I am a lifelong local of Santa Barbara with great appreciation for this town’s architecture and history. I took this tour at the fervent recommendation of visiting friends, expecting to hear the same few stories half the out-of-towners already know when they get here. I was amazed by the depth of Sully’s knowledge and story-telling ability. Walking through the Presidio district (the oldest part of town) with a binder of old photographs, he showed how the town was built, layer upon layer, first the Spanish colonial outpost, then the anarchic capital of a far-flung, forgotten Mexican territory, then the standard, street-gridded Gilded age American city, and finally the Spanish-inspired Mediterranean city from the 1925 earthquake to the present day. Sully is a student of architecture, but he also brings to life the social and economic dynamics that determined how the city’s image and character changed over time. He has a great appreciation for the people who changed Santa Barbara and built the beautiful city it is today. He has evidently read almost every book on Santa Barbara history ever published, including several first person accounts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He does not overlook the darker sides of our history, especially the abominable treatment of the Chumash by the mission fathers, nor does he focus on that to the exclusion of nuance. For example, he started the tour at the Presidio pointing to the rafters made of reeds. He explained that before irrigation, Santa Barbara had no trees except in creek beds, and those were Live Oaks, which twist too much to make beams with. In later examples of adobe buildings, he explained, pine beams were found in the roofs, because Chumash would be forced to collect pine from the taller Los Padres mountains many miles north. For the whole hour, I was entertained and enthralled by Sully’s stories, and I came away with a new and deeper appreciation for the buildings and streets I see every day.
Thank you, Sully!