The Santa Cruz downtown New Leaf Community Market at 1134 Pacific Avenue, occupies the former Bank of Italy. Photo: Jim Whitehead/Mobile Ranger

Ever wonder why the New Leaf Market says “Bank of Italy” over the front door? The downtown New Leaf Market has found its home in an old bank at Soquel and Pacific for twenty years now. As a local history enthusiast, I am delighted that the grocery store left the original name on the building.

Many locals remember that Bank of America was here until the 1980s. I remember the tellers at this bank counting money back to you through a marble-framed window, and I imagined executives on the mezzanine scrutinizing the scruffy college student trying to cash a financial aid check. So when was it the Bank of Italy?

1134 Pacific Avenue. The building was built in 1929 for the Bank of Italy in the Zig-Zag Moderne style (an off shoot of Art Deco). Here, two impressive Olympic God-like figures must have been designed to seem like they were protecting the bank. Photo: Julia Gaudinski/Mobile Ranger

Bank of America’s roots are in San Francisco’s Bank of Italy founded in 1904 by immigrant A. P. Giannini. His bank in North Beach provided banking services to that neighborhood’s working classes, mostly to his Italian neighbors. In the next few decades the Bank of Italy expanded with branches throughout California, buying the bank of Watsonville in 1923 and opening a Santa Cruz branch in an existing building downtown. A few years later, the bank announced that it would build a “modern bank” at Pacific and Soquel.

Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz, 1930. The Bank of Italy is the building on the right at the corner of Soquel and Pacific just past the cinema marquee. The distinctive red brick building is the Trust Building. In the distance, is the Palomar and IOOF building with its clock tower. On the left, the Hihn building, and the New Santa Cruz Theatre in the distance. Image: Linda Rosewood postcard collection

In October 1929, the Santa Cruz Evening News reporter was given a tour before opening day and wrote:

Fine Marble Used

“The best and the most expensive of the world marbles are being used in the building to give it a beautiful effect. The lobby of the bank will be 80 x 18 feet in size with a low grill facing along the north side and east end. The body of the partitions in this portion of the bank will be built of pink Tennessee marble, with borders of black and gold Belgium marble. Counterfacings and top of the partitions are composed of Skyros Greacian [sic] marble. … On the floor of the lobby will be placed round top marble check tables with carved pedestal which will depict certain events of early California history. In addition to these there will be two built in settees and a drinking fountain.”

Five thousand people attended the grand opening of Santa Cruz’s new Bank of Italy, which included live chamber music and free flowers for the ladies. One of the attendees was J. A Brown, who happened to be the last depositor at the old location, and the first depositor in the new location. It is his bulb ranch which is now Brown Ranch Marketplace in Capitola, and the location of the county’s first Trader Joe’s.

Art Deco statuary on the old Bank of Italy Building. Serendipitously, the cornucopia is appropriate for both a bank and a food market. Photo: Jim Whitehead/Mobile Ranger

When the bank opened, and as far as I can tell, nobody clutched their pearls about big naked male bodies or god knows what historically correct art was carved into the pedestals of those check tables. Today, on the outside walls of the building, the robust gods of commerce remain, blessing the healthy enterprise of local agriculture, and gazing down on the scruffy, the immigrant, and everyone.

Today’s stairway from Pacific Avenue up Mission Hill to School Street. Photo: Julia Gaudinski/Mobile Ranger

Until 1920, the Upper and Lower Plazas of Mission Hill in Santa Cruz, California were both the town center and a popular neighborhood. Schools, businesses, and hotels were all mixed in, and people routinely went back and forth between the two plazas by using Mission Street or the School Street stairs.

Before Elihu Anthony developed the Lower Plaza, the center of town was located around the old Mission Plaza. After the Lower Plaza was built, Mission Plaza also became known as Upper Plaza. The Mission Hill area around it was a dense residential neighborhood. For several decades, a wooden staircase at the end of School Street connected the homes of Mission Hill with the busy town near the Lower Plaza.

School Street stairs as they were circa 1860s. Developer Elihu Anthony’s house is visible on the left. Photo: Courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History

More than 100 years has passed since the original School Street stairs were built, yet the same stair route still exists. If you have a chance to visit, imagine turning back the hands of time and visualize the hustle and bustle of people in this part of Santa Cruz a century ago.

Mission Street, or the Lower Plaza, as it was circa 1880. This photo was taken from about where the Town Clock is now. Photo: Courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History

A Recollection from the Foot of the Stairs

The 1899 story that follows, from a local paper, gives a vivid picture of a rather entertaining afternoon as seen from the foot of these stairs.

The Horses and Wagon Belonging to G. M. Wolf Fall Over a High Bank

It was a miracle that the horses belonging to G.M. Wolf of Ben Lomond were not killed this noon. Mr. Wolf had stopped in front of the home of M. Delaney on School street, on Mission Hill, and had left his horses and wagon standing in the street. While in front of Delaney’s place, the horses started to run and continued down School Street. When they reached the end of the street, the horses continued on the paved sidewalk. The walk at this place is quite steep and the horses were going at a lively rate, and when the end was reached they plunged against the plank railing breaking it as if it were kindling wood, the horses and wagon dropping several feet to the landing of the bluff.

The landing is about five feet wide and is covered with brush which was the means of saving the wagon and two horses. At last one of the horses got too near the edge and the spectators were breathless as the horse took its awful plunge over the bank fifty feet to the ground below, striking a projection of the bank once during the fall. The horse lighted on its side within a few feet of the Office of the Santa Cruz Electric Light and Gas Company.

By this time a large crowd of spectators were watching the awful sight of the two horses at the very edge of the bluff with perpendicular walls fifty feet in height. All expected instant death, but to the surprise of all the horse got to its feet and started to slowly walk away.

The neighbors were soon on the spot and block and tackle and ropes were secured from Wilbur Huntington. The horse was loosened and then with the aid of a block and tackle the heavy wagon was hoisted to the sidewalk. The accident might have been a disastrous one, but the horse was not hurt and wagon escaped without damage. The only damage was the smashing of the railing and the tearing away of a portion of the bituminous walk.

This is the second accident at the same spot and in the same manner. In the other accident the horses had a hair breadth escape but the carriage was smashed. Several posts should be placed at the end of the street to prevent a like accident of occurring again.

This old postcard shows the Mission Plaza as it was around 1910. Image: From the collection of Linda Rosewood

Today’s Mission Street and School Street Stairs

In the last hundred years, the width of Mission Street has doubled, and the row of shops and hotels up the hill has disappeared. Gone also is the grand school building, replaced by an office building that was built for the school district. However, the retaining wall and the steps that led to the school remain.

Mission Street today. Photo: Julia Gaudinski/Mobile Ranger

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Mission Hill Staircase Tour made possible local history researcher Linda Rosewood. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.

1. Sources

   • "Over the Bluff." Santa Cruz Surf, December 9, 1899.
   • "Anthony Block to Be Removed Next Week." Santa Cruz Sentinel, March 19, 1909.
   • "The City the Gainer." Santa Cruz Sentinel, October 13, 1906.
   • "Elihu Anthony, Pioneer of 1847, Was God Fearing Man and Santa Cruz’s First Progressive Business Leader," by Leon Rowland. Santa Cruz News, January 22, 1937.
   • The Sidewalk Companion to Santa Cruz Architecture, by John Leighton Chase, edited by Judith Steen. The Museum of Art and History, 2005.
   • Santa Cruz County History - Government: Board of Trustees and Presidents 1866-1875, Santa Cruz Public Libraries website.
   • Century of Service: Santa Cruz Post Office Turns 100, by J.M. Brown. Santa Cruz Sentinel, December 8, 2012.

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Mission Hill tunnel, looking north toward the Potrero neighborhood.

Today’s Chestnut Street in downtown Santa Cruz, California is a quiet residential street, with the occasional passing of Roaring Camp’s Santa Cruz Beach Train filled with excited sightseers on a journey to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. However, a century ago, it was a bustling block brimming with foundries, warehouses, and other industrial activities.

When you visit Chestnut Street, look for the gate that closes off an old stairway that once descended from 133 Mission Street. Across the street from this secret pathway is the corrugated steel-sheathed Enterprise Iron Works, built by a former employee of the father of Santa Cruz, Elihu Anthony.

Mission Hill Tunnel. Photo: Courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History

“Away We Fly Down Chestnut Avenue”

In the 1870s, the Mission Hill tunnel was created beneath Mission Hill, off the block of Chestnut Street. It was built under Mission to satisfy city businesses’ desire to keep freight trains from barreling through the Lower Plaza on their way to the wharves. Just outside of the tunnel was a passenger station . For arriving visitors, this intersection was their first view of Santa Cruz.

The first passenger trip through this tunnel travelled to Felton on October 14, 1874. One person’s account of this journey was described in the Santa Cruz Sentinel:

At a few minutes past two o’clock, two cars, comfortably well-filled with gentlemen and ladies, guests of Capt. Garrett, started for Felton. Pope’s little giant engine was in the lead, and in three minutes after the bell rang it was evident to all present that the quickest time ever made on the road was to be recorded within the next half hour. Away she flew, up hill, over bridges, around points, downhill, continuously puffing and blowing, and never stopping for wood or water, arriving at the point of destination in the unparalleled short running time of twenty-five minutes. An hour and a half was spent in visiting Felton, the city of timber…. Twenty freight cars, carrying lumber and split timber to the amount of eighty thousand feet, were added to the train, when once more the bell rang and all were in motion.

The train was the largest ever hauled from Felton, but the little steamer was sufficient for the occasion, and slowly and gaily the serpent-like couches wound in and out like a thing of life. The scenery was grand. Lofty redwood and pine trees towered on either side. On the right were the granite ribbed and eternal hills, and the public road, with its carriages and horsemen, apparently half a mile distant and immediately above us. To the left and hundreds of feet directly below was the San Lorenzo River, white with foam and rolling sullenly to the sea. Through a short tunnel and the mills of the California Power Company are in view….

A mile distant and immediately in front is the city of Santa Cruz, the Bay of Monterey, and the Pacific Ocean, presenting one of the finest panoramas the eye can look on. Passing through vineyards and fields and orchards, we are at the eastern mouth of the Tunnel. The light fades and the smoke increases. Total darkness prevails. Light appears in front, and amid the clapping of hands and the waving of handkerchiefs, those on the banks returning salutes in answer to the salutes of those on the cars. Away we fly down Chestnut Avenue, passengers of the first train that passed through the Railroad Tunnel, all pleased with themselves and proud of the company in whose hands and by whose boon the noble work was wrought. (End of newspaper story)

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Mission Hill Staircase Tour made possible by local history researcher Linda Rosewood. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.

Santa Cruz City Hall gardens.

Today’s City Hall at 809 Center Street, is located in the two blocks along Church Street between Chestnut and Cedar Streets. In the late 1800s however, this area was occupied by the estate of a Santa Cruz pioneer, F. A. Hihn. Like his contemporary, Elihu Anthony, Hihn was active in every industry: real estate, water, transportation, lumber, and tourism. His mansion served briefly as the Santa Cruz city hall in the 1920s until a new one was built in his front yard. The new city hall, the one that remains today, was built in the Monterey Colonial style, which was a new and modern style at the time. The enclosed Spanish Gardens are very much a part of this style.

Santa Cruz City Hall in the 1940s. At the time the gardens were called “Spanish Gardens.” Image from the collection of Linda Rosewood.

Santa Cruz City Hall circa 1940s. Image from the collection of Linda Rosewood.

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Mission Hill Staircase Tour made possible by local history researcher Linda Rosewood. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.

There are many hidden staircases on Mission Hill with stories to tell.

Get to know Mission Hill as it is today and as it was over 100 years ago.
Get your exercise for the day with this sixteen stop walking tour uncovering hidden treasured stairways within the nooks of Mission Hill. With each step of this one-mile walking tour, you’ll be exploring Santa Cruz history and relics of the time. It’s all fairly easy terrain save the four (and a half) staircases you need to climb!

We highlight a few stops below but the rest can be read in blog form at the bottom of this page or in our free app, Mobile Ranger Guides.The tour was created by local history researcher Linda Rosewood.

A screen shot of the stops and the interactive map feature in the self-guided mobile tour.

Walk in the steps of, Elihu Anthony, a lucky pioneer who created his own empire.

School Street stairs as they were circa 1860s. Elihu Anthony’s house is visible on the left. Photo courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

See the artifacts and feel the echos of the Spanish mission. Find out what happened to Father Quintana.

The School Street Adobe is the last building still standing from the Santa Cruz Mission.

Learn about Loudon Nelson, a black man who in the 1860s left all he had to Santa Cruz’s school children. And what’s his real first name: Loudon or London?

The grave stone for London Nelson at Evergreen Cemetery, Santa Cruz, California.

If it’s open, walk up the dark set of stairs to Red Restaurant. Photo by Bailey Queue.

Today’s Red Restaurant, at 200 Locust Street, is in the old Santa Cruz Hotel building, built in 1877. The restaurant on the lower level was known throughout much of the twentieth century for its delicious Italian Family Dinners. The good food served “family style” was an inexpensive choice for tourists, before fast food restaurants.

The main entrance to the Red Room.

In the 1970s, the upstairs was remodeled to become Santa Cruz Bar and Grill, and its original distinctive stained glass windows remain, as well as the dark paneling, fireplace, and skylights.

The Red Room interior from 1960s postcard. Image from the collection of Linda Rosewood.

After 3 pm, enter the Santa Cruz Hotel from Locust Street and take the stairs up to the Red Restaurant to relax and enjoy a drink and a snack in the company of Santa Cruz locals.

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Mission Hill Staircase Tour made possible by local history researcher Linda Rosewood. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.

Only one block long, Rincon Street is home to Rincon Park.

At the end of Rincon Street in Santa Cruz, California, is a small park which today looks mostly like a landscaped median strip. But in the late 1880s, neighborhood property owners bought a triangular lot along Chestnut street from one of Santa Cruz’s early founders, A. J. Hinds, whose grand house still stands next door. The neighbors gave the lot to the city with the intention of turning it into a park.

Instead, for decades the city used the land as a kind of corporation yard and stored graders, gravel, and manure. Finally, in 1905 the Improvement Society was able to raise more private funds, and gained approval to put a sidewalk around the park. In subsequent decades, the park became a beloved public space. It was one of the first areas of Santa Cruz that visitors saw after leaving the train station at the Mission Union tunnel.

Forty years later, it was common for the newspaper to report on the latest flower blossoms of Rincon Park:
“No one loves flowers better than Joe Biondi, the city gardner. He finds time not only in making the city hall grounds one of the most beautiful spots in the city but also works on the triangular Rincon park-He is bordering the park with rows of a small pink flower unusually beautiful at the present time. He is also planting colorful mesembryanthemum [iceplant] and a lot of portulaca [purslane], now coming back to the gardens again in reds, yellows, and pinks all of the brightest colors.”

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Mission Hill Staircase Tour made possible by local history researcher Linda Rosewood. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.

The stairs along Walnut Avenue that go up to the top of Mission Hill at Towne Terrace.

This retaining wall and stairs are one of the distinctive features of Walnut Avenue. The Pratchner family lived at the top of these stairs and George Pratchner built the wall. His construction company was awarded a job in 1893 to grade this curve at Walnut Avenue, and build the retaining wall that remains today. He also built the original stair at the end of Cliff street on Beach Hill, and many other stone structures that still remain in Santa Cruz.

Everyone wonders: who was Pratcher??

From the landing, there is a nice view of downtown Santa Cruz. You can see the many redwood trees which were planted downtown more than 100 years ago. There is a particularly large one at the corner of Walnut and Rincon near the bottom of the hill.

View from the landing of the Walnut Street stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs and up the hill is Santa Cruz High School. There are a few stairways between the school buildings on the hill and the flats below, but they are now closed to the public.

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Mission Hill Staircase Tour made possible by local history researcher Linda Rosewood. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.

An 1880s cottage on Towne Terrace.

Before it was subdivided in the 1940s, the broad street now known as “Chrystal Terrace” was just narrow “Christal Lane” running from Mission Street to a farm house surrounded by orchards, redwoods, California buckeye, a goldfish pond, a tank house, and a windmill. The house and farm were first built by pioneer Julian Trescony. Later it belonged to his daughter and her husband, Dr. J. F. Christal, a pharmacist who owned Horsnyder’s. The family name was changed to the “y” spelling when subdivided.

Santa Cruzans still have vivid pictures of early Santa Cruz because of the reminiscences of Ernest Otto, a Sentinel reporter who grew up here in the 1870s. For many years he wrote a column in the paper, based on extraordinarily detailed boyhood memories. This is how Otto described “The Christal Place:”

“Within the city limits close to town is a secluded yet beautiful section, now known as Chrystal Terrace. It is likely it has never been seen by more than 500 of the present residents, but in the boyhood days of the writer the old Trescony place was known by every resident of the city and was considered one of the beautiful show places.

This place has lost none of the old time charm and on each side of the hill on which the house stands are wooded gulches. The one on the south side is in its primitive state with the native California trees.

The farm had the usual windmill and there was plenty of pastureland for the cows which were a part of the ranch life. This is now known as one of the newer and choicer subdivisions, Chrystal Terrace, upon which the first houses are now being constructed.”

Ancient Trees Were Treasured

When it was first subdivided in the 1940s, the Chrystal Terrace neighborhood was advertised to Santa Cruzans who could afford to buy a lot and build their own custom home. It was therefore built one house at a time, not as a single development. The last house on the street wasn’t built until 1971, and buyer of that lot removed an ancient magnolia and a redwood that had been there since the Christal Farm days. In a letter published in the Sentinel, a resident wrote: “a tree that has grown for many years in a vacant lot really becomes the ‘property’ of the neighborhood for it persists in the memories of the boys and girls who grow and move away and yet retain forever the remembrance of childhood climbing and playing in the branches of an old friend.” The writer suggests that the entire city would benefit if people other than property owners had influence on when trees were removed. It was sentiments like these that lead to the Santa Cruz Heritage Tree ordinance that has protected so many of our beloved trees.

Although an undistinguished subdivision today, those redwoods growing the backyards are relics of a celebrated farm that flourished here.

The intersection of Chrystal Terrace and Mission Avenue in 2015.

Chrystal Terrace is a wide street with larger lots and more modern home designs.

Eclectic Towne Place

Next to the Christal Place was another farm, the “Towne Place,” established by pioneer John Towne. Lots along “Towne Lane” were sold and built on throughout the 1880s to early 1900s without any coordinating plan. This is evident in the small 19th-century lots and eclectic architecture on this narrow street. It’s completely different than the Chrystal Terrace neighborhood with its larger post-1940s lots.

A Victorian era home on Towne Terrace.

The intersection of Town Terrace with Mission Avenue.

Towne Terrace is a narrow street today with small lots and victorian era homes.

Like the Cristal’s farm, the area around the Towne farm was also known for its natural beauty, and particularly famous for the variety of birds that nested there. In 1910, Josephine Clifford McCrackin, a Sentinel reporter, complained about a gang of local boys killing the birds:

“At present, Mission street, and the streets running into it, from Union street toward Laurel, including Towne street, especially are intolerably infested by a gang of young hoodlums in store-clothes, whose parents should know of the mischief they are up to.

I have visited Towne street before, and will go there again, for the grounds running from there into the Christal grounds have always been the home of innumerable birds, and therefore a favorite haunt of the boy with the slung-shot. … The boy who will kill or maim a bird, a dog or a cat, just for fun, will end his days behind the prison bars or on the gallows….I call upon all parents to take notice of this warning, and those who live within the precincts mentioned, to take some interest in the pastimes their sons most indulge in. … These hoodlums are law-breakers, and they know it.”

McCrackin then invited “right-minded citizens” and members of the Humane Society to arrest the boys if seen killing birds. She signed the column with the title “President, Ladies Forest and Song Bird Protective Association.”

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Mission Hill Staircase Tour made possible by local history researcher Linda Rosewood. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.

Locust Street steps in 2015.

There have been stairs going up Mission Hill from here for over 100 years. The stairs here today were built after 1964. The retaining wall, however, is considerably older. The original stairs extended straight down to Chestnut Street.

To the left are another set of private, gated stairs. These were built recently. They merge with an old retaining wall where another stairway once ascended to the hill above.

These gated stairs are private and were built post 2010.

The Extension Cuts Through It

Prior to 1964, the busy road known as Chestnut Street Extension did not exist. The street was cut into the hill to make easier access downtown from the freeway. Unfortunately, as you saw when you tried to cross the street, the traffic flow is rather disruptive to the neighborhood. Prior to the extension, Chestnut was a quiet residential street, curving along the base of Mission Hill. You can see the remnants of the retaining wall on both sides of the hillside cut.

Chestnut Street Extension in 2015.

On either side of the Chestnut Extension, you can see the old retaining wall that once ran unbroken at the base of Mission Hill. The blue line shows the base of the old uncut Mission Hill.

It Used to be a Beautiful Spot

Where today the Locust Street stairs curve at a landing, before Chestnut Street Extension removed them, the steps when straight down from Locust Street. First built in 1897, the Locust Street steps were one of the first local landmarks people saw when arriving on the train.

The Locust Street steps were commissioned by the neighborhood’s homeowners who raised the $300 necessary in small donations. The steps were of white stone and paved with “bitumen” which a kind of blacktop mined locally. “On each side of the steps a lawn will be laid out and the hill which has been an unsightly thoroughfare will be one of the most beautiful places in town. A movement is on foot to put steps up Union street hill.”

Several newspaper stories subsequently report that the City allocated money to plant flowers along the landmark. Their white stone was complemented by lantana and other bright, long-blooming borders.

Locust Street steps.

Unfortunately, widening of Chestnut extension in 2013-14 even worsened the former landmark and public garden into a kind of prison walkway, with a chain-link fence obscuring the view from the landing at the top of the stairs.

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Mission Hill Staircase Tour made possible by local history researcher Linda Rosewood. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.

There are no photographs or paintings known to be accurate depictions of the Santa Cruz mission. Illustrations like that above are recreations from written descriptions. Photo courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

Many of present-day parks established at the Spanish missions feature a chapel, cloistered buildings, and gardens around a central plaza. Nearby Missions San Juan Baptista and Santa Barbara are particularly well restored but unfortunately, Mission Santa Cruz is not. By the time Americans arrived in Santa Cruz in the 1850s, the original Mission buildings had been destroyed by earthquakes, had melted away in the rain, or had been just been torn down and replaced.

The only building remaining from the mission is the long white adobe on the south side of School Street. The adobe and grounds form Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park. The exhibits tell the story of the people who lived in the adobe over different historical periods and admission is free.

The School Street Adobe is the last building still standing from the Santa Cruz Mission.

Mission Never Prospered

The Spanish Franciscans arrived in Santa Cruz in 1791, and started building a mission on the banks of the San Lorenzo River near where Elihu Anthony’s Lower Plaza would be 60 years later (today it’s the downtown area surrounding the Town Clock) . It was named “Misión la Exaltacion de la Santa Cruz” which was the name that the explorer Gaspar de Portolà gave to the area when he camped on the banks of the San Lorenzo and erected a wooden cross on October 17, 1769. After the first settlement was flooded, the mission was moved up to the bluff. The Mission never prospered and like all the others was secularized by an independent Mexico by 1836.

The Mission Plaza

Spanish missions were always built around a central plaza, and this park is the most visible relic of the mission at Santa Cruz. The fountain in the center of the plaza is an echo of the original water source for the mission, which was fed by springs that still flow near upper High Street.

Santa Cruz’s Mission Plaza.

Mission Plaza fountain detail. Photo by Bailey Queue.

The Holy Cross parish church at the north end of the plaza was built in 1889 in an architectural style far from the Spanish roots of this site, and more familiar to the parish’s members at the time. The 1891 granite memorial arch in front of the church commemorates the 100th anniversary of the founding of the mission.

This old postcard shows the Mission Plaza as it was around 1910. Image from the collection of Linda Rosewood.

It Looks Like the Mission but It’s Not!

On the corner of Emmet and School Street, across from the adobe, is a building that looks like what you might expect to be a mission. This smaller-scale replica of what a mission chapel may have looked like was built in 1931. Inside the chapel is a nice little museum of mission history.

Postcard from the 1950s showing the replica of the mission that was built in the 1930s. Image from the collection of Linda Rosewood.

If you’re interested in stories about Mission Santa Cruz, read Mobile Ranger’s post about Father Quintana’s Grisly Death at Mission Santa Cruz.

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Mission Hill Staircase Tour made possible by local history researcher Linda Rosewood. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.

The Clock Tower at its current home at the intersection of Mission Street, Front Street and Pacific Avenue.

Santa Cruz’s Town Clock is a beloved landmark, the symbol of the downtown neighborhood and a frequent gathering spot. But it hasn’t always been where you see it today.

The Clock’s First Home

Originally, the clock tower was an ornament to the Odd Fellows Lodge built in the late 1800s and located near the courthouse on Pacific Avenue. The “Odd Fellows” is a men’s social organization, similar to the Elks or Masons.

The clock in its original location above Pacific Avenue between Cooper and Church Streets. Photo courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

As prominent downtown landmark, the clock was chosen as the site of the first public installation of electric lighting, when electricity came to Santa Cruz in 1896. For many Santa Cruzans, the same clock, so familiar to us today with its pretty rows of lightbulbs, was the first electric light they had ever seen.

The town clock escaped the fire of 1894 but burned in 1899. It was rebuilt within a year. Photo courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

The Clock Tower Goes Underground

In 1965, the owners of the Odd Fellow’s building remodeled it into a featureless mid-century office building. The clock was removed and stored in the basement of the City museum in Seabright (currently called the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History).

The Town Clock dismantled in a field circa 1970. Photo courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

Out of the Basement

In 1970, volunteers from both the University of California Santa Cruz and the town began working to find a new home for the clock. By the time of the bicentennial in 1976, public donations had paid for a tower to be built over an existing fountain. The old clock was repaired and erected at the top the newly developed Pacific Garden Mall. The next year, a demonstration against the B-1 bomber was held at the Town Clock, and for decades after the clock has been the city’s meeting place for protest, celebration, and mourning.

The town clock in 2015.

Many thanks to the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History for use of their historical photos.

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Mission Hill Staircase Tour made possible by local history researcher Linda Rosewood. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.

The Mission Hill School built in 1875. Photo courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

Mission Hill was home to many of Santa Cruz’s early schools. One of the earliest, Mission Hill School, was at what is today’s 133 Mission Street. In the 1860s there was a two-room wooden school house there. It struggled with funding and was not able to stay open all the time.

133 Mission Street in 2014. Note the considerably older retaining wall.

London Nelson: An ex-Slave Funds the Schools

Behind where the post office is today was the farm of London Nelson. He came to the Californian Gold Rush as a slave, and purchased his freedom by working in mines. He settled in Santa Cruz and bought a small plot of land near the river where he grew vegetables and worked as a cobbler.

The story is told that in the 1860s, Nelson used to enjoy watching the school children walk past his cabin on their way to school on Mission Hill. He could also see the top of the school where sessions at some point stopped due to lack of money.

At that time, Nelson was only in his early fifties but he became very sick. He made a will, giving “his fortune” to the public school system to benefit the children of Santa Cruz. After he died his friend Elihu Anthony handled the estate, but did not settle Nelson’s affairs until 1875. By then, the school had been rebuilt and reopened with public and private funds. Anthony used the $300 from the sale of Nelson’s estate to purchase a small lot on Mission Hill near the school, giving access to an administration building.

Mission Street circa 1880. Note Mission Hill School in the upper left. The cupola and third story shown in this photo was lost in a fire by the time the photo above was taken, but the steps leading up to the school remain to this day. Photo courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

The old steps to the public school. At the top now resides a monument to London Nelson.

Nelson has been honored for his generosity in several ways by the citizens of Santa Cruz. First, according to a 1942 Sentinel article, children from Mission Hill Middle School used to make an annual field trip to clean and decorate his grave site at Evergreen Cemetery where a large headstone says, “He was a colored man and willed all his property to Santa Cruz School District No. 1. Rest in peace.” Second, there is a memorial at the top of the stairs to the old Mission Hill School. Finally, the Louden Nelson community center is named in his honor.

All the Nelson’s commemorations perpetuate an unfortunate typographical error. Historians have concluded that sometime in the 1930s someone misread a handwritten notation of his first name, and transcribed “Loudon” instead of the correct name of “London.” The error persisted.

The grave stone for London Nelson at Evergreen Cemetery, Santa Cruz, California.

Schools Come and Go

Mission Hill School was both the grammar and high school until a new high school was built on Walnut Avenue in 1893. It was then just the grammar school until todays Mission Hill Middle School was built in the 1920s. In 1929 the old Mission Hill School was torn down.

Right across the street was Holy Cross School. For generations, children in Santa Cruz, Catholic and Protestant, went to school across the street from each other, and both schools were prominent landmarks on Mission Hill.

The original Holy Cross School. The steps to the school, as well as the handrail, remain. The steps on the right have been removed.

Holy Cross School today.

Many thanks to the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History for use of their historical photos.

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Mission Hill Staircase Tour made possible by local history researcher Linda Rosewood. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.

Mission street, between the Upper and Lower Plazas, as it was circa 1880. Photo courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

Before the automobile age everyone—rich and poor—walked to work, to school, to church, to the movie house. The little town of Santa Cruz grew along a river, and the first fine homes of its shopkeepers and bankers and lawyers were built on the hills overlooking the river valley.

Mission Hill is one such hill and to this day is a neighborhood at the heart of Santa Cruz. It used to have quite a different feel however. The schools, businesses and hotels were used by and relied upon by people who lived there. People routinely walked back and forth between the Upper Plaza – the area of the old Mission Santa Cruz on the top of the hill where the homes and schools were; to the Lower Plaza – the bottom of the hill by the river where the businesses were.

The historic photo of Mission Street is an example of how different Mission Hill was in the late 1800s. It is lined with a multitude of businesses. The Santa Cruz public school proudly presides over the town. In the foreground is the St. Charles hotel, and at the end of the block is the Temperance Hall. On the left is a blacksmith shop. Although the roads are dirty and rutted, the children stand on wide clean sidewalks.

In the last hundred years, the width of Mission Street has doubled, and the row of shops and hotels up the hill are long gone. Few people live, work and shop all within Mission Hill and Mission Street is primarily a corridor for car traffic. Gone also is the grand school building, replaced by an office building that was built for the school district. The retaining wall, and the steps that led to the school remain.

Mission Street today.

Many thanks to the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History for use of the historical photo.

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Mission Hill Staircase Tour made possible by local history researcher Linda Rosewood. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.

Santa Cruz’s Lower Plaza in 2015 (left) and circa 1860 (right; photo courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History).

It was called the “Lower Plaza”

The triangle area formed by the intersection of Pacific Avenue, Mission, Front and Water Streets has been the heart of Santa Cruz since the town was established shortly after the arrival of Americans with the Gold Rush. This area was known as “Lower Plaza.” Across the street and up the hill was “Upper Plaza” which had been the center of the Spanish Mission.

In the 1860s the Lower Plaza was without cars, and instead was full of pedestrians, carts, wagons, horses, and mules. Hay spilled halfway across the thoroughfare. All the shops and hotels had covered board sidewalks because the streets were either muddy or dusty.

There has been a prominent triangle-shaped building at this intersection since 1860 when Hugo Hühn built one. The Hühn building was lost to the 1989 earthquake but Louis Rittenhouse retained the shape when he built a new building there in 1995. In fact, earthquakes and business development have removed all but one building from pioneer Santa Cruz: Lulu Carpenters.

Lulu Carpenters is the last surviving building from the mid-19th century. Photo © Linda Rosewood.

Photo Time Series: 1860 to 2015

Lower Plaza circa 1860. Photo courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

California had only been a state for ten years when this photo was taken. You can use the triangle-shaped Hühn Building in the center to locate where the post office is now. Elihu Anthony’s blacksmith shop and other buildings are in the foreground. In the distance, there is a livery stable at the corner of Front and Cooper. In those days, Cooper street continued to the riverbank.

Lower Plaza circa 1892. Photo courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

By the early 1890s, the Lower Plaza was a transportation hub where passengers could board the electric street car east for Capitola Village or west to Garfield Park (in the Circles neighborhood). The Lulu Carpenters building is visible next to the grand Pacific Ocean House. The clock tower was located on the IOOF building and is just visible behind the telegraph wires (I will cover the movements of the clock tower in a future post). The piles of hay in Front Street indicate where livery stables and barns were located behind the businesses of Pacific Avenue.

Lower Plaza circa 1905. Photo courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

The tower on the courthouse indicates the photo was taken before the 1906 quake. Just beyond it is the clock tower on the IOOF building. “Williamson and Garrett” was a general store. It was torn down in the 1970s to make room for a bank. Its loss catalyzed the local historic building preservation movement. In the foreground is the St. Charles hotel, and to the left of it is the Elihu Anthony Block. The entire Anthony Block was removed in 1909 to allow Pacific Avenue to continue north. Photo courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

Lower Plaza in 2015.

In this modern photo, the Hühn building, lost in the 1989 earthquake, has been rebuilt by Louis Rittenhouse and keeps the iconic triangular shape. The roof of the new “Cooper House” is visible on the site of the old court house. The bank that replaced the old general store is thankfully obscured by a pine tree. The crowd of gold-rush era buildings of the Anthony Block are gone. Pacific Ave continues north through the intersection and the clock tower is also located at this intersection.

Many thanks to the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History for use of the historical photos.

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Mission Hill Staircase Tour made possible by local history researcher Linda Rosewood. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.