Santa Barbara’s Adobe Renaissance

The spotlight on Santa Barbara adobes tends to focus on 200-year-old adobes such as the Casa De la Guerra and the Hill-Carrillo Adobe. But a century later, we had an adobe renaissance. These newer adobes are now a century old. Some are modest-sized, and some are quite large.

When the construction boom began in the Roaring Twenties, interest in adobes began to build. In 1920, the local paper wrote, “Adobe May Solve Building Problem. Adobe, once so essential to building and lately scorned, is coming back. It promises to solve the building problem of Santa Barbara. At least, that is the opinion of City Building Inspector Steward, after a conference with John Chard, regarded as an authority on adobe.”

The journal Architect and Engineer interviewed Chard. “He asserts that if properly prepared, this native material can be used to very considerably cut the cost of building …. As a building material, it is far stronger than is generally supposed …. The proper plaster protection will insure an adobe wall against deterioration …. As a building material, adobe is everlasting, soundproof, nonconductive, and fireproof, always of normal temperature, and is cool in summer and warm in winter.”