Chisem builds dream palace
Pedro B. Chisem arrived in Santa Cruz from Mexico in 1908, meeting up with his friends, Warren and Euphemia Garrett. It wasn’t just Santa Cruz the 68-year-old Chisem fell in love with, but Santa Cruzan Emma B. Sharpe, for whom he would build a cottage. According to Vivian Rostron, Chisem built a house at 214 Berkeley Way in 1909, and lived in it as he built a $4,000 Honeymoon Cottage for himself and his fiancé. Construction stopped during a very wet winter, and Chisem sold 214 to the Garretts in 1910, and moved into the Alta Hotel downtown.
The Alta Building housed several stores and the Main Post Office at the south-west corner of Pacific and Walnut avenues, with Chestnutwood’s Business College on the second floor, and student apartments on the top floor. From here, he could see clear to the ocean, and watch new construction rising all around the building. Two threestory buildings were the new Venetian-style Pacific Telephone Building next door on Walnut Street across Pearl Alley, and Andrew Trust Building at the north-east corner of Pacific and Soquel avenues, designed to look like an ivy league college. The steel-frame Trust Building had a bracketed cornice that looked solid, but was actually hollow tin, to prevent a falling hazard in a quake.
This wasn’t long after the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed San Francisco, and damaged 296 miles of California coastal towns. Yet far from viewing Santa Cruz as a town climbing back from disaster, Chisem was impressed by the vitality and construction innovations this rebuilding effort showed. Chisem started buying up Santa Cruz real estate, beginning with the property at the south-east corner of Pacific and Soquel avenues for a fourstory building, to be the tallest downtown. At Front and Water streets, the Main Post Office was building its first structure entirely for postal service, using steel-reinforced concrete in a Renaissance style. Chisem was so impressed, he offered the city funds to buy the Mission Garage site at Mission and Water streets, intending to replace it with a landscaped plaza. This didn’t happen, and the garage was later replaced with a gas station. (But in 1968 a fountain and park were finally installed, followed by a clock tower in 1976).
Chisem’s honeymoon cottage was completed, and became the site for his wedding on October 12, 1910. The marriage cer
emony was conducted by Judge Lucas Smith, with a benediction by Rev. George W. Stone of All Souls Unitarian Church (later a member of Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull-Moose entourage.) The Chisems took their honeymoon in Gueymas, on the Gulf of California, where he’d built a fortune in mining, ranching and farming during the previous 50 years. Yet when they arrived, the Mexican Revolution broke out in November, but seemed to wrap-up by May, 1911, when they returned to Santa Cruz.
THE ARCHItECt
Chisem’s architect was Wm. F. Bray, a native of Cornwell, England, with a background in the Arts & Crafts style. Bray went to Nigeria in 1901 to build industrial structures and worker housing for an oil company, then moved to San Francisco in 1904, picking up California styles of Craftsman and Mission. But in 1906, the city was destroyed by earthquake and fire, so he moved to Twin Lakes, where four of his five children would be born, and worked for San Vicente Lumber Company. The Davenport cement plant had just opened north of Santa Cruz, as steel-reinforced concrete became a standard for earthquake and fire-proof construction throughout the west.
When San Vicente built its mill at Antonelli Pond, Bray built a concrete boiler-house to prevent any explosion setting fire to the mill. He also built a concrete Missionstyle station at Delaware Avenue and Natural Bridges Drive for the Ocean Shore RR. It explored the picturesque values of concrete construction, and housed Bray’s architectural office.
Chisem loved the station, and in 1911 was guest of Fred Swanton touring the Casa Del Rey Hotel and Boardwalk’s Casino and Plunge, all examples of picturesque concrete and steel construction. Chisem learned Bray had been waiting for a project to showcase the ultimate in modern fireproof construction. So he hired Bray to build a three story garden apartment house at High and Highland streets, overlooking the town.
On May 28, 1912, Chisem announced to the public that his High Street apartments would have 55-rooms divided into 25 apartments, and cost $50,000. Fourteen days later, the first-class Sea Beach Hotel on the waterfront burned down. About that time, the Davenport cement plant’s manager, Francis Davis, and his brother, superintendent Frederick Davis, announced construction of an all concrete “Davis House” on West Cliff Drive near Pelton, to show concrete could be safe and beautiful.
But it was Chisem’s apartments that began to look like the model for fireproof construction. The apartments would have no open-flames, fumes or soot. Everything would be electric for lighting and cooking, with hot water radiators for heating. The building’s only chimney was for an on-site gas motor to generate the electricity, avoiding the spotty service of electric utilities. The private electric plant alone cost $14,000. Chisem was so pleased with Bray’s work, that he had him also draw up plans for a four-story building at Pacific and Soquel avenues, with construction to begin March, 1913, when the apartments were finished.
On June 21, Chisem said the building would be called “Piedmont Court,” after a name meaning “Foot of the
Mountain.” Friends tried to convince him to name it “Chisem Apartments,” but he shyly declined, although it might be noted that the apartment’s initials “P.C.” were the same as Pedro Chisem’s. The construction superintendent was John M. Church, only a few years before co-founding the prolific contracting firm of Hamilton & Church, famous for Pasatiempo, and other developments. George Cardiff was the concrete supplier, through a local firm owned by Austin D. Houghton, once a private architect for John D. Rockerfeller.
OBStACLES
Yet in 1913, with the exterior of the building finished, Chisem’s funds to complete the interior were threatened by chaos in Mexico. Gen. Victoriano Huerta led a coup d’etat, removing Mexican President Madero and executing him and his supporters, making Huerta dictator. The Sonoran government refused to recognize the Huerta regime, appointing Alvaro Obregon head of a Constitutional Army to secure the province in the name of the 1857 Constitution. When Obregon captured the port of Guaymas, it unseated the Porferian Elite who’d backed the Porferio Diaz dictatorship. Kaiser Wilhelm supported Huerta’s dictatorship with illegal weapons and cash, so U.S. president Woodrow Wilson backed the Constitutionalists, until Huerta fled the country. The war caused a series of hardships, through bloody battles, epidemics spread from one community to another, burned crops and slaughtered cattle to keep food from the enemy, and property confiscation. For this reason Mexico remembered 1915 as “The Year of Hunger.”
Anxious to get back to Guaymas to rescue his interests, Chisem entrusted his Santa Cruz properties and debts to realtor Frank Wilson. So on Aug. 28, 1916, Wilson formed a partnership with banker Bruce L. Sharpe and Robert C. Blossom. They mortgaged the building to Blossom for $30,000 to pay off the creditors, while Wilson and Sharpe each paid half the $6,000 to install the elevator. They put the furnishing contract out to bid, awarding it to the Pacific Coast Furniture Company on Pacific Avenue.
The architecture is Hispano-Mooresque style, inspired by the Alhambra. It has scalloped arches, detailed in Arabesque, with a fountain, blue ironwork railings, and blue-andgold lacework on the doorhandle plates. As a Tourist Apartment hotel, its rooms could be divided into smaller apartments during busy times, or enlarged into spacious suites. There was a deep front porch for taking in the panorama. The ornamental lobby included a gramophone, reception desk with a switchboard, potted palms, and a steamer trunk closet. The west hall had a Writing Room, Music Room, and Ladies Reception Room. The east tower held the Piedmont Cafe with its own dining porch facing east. Cooking was done in the basement, then sent up by dumbwaiter.
The apartments were models of efficiency. They had a kitchen, bathroom, parlor, and dining room, with a murphy bed folding into the wall. The electric stoves were designed like furniture in missionoak style, with two burners on top, a boiler and baking oven below, and a timer on the bottom shelf. Likewise, the Hoosier Cupboard was the ultimate kitchen organizer of the day.
Each apartment had a candlestick phone without dial, talking to the operator to make a connection. Push-button lighting was the very latest. The vacuum cleaner was just a hose and suction head, that could be attached to a hose outlet in any room, run from the basement where the dirt was collected. The grounds included tennis courts and formal gardens.
Chisem never returned to see his completed landmark. Architect William Bray left in 1914 before construction finished, to work as one of Tucson’s leading architects. He designed his Tucson home in Prairie Style, which is now a National Register landmark. In 1922 Bray moved to Burbank where he continued his career.
But Piedmont Court finally got its grand send off in 1917, when the mostly vacant apartments were offered to house the cast of the movie “Mothers of Men,” with some scenes filmed at the apartments. What better than a Hollywood cast of actors, to appreciate the Alhambrafantasy of Pedro Chisem’s dream palace!