Category — Santa Rosa

There are a lot of unique neighborhoods in Sonoma County. Tucked in between Santa Rosa and Windsor and bounded by Old Redwood Highway, Fulton Road, and Highway 101 is a small enclave of about 80 homes. They’re on Mark West Station Road, Donna Road, and Kay Avenue. The streets are laid out in the shape of an H with Kay as the crossbar.

The west end of the area is bordered by vineyards running all the way to Highway 101 and an ecological reserve that is an excellent example of the woodlands and plains that once covered most of the Santa Rosa area.

There’s a big range of home sizes here, from tiny cottages to elaborate, modern houses.
The lots tend to be big with one acre parcels as the most common size.One of the things I like most is the tree lined character of the area with some really terrific oaks. One of the reasons for the health of the vegetation here vegetation health is the high water table. It will flood in the winter when rains are heavy and the ground is saturated. Houses that are at grade level are vulnerable.

I think this is an area poised for improvement and growth. This is a superb location where you could bicycle to work anywhere in the Airport Blvd area of Santa Rosa. The current large lots combined with the modest existing homes represent excellent land values capable of supporting much more highly valued homes. A combination of owners remodeling their homes along with newcomers starting from scratch is likely to change the character of this charming neighborhood.

I just hope that in the rush to build new and better homes we don’t forget to allow for entry level housing for our young population. I was remembering today about the fun I had at age ten working with my dad to build a tree house. It wasn’t as nice as this one, but it inspired me to enjoy the building process.

My first significant earthquake came while I was sitting on an under-construction deck in Berkeley. The deck, still unbraced, stood still while the house it was attached to swayed pretty vigorously. It was an interesting demonstration of Newton’s Law that a body at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force. That same earthquake that couldn’t twitch my deck was strong enough to move parts of California a few inches North and knock down stone walls.

Structural engineers have studied earthquakes and their effect on structures and can make just about any building designed today both safe and durable in an earthquake. Sadly, some of our most beautiful building materials are terrible choices for earthquake country. I did a quick walking tour around Railroad Square in Santa Rosa today and was admiring the many older buildings that featured stone and brick. The Hotel La Rose is a beautiful stone building of three stories that was built of locally quarried basalt in 1907, a year after the big quake in San Francisco that also knocked down much of Santa Rosa. Just around the corner from the hotel is the Jacobs building. Lots of tenants have occupied this building and Capri, one of our favorite Italian restaurants, was on the ground floor. We still miss Luigi.

The clinker brick facade of this Railroad Square landmark has a wonderfully authentic color and rustic feel and that isn’t achievable with stucco, wood, or any of the faux masonry products that get glued onto the exteriors of buildings today. So the answer to the question, “Why do earthquakes suck” has to be that they deny us some of the traditional architectural materials that have been around for millenia. It’s still possible to design with brick appearance as the JC parking lot attests, but that’s a public works job with a mega budget. For the average residential and commercial builder, real stone and real brick are expensive ornamentation devoid of any structural significance. Thanks a lot, earthquakes…

I was looking for a multi-unit building for sale on Morgan Street in Santa Rosa last week when I came across a beautiful round porch. If you’re new to my blog you probably don’t realize that I’m a lover of architectural details in general and round porches in particular. Round porches represent a powerful expression of carpenter art and talent that isn’t matched by many other details. This porch includes a wonderfully constructed curved wall pictured here. Sonoma County real estate includes many round porches, particularly in Healdsburg. Next time you’re walking in your neighborhood, see if you can spot any curved porches or other sweet architectural details. I’d love to hear from you if you find something you love.

Bungalow is an interesting term. Real estate people use it for almost anything small, but it actually comes from Bangalore in India where the colonial English started using it as a term to refer to the residences built for them based on traditional architecture. The key features are single story construction with a wide verandah. There are many more key details that help define the bungalow style.

Bungalows were first built in the late 1800’s and the style remained extremely popular in the first part of the twentieth century. Bungalows in America were a residential expression of the Arts and Crafts movement which in turn was strongly influenced by the Craftsman movement. California set the pace and bungalows became almost synonymous with California.

Most of the cities in Sonoma County have great examples of bungalows. Click on View Listings to see one bungalow for sale in Santa Rosa and three bungalows for sale in Petaluma that I pulled from the MLS today. There were quite a few more listed, but they lacked the “bungalow essence” I wanted to show you. Let me know if you are interested in any of these. I’d be happy to show them to you.

I was meeting my brother for breakfast at Arrigonis yesterday and thought I’d look at a few properties while I was waiting. This currently active listing in Santa Rosa is a very nice fixer opportunity. It’s in the heart of downtown, but just far enough away from the busiest streets that it’s got a peaceful feeling. It’s in the Cherry Historical District and is listed for just under $500K. From my point of view, this historical home downtown is a great opportunity to support the new urbanism, grab a property that will be the envy of your condo-dwelling friends, and take advantage of excellent appreciation over time. Sure, it’s going to take some work to maintain, but so would any other home, old or not.