A Necessarily Truncated Review of Tecolote’s Provenance

Here it comes now, written in a hurried and bulleted present tense meant (frankly) to offset the section’s brevity with a mitigating sense of telegram-like urgency. Please play ball, reader. 

  •Roger Sherman Gates Boutell, Sr. retires from the Library of Congress and moves to, of all places, Santa Barbara, California. 

  •A comfortably liquid pensioner less needful of income than of post-retirement engagement – oh, and a book nut – Boutell and wife Avis buy an established bookstore called “Tecolote” (location in SB unknown) from a demoralized “Mrs. Kelley” who… 

  •In the wake of the June 1925 quake that razes SB and annihilates her trinkets-and-pottery-augmented bookshop, quits both the book business and SB itself. 

  •Boutell occupies Kelley’s space with his own enterprise, launching Tecolote as a proper book shop and not a curio purveyor with books. 

  •Studios 25 and 26 become available in the newish El Paseo complex and Boutell’s Tecolote moves in.

  •Roger Sr. retires in ‘45 whereupon… 

  •Roger Jr. and his wife Zella take over Tecolote. 

  •In 1954 a discouraged Zella notes “everyone seems to be watching TV now…” and the Boutell family and Tecolote part company that year, selling to Mr. and Mrs. William Tilghman, and Mr. and Mrs. John Boit Morse. 

  •Tilghman and Morse families sell to James Maher in the early ‘60s, who in turn sells to: 

  •Mr. and Mrs. Wm Watling in ‘63. 

  •Tecolote leaves El Paseo and moves into their present space. 

  •Wm Robbins and his wife Laura buy Tecolote in ‘70 and expand the hell out of it, between ‘75 and ‘78 opening Tecolote branches in La Cumbre mall, Goleta, Scottsdale, AZ, and possibly La Jolla. Ultimately all branches close except Tecolote’s in Montecito’s Upper Village. 

  •In ‘79 Tecolote sells to Gary and Kathy Mullins, who own The Book Loft in Solvang. 

  •The Mullins’ sell to Harry Sims in ‘85.

  •Sims sells to Margaret “Peggy” Dent in 1990, who sells to Tecolote Manager Mary Sheldon and her backers in 2007. 

  •Roger Sherman Gates Boutell, Sr. dies in ‘62, Roger Jr. in ‘93.