Santa Barbara has drawn photographers to its sunny climate, beautiful landscape, and charming architecture for over 150 years. Starting in the early 1870s with its first resident photographers, E. J. Hayward and Henry Muzzall, at least 11 photographers had set up shop by 1900. They documented the Mission and the adobes and the views from […]
Last Sunday’s opening of the new Michael Towbes Library Plaza was everything the Journal’s Jeff Wing predicted it would be in a recent edition of the weekly MJ. It was indeed a mezzo shout of happy civic hollering as a Pandora’s box of color and sound reverberated on the sun splashed block party on Anapamu […]
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Back in 1924, when Edward A. Johnson celebrated the opening of his spectacular Granada Theatre, he arranged for a program that highlighted the flexibility of the new venue. In addition to one of the first-ever 3-D movies, cartoons, a ballet performance, and the world premiere of Mae Murray’s Mademoiselle Midnight, he hired Antonio P. Sarli […]
This political season is sufficiently fraught that your fraidy-cat columnist is going to steer well clear of the melee and write about something we can all agree on. I’m talking of course about the inarguable virtues of Communism. Ha Ha Ha. Kidding. As has been lightly touched upon in endless cocktail party conversations (and more […]
In early 1910, the local newspapers were abuzz and the paparazzi were sharpening their pencils in anticipation of the arrival of the great philanthropist and Steel King, Andrew Carnegie, in Santa Barbara. Carnegie had left Pittsburgh on February 15 in the company of his wife Louise, daughter Margaret, his associate Charles Lewis Taylor, and four […]
Synchronized swimmers, Shakespearean actors, and trespassing skateboarders have all felt the magic of Mar y Cel, although many of those who live below the singular arched wall that still stands today have yet to hear the stories of the land between the sky and the sea. Henry Bothin, the original owner of Mar y Cel, […]
During the California Gold Rush, eggs cost a whopping $3 dollars each, which translates as $120 per egg today. The high price of eggs, however, did not lead to a thriving poultry business. Chickens couldn’t be herded across the plains and were difficult and expensive to transport in great numbers around the Horn. Besides, wild […]
Old Spanish Days Fiesta is rooted in the dozens of short-lived attempts to establish an annual festival in Santa Barbara, starting, perhaps, with the 1886 Mission Centennial celebration. In 1924, the fiesta that was created to celebrate the opening of the new Lobero Theatre succeeded spectacularly. This year marks its 100th year anniversary. Months of […]
In celebrating Black History Month, this week we honor America’s First Black Woman novelist, Hannah Bond, whose self-styled pen name was Hannah Crafts. Her novel, written in the 1850s, is titled The Bondwoman’s Narrative. It remained an unpublished manuscript until 2001, when it was purchased at an auction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. from the […]
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In July 1909, much to the alarm of the Santa Barbara populace, the Morning Press announced that the venerable Covarrubias Adobe was to be razed and replaced by a modern apartment building. Without notice, Nicolas Covarrubias had sold it out from under his aging siblings, Camillo and Amelia. The first they heard of the sale […]
Montecito! (excuse me) While our fairly liquid little village has never been known as the “Home of the Mink Stole,” neither has it ever sported the tagline “Central Coast Epicenter of Tweens Helling around on BMX Bikes.” That branding would likely have been discouraged by the Montecito Association. The descriptor, though, would not have been […]
Few have had a grander international presence while living in Montecito than a wealthy Chicago businessman named Avery Brundage. His story is a quintessentially American one – a rags-to-riches, Horatio Alger tale, though not without its twists. Brundage grew up in the Teddy Roosevelt era of bold, rugged achievers. Born to modest circumstances in Detroit […]
In January 1904, the Santa Barbara Independent informed the public that a “very notable art exhibit” had opened at 1212 State St. in the building that recently housed the Chamber of Commerce. For 25 cents, visitors could see the much-lauded oil paintings of the 21 missions of California by Edwin Deakin. “Each of the 21 […]
Upon the death of beloved local artist Dudley Saltonstall Carpenter in 1955, the newspaper expressed the esteem in which he was held and commented that he had continued to paint to the end of his full and creative life. And what a life that was. Born into a military family in 1870 in Nashville, Tennessee, […]
