At the turn of the century, California was attracting tourists and settlers by building eclectic Victorians found nowhere elsewhere in the nation; California Craftsman styles showcasing the state’s rustic arts scene; Spanish architecture to promote our sunny Mediterranean climate; with lush park-like landscaping to emphasize an outdoor lifestyle. These trends were a great inspiration to Watsonville architect William Weeks, whose garden-like homes, schools and civic structures brought a suburban feel into the heart of any city. These were Humanist environments designed around the pedestrian, emphasizing nature and art.
Watsonville had a booming apple economy whose wealth built many attractive homes and businesses, a great number by Weeks. Yet from the railroad, this picturesque township was partly hidden by industrial architecture along the rail shipping line. So between 1896 and 1906, Weeks build artistic warehouses and packing sheds to minimize the industrial intrusion on the cityscape.
Yet Weeks was living in a tourist county and wanted to understand what made superior resort architecture. He had studied World’s Fair architecture, which were models of the ideal city, and of unique attractions. In 1903, Weeks took a fact-finding tour of resort architecture back east, studying the best of the best for their layouts, amenities and aesthetics. Resort architecture tended to be settings that made people feel special and were worth a special trip to be there. His early resort designs were a 1904 dance hall on the Port Watsonville waterfront, where a railroad wharf loaded apples onto steamships. Then in 1905 he built “Weeks Missionesque” buildings for the Paso Robles Hotel, such as a clubhouse, sulfur hot springs building and a hot springs municipal baths.
Earthquake
The 1906 earthquake and fire wiped out most of San Francisco and left parts of other towns with various levels of devastation or disrepair. This was a time of trauma but also manifested an urgent need of building to new fire and earthquake standards. Lumberman F.A. Hihn had examined his San Francisco properties after the 1906 earthquake, finding them in good condition, but after the fire, Hihn found them all gone. Yet it was with optimism that Hihn hired Weeks to replace his lost structures. As a recreational focal point for Watsonville, Weeks designed the Romanesque bandstand in Watsonville Plaza in 1906.
Two months after the earthquake, the Boardwalk casino and plunge burned down, so William Weeks rebuilt them, drawing inspiration from the Moorish-style Decorative Arts Pavilion at the 1894 San Francisco Midwinter Exposition. The elegant design served Fred Swanton’s promise that the Boardwalk would not become a Bowery of low life attractions, but would aspire to cultural amusements like a World’s Fair. The Casino and Plunge buildings were adorned with statuary and bas-reliefs. The Casino Ballroom featured bands, operas, plays and vaudeville. The Penny Arcade soda fountain had Tiffany lamps, while the beach arcade had art studios, jewelry stores selling souvenir silver spoons and souvenir Dresden porcelains. Weeks also built the Boardwalk movie theater (east corner of today’s bumper cars), Cottage City office and cottages and an electric power plant for the vast array of Boardwalk lighting, yet enclosed in a non-industrial Moorish building.
Paraiso Hot Springs was once an Indigenous healing place, after which serving the Soledad Mission. It became a Victorian health resort in the 1870s, then Weeks designed Paraiso Springs Hotel in 1908. The same year Weeks designed a dance hall and hotel for Big Trees Grove, and a convention hall for Monterey in 1910.
Weeks had a strong feeling for prominent civic architecture. After the 1906 earthquake, Weeks reinforced the damaged Santa Cruz Courthouse, and built courthouses for Hollister, Quincy, Red Bluff, Salinas, Woodland and Elko, Nevada, as well as jails for Salinas, Turlock and Woodland. He designed a Hollister town hall in 1908 and a Los Gatos town hall in 1913. Weeks’ 1908 Bayview School at Bay and Mission had an innovative fire escape as a corkscrew concrete slide. The stately structure was called Bayona Town Hall as a popular location for community meetings. His dozen hospitals included Santa Cruz and Watsonville.
Apple Annual
In 1908, Spokane, Washington, launched the first National Apple Show as a way to promote its apple industry. The Pajaro Valley was so impressed, it copied its entire format to create The Watsonville Apple Annual as a five-day festival. Weeks designed and built the Apple Annual Hall in 1910, and with growing crowds coming to Watsonville, Weeks built the Appleton Hotel (now Wall Street Inn) in 1911. By 1914, the increased popularity moved the Apple Annual to San Francisco. The top apple growers Mateo and M.N. Lettunich built in 1914 a 4-story building overlooking Watsonville Plaza (corner of Main and East Beach). The Lettunich Building would house the Fruit Growers National Bank. Weeks was a movie fan, and in 1915 designed the Appleton Movie Theatre, with cornice brackets bearing the smiling faces of Greek muses.
But the Apple Annual found it impossible to compete with the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, so county apple exhibits were instead housed at the World’s Fair with other Santa Cruz agricultural exhibits. Meanwhile, Weeks had already designed 50 schools statewide, whose designs and innovations led to a commission to create the Model School House exhibit at the 1915 San Francisco World’s Fair. His school-builder reputation was already in place in 1905 when he was keynote speaker at the State School Board Convention, expounding on modern school construction. He often appeared in Architect & Engineer magazine with articles like Building the School, and in 1921 gave a series of lectures for UC Berkeley architectural college on school architecture.
His school designs, like his library designs, were often the result of competitions with other architects, making his stature in school construction more impressive. His World’s Fair exhibit spurred commissions for 20 schools over the next four difficult years, marked by two years of wartime restrictions, followed by two years of Spanish Influenza limitations. Weeks would end up building around 200 schools in his lifetime, including California State Polytechnic (Cal Poly) in 1905, and part of West Valley Junior College in Saratoga in 1926-28.
San Francisco’s fair showcased eclectic beaux-arts classicism in rainbow hues, yet the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego’s Balboa Park showcased the new variety of Spanish styles, like Spanish Colonial and California Mediterranean. These became popular William Weeks styles in the 1920s and 1930s, along with the modern Art Deco styles.
Aviation went from an impractical novelty following the Wright Brothers 1903 flight, to stunt flying by daredevils, to an Air Force of heroic sky fighters during World War I. At the war’s end in 1919, Air Force Lt. Charles Stoffer landed in Woodland that summer during a barnstorming tour and gave O.W.H. Pratt a ride. Pratt became infatuated with aviation and soon organized the Yolo Flier’s Club in Woodland. It was to be an “aeroplane” destination featuring a private airfield, clubhouse, golf course, swimming pool and bowling alley. Pratt charged $100 membership fees, plus yearly dues of $30, and by October 1919 had 100 members. William Weeks had designed most of the homes and businesses in Woodland, so he was hired to build their clubhouse with a monumental entry gate as a memorial to soldiers who died in World War I.
Hotels
Weeks’ 1903 Monterey Hotel was the first of over 30 he designed. Hotels often combined tourist services with a restaurant and conference facilities. His first in downtown Santa Cruz was the 1910 Waldo Hotel, serving mostly students attending Heald’s Business College in the Elks-Trust Building. But most students preferred budget accommodations in private homes or boarding houses, so Weeks replaced the Waldo in 1917 with Elk’s Club facilities. In 1926, Andy Balich hired Weeks to design a transit center office building with Spanish-Colonial features. But the number of existing vacant offices made the new project untenable. Meanwhile, Mike, Louis and Mitchell Resetar had Weeks build their Spanish Colonial Resetar Hotel in Watsonville, opening in 1927. Balich liked the idea and had Weeks draw up designs for a 7-story Spanish Art Deco hotel in Santa Cruz with Spanish explorer artwork.
A need to keep a legal pedestrian right-of-way through the Balich property led to another redesign, resulting in an enclosed shopping arcade. But when Balich leased his hotel to a manager, the first thing to go was the name, now dubbed the Palomar Hotel. Variations of the Palomar Hotel were used in San Jose’s 1928 Medico-Dental Building, and its 1931 De Anza Hotel, both with facades of up-thrust pilasters to exhibit soaring verticality.
Weeks was a man always on the go, visiting his construction sites across the state. He had a heart attack in November 1935, which only slowed him briefly, regaining his old vigor and workload. Then in the spring of 1936, he died of heart trouble. His obituary said, “practically every city and town in Northern and Central California claimed one or more buildings which he has designed.”
Can you help?
Preservationist and archaeologist James Carucci is a board member of the Lompoc Museum in Santa Barbara County. The museum building is the former Carnegie Library designed by William H. Weeks. He would be pleased to learn of any repository for William Weeks papers, drawings, photos, etc., and would be especially pleased to find interior and exterior photos of the Lompoc Carnegie Library. Send responses care of this newspaper, which will be forwarded to Mr. Carucci.
