Historic Structures

Murphys Hotel - Mitchler Hotel, Murphys California

Original Murphys hotel built in 1855-56 and known as Sperry and Perry hotel and was called a fire proof building. Stage stop enroute to Calaveras Big Trees, the hotel was built to accomodate that traffic after the trees discovery. Although thought to be fireproof, burned in the fire of 1859. Front part of building was of stone and iron doors separated this part from the wooden dining room in the rear. Work was started immediately after the fire on a new building which was completed for opening the following year in spring. New walls were entirely of stone. The hotel never again burned in subsequent fires. In the fire of 1874 the stone walls saved it from fire. Also in 1893 there was a tremendous explosion and fire. The hotel was saved except for warping of iron doors and shutters.

Scotland Mansion, Frankfort Kentucky

The imposing Greek Revival mansion, located off Versailles Road, five miles east of Frankfort, was built between 1845 and 1847 by Robert Wilmot Scott, a prominent lawyer, politician, and innovative farmer and stock raiser. He as?as ais© instrumental in establishing the Kentucky public school and constructed the first common school in the State on his estate. The land on which the house was built had been the estate of Martin D. Hardin (1780-1823), another eminent lawyer and politician. Later owners of the property include Horatio P. Mason, a famous contractor and engineer; and Colonel J. Swigert Taylor, a respected Frankfort distiller and thoroughbred horse breeder. Scotland, as it is now called, is the largest Greek Revival house in Franklin County, and one of the largest in Kentucky. Its imposing bulk is well-known to motorists driving on Interstate Route 64, the present main connector between Louisville at the Falls of the Ohio River and Lexington in the heart of the Bluegrass region of Central Kentucky. The house, surrounded by aged trees, lies at the top of a knoll several hundred feet south of the highway just east of the Frankfort interchange. The extensive property is entered off the road between Frankfort and Versailles, Woodford County, where it passes under I-64 half-a-mile west of the house. The present rear of the property abuts on the Old Frankfort Pike, a narrow scenic road now seldom used but once a major thoroughfare linking the State capital with Lexington, the Athens of the West. Before I-64 was routed across the north side of the property, the house was approached from the old Leestown Road (now 421), which has, however, changed its course several times in the last century-and-a-half. By the mid-19th century, the early L & N Railroad had already been located between the house at the Leestown Road. Thus the mansion has always faced at least one major transportation route and the property has been defined by others; the apparently unfortunate proximity of I-64 is, therefore, only an extension of a feature in fact boasted about by Robert Wilmot Scott, the builder of the house, in an advertisement for the sale of the property, he personally prepared in 1871. The Louisville and Lexington Railroad, and the State road from Frankfort to Lexington, pass through it, under the same lines of fence affording a commanding front view of the principal dwelling-house and adjacent grounds; the Frankfort and Versailles Turnpike is on the western boundary; Ducker Depot is within a mile and a half, and thus easy access is had, from all directions, it being five miles from Frankfort, nineteen from Lexington, and seventy from Louisville.

St. George Hotel, Winchester Kentucky

This hotel was erected by the George brothers, prominent local businessmen, and stands on the site of the old Winchester Hotel, a two-story wood frame hotel and business block. Because of its location near the train station, this hotel catered to railroad travelers. The structure is an unusual combination of Queen Anne and Neocolonial architecture which functioned as a major hotel in town since it opened in 1904. For one year it was the finest hotel in town but was superceded by the larger Brown-Proctor when that hotel opened in 1905.

Schoenhofen Brewery - Edelweiss Beer, Chicago Illinois

The Schoenhofen Brewery, long known as the producers of Edelweis Beer, was one of the largest and most elaborate breweries ever constructed in Chicago. The Brewery was established in the early 1860's and continued to function until Prohibition. The Schoenhofen Brewery is a fifteen building complex covering about seven acres, two miles south of Chicago's downtown. The first buildings were erected in 1862, when Peter Schoenhofen moved his business eight blocks south and west, from Jefferson and 12th Streets, to Canalport and 18th. None of these first buildings remain. The oldest building in the complex was probably built about 1867, five years after the founding of the brewery on the 18th and Canalport site. In the process of growth from 600 barrel capacity in 1860 to 1,200,000 barrel capacity in 1910, older buildings were remodeled or demolished and replaced by larger structures.

Berry Hill Mansion - Juniper Hills, Frankfort Kentucky

The house which George F. Berry constructed in 1900 incorporated all the elements that the bourbon edifice demanded. From its very beginnings Berry Hill, as it has become popularly known, was a venture into the high style architecture that reflected all the aspects demanded by the bourbon aristocracy within the area. George Berry purchased the property during the last decade of the 19th century. He named the estate Juniper Hill due to the large amount of red cedars that were growing upon the property. Upon the land he commissioned the construction of a massive stone Colonial Revival structure.

Louisville, Henderson, and St. Louis Railroad Depot, Fordsville Kentucky

The Louisville, Henderson, and St. Louis Depot in Fordsville was built in 1916 to replace the original 1890 depot built when the railroad was first operational. The Fordsville Depot is the only major depot remaining in Ohio County and one of the few in the surrounding area. Fordsville, a small town in northeastern Ohio County, has a present population of about 580 (1980 census), considerably less than its early 20th century high of about 900. Ohio County, established in 1798, was very sparsely settled through the first half of the 19th century. Its citizens relied almost exclusively on agriculture, hunting and fishing, and its huge timber reserves for their living. Only Hartford, the county seat located approximately fifteen miles southwest of Fordsville, was a town of any size.

Red River Iron Furnace - Fitchburg Furnace, Fitchburg Kentucky

Designed by Fred Fitch and built by Sam Worthley in 1868, it is unique in that it consists of two furnaces in a single structure. It was built of carefully cut stone and is 65 feet high and 115 feet long. It operated from 1870 to 1874 and employed 1000 men. In 1870, this furnace produced 10,000 tons of pig iron valued at more than $60,000. The production of pig iron was one of Kentucky's earliest industries. A major producer of iron since 1791, Kentucky ranked third in the U.S. in the 1830's and 11th in 1865.

Rochester-Cecil House - Melrose, Danville Kentucky

Roselawn - Owsley House, Danville Kentucky

Roselawn was the last home for William Owsley, Congressman, Governor of Kentucky, and Associate Justice on the State Court of Appeals. Owsley, born in Virginia in 1782, came to Lincoln County, Kentucky, as a child. He studied law under Chief Justice of the State Court of Appeals John Boyle and, after obtaining his license, began to practice law in Garrard County. He was elected to the State Legislature and shortly thereafter (1812) was appointed to the Court of Appeals by Governor Scott. In 1828 Owsley retired from the Court and returned to his home in Garrard County, Pleasant Retreat (listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1975), to practice law. He sold the house and moved to Frankfort in 1837. The next year he purchased the property on which Roselawn was to be built, and established his son-in-law, Clifton Rodes, and family there. There was apparently a dwelling on the property at the time Owsley bought it, but neither this fact nor the nature of the dwelling can be substantiated. The existing dwelling reputedly burned in 1847, and the Rodes family moved to Danville. In the meantime, Owsley won the 1844 election for the Governor of Kentucky. He moved to Roselawn, built for his retirement, when his term ended in 1848 and lived there until he died in 1862. Roselawn is a two-story, five-bay, brick house situated in the gently rolling terrain of the Bluegrass Region in northeastern Boyle County, Kentucky. It is located about a mile and a half northwest of Danville on the east side of U.S. 127 (Harrodsburg Road), and about two miles from the Mercer County line. The house, which faces southward, is set back from the highway lying to its west and sits on the northern edge of a broad, flattened knoll amidst a grove of mature trees.

Robinson House - Quietdale, Huntsville Alabama

The house was erected for Mrs. Caroline Moore Robinson, widow of Madison County sheriff William (Black Bill) Robinson. A Virginia-born planter and speculator, Robinson had accumulated vast landholdings in Alabama and Mississippi by the time of his death in 1852, at the premature age of forty-four. Documentary evidence hints that the noted Huntsville architect George Steele or his son, Matthew W. Steele, may be responsible for the design and construction of Quietdale. The younger Steele, though never to achieve a reputation comparable to that of his father, intermittently practiced as an architect in Huntsville during the 1850s. George Steele himself died in the fall of 1854. But a note among his estate papers refers to a debt of $1131.66 due from the Estate of Wm Robinson for the bal[ance] of work furnished by M.W.S. Executor, payable on January 1, 1856. Certainly the original plan of the house followed George Steele's predilection for separating the formal interior spaces from the more intimate family living area Thus a forty-two foot long drawingroom suite lay to the right of an entrance vertibule; to the left was a series of smaller and more informally disposed rooms extending into a rear ell. Directly behind the foyer, two stairhalls with parallel stairways led to completely separate bedroom suites on the upper floor. Why the upper floor was partitioned is not entirely clear: whether to isolate the guest chambers, or in deference to the custom observed in far more primitive Alabama houses of the period, of carefully separating the boys' and girls' sleeping quarters.

Kildare Mansion - McCormick House, Huntsville Alabama

Kildare's builder Michael O'Shaughnessy was a northern capitalist who, with his brother James, was looking for investment and development situations in the South during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. They settled on Huntsville, a town of 5,000 persons that had never revived following the Civil War, where they built and purchased homes and began buying large tracts of land and buildings. It was through the O'Shaughnessy's influence that additional wealthy outsiders were attracted to Huntsville as a town with great development potential. It was this group of northern investors and self-styled town builders, associated with prominent local businessmen, that provided the money, the connections, and the know-how to package and sell Huntsville as an industrial and resort site. Before the O'Shaughnessys moved on, they were chiefly responsible for the creation of Dallas Manufacturing Company and of East Huntsville Addition (a major suburb), the construction of the resort facility called Monte Sano Hotel, the refurbishing of the Huntsville Hotel, and the establishment of a large cotton seed oil plant. However, many of their colleagues remained in Huntsville and continued to establish or attract additional cotton textile mills and various other smaller industries, which created the economic basis for the town's postbellum recovery. The second owner of Kildare, Mary Virginia McCormick, was the daughter of Cyrus Hall McCormick of reaper fame. Although she spent only a few months in Huntsville each year, if at all, she was responsible for much philanthropic work in the town. She took a particular interest in the living conditions of the several mill villages that had grown up around the town (as a result of the O'Shaughnessy's initial efforts) and coerced the mill directors into providing better health care and recreation facilities for the operatives by offering matching funds for settlement houses and YMCA's.

Southern Railway System Train Depot, Huntsville Alabama

The Memphis and Charleston Railroad Depot, built in 1860, is the oldest railway terminal standing in Alabama and one of the last surviving physical evidences of the South's most significant antebellum rail systems. During the Civil War the Depot was used as a temporary Federal prison. The Memphis and Charleston Railroad was the most important transportation line in the South, in addition to being the most potent factor in the commercial development of Northern Alabama. Originally incorporated under the laws of Tennessee on February 2, 1846, the railway embodied one of the early dreams of the south; to connect the Mississippi River at Memphis with the Atlantic Ocean at Charleston. The merchants and farmers of North Alabama had long suffered from the loss of their cargo in the treacherous Muscle Shoals of the Tennessee River. Thus when a railroad was planned, the citizens of Huntsville were determined to have the line go through their city. By 1849 the citizens had voted $50,000 toward the proposed railroad, and by 1850 it had been decided that the route would definitely go through Huntsville, which would also be the headquarters for the Eastern Division. On January 7, 1850, the company was chartered by the legislature of Alabama as the Memphis and Charleston Railroad Company.

Dunnavants Department Store Building, Huntsville Alabama

The Dunnavant's Building was erected by Terry Brothers and Rogers, a local dry goods company, in 1905 from a design by Huntsville architect Edgar Love. It was originally of brick and milled construction according to the Weekly Mercury which reported that carpenters are now placing the heavy timbers for the second floor. The building was extensively remodeled in 1927 by contractor Charles E. Baxter who had a force of men at work building an entire new front, besides the rearrangement of the interior. However, drawings and photographs of the building indicate that the only exterior changes ever made to the building were confined to the entrance and display windows on Washington Street. In 1940 a fire started in the paint department on the third floor and did considerable damage to this floor and the roof. At that time the roof was replaced and repairs were made throughout the structure. Three months after the fire Dunnavant's reopened for business. Terry Brothers and Rogers changed partnerships several times until P. S. Dunnavant gained control of the store in 1925. Dunnavant's was the premier department store in Huntsville for many years and remained in this downtown location even after opening a branch store. In 1975 after P. S. Dunnavant died, the downtown store was closed.

Angels Flight Cable Railway, Los Angeles California

The property was first constructed in 1901 to provide efficient transportation between the city's commercial core and the top of Bunker Hill. New cars were constructed in 1905. A new station house, designed by noted Los Angeles architects Train & Williams, and an entrance arch were added in 1910. The period of significance begins in 1905 and ends circa 1945. The Flight operated continuously until 1969 when it was dismantled and stored as part of an urban renewal program. Twenty-five years later, the original elements of Angels Flight was removed from storage, rehabilitated, and reinstalled within the same city block slightly south of and parallel to its original location on the hill. Angels Flight operates in its historic function, carrying passengers up and down Bunker Hill's steep eastern slope in downtown Los Angeles. One of only six incline railways still extant and operating in the United States, Angels Flight represents a now extremely rare property type. The incline railway was originally developed to serve two different needs: industrial and passenger. According to incline railway historian Donald Duke, The first known incline railway in the United States was constructed in 1762, at Lewiston, New York. It was used to haul merchandise up and down the Niagara escarpment, near what is now the border between the United States and Canada. The application of cable rail technology to incline rails spurred their greatest period of construction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, with most constructed between 1880 and 1910.

Robbins Hotel, Beatrice Alabama

The Selma to Pensacola rail line was chartered in 1858 but construction was barely completed 40 miles south of Selma when the Civil War broke out. Intermittent postwar construction and financial entanglements left a 45-mile gap through rural Monroe County in the line's completion that was not completed until 1899. The Daniel Robbins farm, with the exception of the Robbins House, was among land purchased by railroad contractor Robert M. Quigley for purposes of establishing the railroad right-of-way which subsequently passed approximately 200 feet east of the house. The Robbins House immediately became a haven for railroad people, commercial travelers, sportsmen and other guests brought to town by the new railroad. It was this close proximity to the railroad line that necessitated the c. 1905 enlargement of the Robbins House and gave it its present identity. The Robbins House turned hotel, served the rail traveler and subsequently the automobile tourist of the 1920s-1930s. While Monroe County was created in 1815 and general settlement in the county was very early by Alabama standards, there were several communities that were not born until the railroad bisected the county in 1899. Beatrice, Alabama is one of them.

Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Beverly Hills California

El Cortez Apartment Hotel, San Diego California

The history of the El Cortez Area is well-documented. Named after the imposing El Cortez Apartment Hotel, the El Cortez Area encompasses a geographic section of San Diego which rises from around a 25 feet elevation along Front Street to approximately 65 feet at 10th Avenue. The area has been defined as bounded by Interstate 5 to the north, the community of Little Italy to the west, Interstate 163 to the east, and A Street to the south. The highest point in the El Cortez Area is Prospect Hill, located within the Bay View Homestead subdivision between Ash and Date Streets and Sixth and Tenth Avenues. This hill contained some of the most spectacular Victorian residences in the city. During the 1880s, prominent businessmen erected their homes on Prospect Hill because it provided them with magnificent views of the city and harbor as well as the city park. Unfortunately, the majority of ornate structures and their gardens from that period are no longer in existence. After San Diego recovered from the Panic of 1893, affluent citizens constructed more modern and less massive residences on the hill. With plans beginning in 1909 for a Panama- California Exposition in the newly named Balboa Park, the Cortez area experienced a surge in hotel and apartment building. Between 1910-1913, the majority of the apartment complexes in the Cortez area were erected.

Old Point Loma Lighthouse, San Diego California

The Old Boint Loma Lighthouse was begun in 1854 when a contractor's crew from the eastern United States came to San Diego to build the port's first lighthouse. From 1855 to 1891, this 19th Century lighthouse at the end of the long, high Point Lome peninsula guided ships along the coast of California and into Sen Diego harbor. But the real significance of this Cape Cod structure is not just that of a lighthouse faithfully performing its task but in its creation and use. The lighthouse was one of the first eight lighthouses built on the Pacific Coast of the United States. Since all eight were built by one firm under one contract, the old building stands today as a symbol of the nation's first successful effort to obtain navigational aids for the newly acquired west coast. It used a Fresnel lens for illumination. Today, the Old Boint Loma Lighthouse is a landmark symbol of the City of San Diego and one of the most prominent features of Cabrillo National Monument. The view from the Lighthouse has been rated one of the three great harbor views in the world, taking in a vast panorama of sea, islands, coast, harbor, land and mountains.

Balboa Theatre, San Diego California

As a major player in the establishment of live performance theatres and the sweeping business of motion pictures during the 1920's, the Balboa Theatre anchored this national trend in the most southern and western part of the country. In a city with an uncertain economic future following the 1915-16 Panama-California Exposition, the Balboa was truly a pioneering effort on the part of its developer, architect and contracting team, and was a landmark the day it opened. The period of significance is from the grand opening in 1924 through 1930 which encapsulates the most successful period of live performance and cinematic presentations. Following the 1915-16 Panama-California International Exposition in Balboa Park, that attracted 3.7 million visitors, many of means, the city was transformed by the event and an urban sophistication slowly began to happen. San Diego's population doubled in this decade rising from 75,000 to 148,000. The Balboa Theatre was a grand experiment in an economically volatile city.

Point Pinos Lighthouse, Pacific Grove California

The Point Pines Lighthouse is the oldest continuously operating lighthouse on the west coast. Its construction and lighting was completed in 1855, shortly after Alcatraz Light. The station was damaged in the 1906 earthquake necessitating rebuilding of the tower in 1907. The reconstruction followed the original plans. Additions have enhanced the building's appearance.

Wiley Bates High School, Annapolis Maryland

The Wiley H. Bates High School, built on Smithfield Street in 1932, is the second building erected by the Anne Arundel County Board of Education to provide secondary education for African- American students. It is the direct descendant of the Stanton High School located on West Washington Street in Annapolis. Stanton school was a three-year high school established in 1917, and was the first black secondary school in the county. Enrollment came primarily from the surrounding areas, but space was required to accommodate increasing enrollment. Interested residents, including the Stanton Parent-Teacher Association, and Wiley H. Bates (a prominent member of the African American community), persuaded the Anne Arundel County Board of Education of the need for a separate high school for colored students, and a site search began. At this time it was not uncommon for colored parents to donate land for the schools, and with a $500.00 donation from Mr. Bates, property was secured on Smithville Street. The school was constructed, and classes started in the fall of 1932. The first principal of the school, Frank Butler, recalls that while it was officially identified as the Annapolis Colored High School, it was known as Wiley H. Bates High School since it first opened.