style the city rebuilt itself in after the earthquake of June 29, 1925, and the one that came to be called the Santa Barbara style.
George Washington Smith’s Casa del Herrero in Montecito (1925), and the County Courthouse, dedicated August 14, 1929.
An Architectural Board of Review was formed within days of the 1925 earthquake. The City’s boards review design to this day.
Italian Mediterranean
The villa of the great Montecito estates: formal, symmetrical and generous, with its rooms opening onto arcades.
Val Verde in Montecito, designed by Bertram Goodhue in 1918, with later work by Lockwood de Forest.
Mediterranean is one of the three traditions El Pueblo Viejo accepts for new work.
Craftsman bungalow
The most popular house of the early 1900s, and the one whole streets of the city are still made of.
Bungalow Haven, the largest intact concentration of Craftsman bungalows in Santa Barbara.
Bungalow Haven has been proposed as one of the City’s historic districts.
Monterey Revival
A California form from old Monterey, revived in the twentieth century with a wood frame where the originals were adobe.
Its long upper porch is the detail to protect in any renovation.
California Ranch
Postwar living on one floor, opened to the garden. Much of San Roque was built in it in the 1940s, 50s and 60s.
The archive of Cliff May, the style’s best-known architect, is held at UC Santa Barbara.
In the City, the Single Family Design Board reviews most exterior changes, weighing whether a house is compatible with its neighborhood in size and design.
Coastal Modern
Glass, thin roofs and the landscape as the main event. Richard Neutra built one of its early examples in Montecito.
Richard Neutra’s Tremaine House in Montecito, 1947–48, built in concrete partly against the risk of fire.
Montecito’s board requires no particular style; its aim is to preserve the area’s semi-rural character.
Four questions, one house.
A guide, not a survey: plenty of houses here mix two styles. The features are what to check.
Approximate years, from the City of Santa Barbara’s style guides. Monterey Revival is left off: we could not confirm its local dates.
- City of Santa Barbara, historic architectural style guides
- City of Santa Barbara, El Pueblo Viejo Landmark District
- City of Santa Barbara, Architectural Board of Review
- Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation, Casa de la Guerra
- SAH Archipedia, Santa Barbara County Courthouse
- Val Verde (Montecito)
- City of Santa Barbara, proposed Bungalow Haven Historic District
- Online Archive of California, Cliff May papers, UC Santa Barbara
- Monterey Colonial architecture
- Neutra Institute, Tremaine House
- City of Santa Barbara, San Roque historic context survey
- Montecito Board of Architectural Review
The house you start with limits the house you finish
In the City of Santa Barbara, the Single Family Design Board reviews most exterior changes and weighs whether the result suits its neighborhood in size and design. In El Pueblo Viejo, downtown, new work must follow “the adobe, Spanish Colonial Revival or Mediterranean tradition.” Montecito’s Board of Architectural Review asks for no particular style; its Community Plan aims to keep the area’s “semi-rural character.”
So we name the style first, and honestly, even when the answer is “two styles, forty years apart.”
What we look for on a first visit
- Which defining features are original, changed or missing
- Windows: depth in the wall, type, proportions. Replacements are where character is most often lost
- The roof: pitch, material, eaves. Hard to change later without a board noticing
- Additions, and whether they read as additions or pretend not to
- Unpermitted work, which any substantial application must settle
The features are the brief
The City’s Spanish Colonial Revival guide lists deeply recessed windows as a defining feature. A replacement set flush with the wall can be the right size, color and price and still remove exactly that. The same goes for a Craftsman bungalow’s exposed rafter tails, or a Monterey house’s long upper porch. None is expensive to keep. Each is expensive to put back.
Know the numbered features above before you meet a designer: they are what a board looks for, and what a good renovation keeps.
Houses that are more than one style
Most houses here have been changed at least once: a ranch given a tile roof, a bungalow with a stucco addition, a Spanish house with modern glass across the back. None is wrong in itself; some are better for it. Review asks that new work be legible, old work respected, and the drawings show exactly which is which.
Send us the address. We'll tell you the truth about it.
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