Tag archives: history
Artist and gallery owner Ralph Waterhouse, who just celebrated this 80th birthday with a boffo bash at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, hosted his first solo exhibition in 25 years at his new gallery on Coast Village Road, just a tiara’s toss from Ca’Dario. “My wife Diane thought it would be a good […]
A late afternoon sun graced another lovely event at Bellosguardo on Thursday, September 21. That day, the Bellosguardo Foundation hosted a reception and book talk by Liz Brown, author of Twilight Man: Love and Ruin in the Shadows of Hollywood and the Clark Empire. As guests mingled and explored the estate, docents were on hand […]
I couldn’t believe they made a movie about Barbie. Seriously? The doll whose body gave three generations of prepubescent girls inferiority complexes and set a standard so high some became devotees of augmentation surgery? Then I read Josef Woodard’s movie review, one which doesn’t end in a resounding nay or yay, but with – “…the […]
Celebrating the 99th anniversary of its founding this year, Santa Barbara’s Old Spanish Days Fiesta was established in August 1924. Civic celebrations commemorating Santa Barbara’s old Spanish days, however, date back to the December 1886 fiesta celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of Mission Santa Barbara. The purpose of that four-day celebration was to […]
“Los Angeles in Three Great Houses” continues from last week. This week’s installment looks at the house of a man for whom the California dream came true: The Doheny Mansion He had been a drifter, mule driver, fruit packer, and failed prospector – not the résumé you’d expect for the future richest man in America. […]
In Colonial Jamestown, having survived the starving time and learned how to work thanks to Captain John Smith’s edict of “no work, no food,” the male colonists wanted women. Not just for the delights of the fairer sex, but to share the work. Among her housewifery chores, a woman in Colonial America spun the wool, […]
There are several things I dread hearing when I’m on a docent-led excursion. “If anyone here is acrophobic, you may want to reconsider today’s steep hike up Mountain Goat Trail.” Or… “If anyone here is aquaphobic, you may want to skip the kayak experience down ‘Devil’s Muse Rapids.’” But I wasn’t worried today. We were […]
Black History Month (BHM) is an annual national celebration during February that commenced with Negro History Week (February 1926) initiated by Carter G. Woodson, founder of Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). Later in the 1940s, Blacks in West Virginia began to celebrate February as Negro History Month, and by 1960 […]
Doris Kearns Goodwin, world-renowned presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, speaks at the 18th annual Westmont President’s Breakfast on Friday, March 10, from 7-9 am in the Grand Ballroom of Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort. Tickets cost $125 per person and go on sale Friday, February 10, at 9 am at westmont.edu/breakfast. Seating is limited, […]
Last week, the usual crew of Montecito locals gathered to decorate the giant pine tree near the Manning Park tennis courts. It’s a festive tradition that goes back many decades, and we retell it here each year to keep the memory alive. As the story goes, in the early 1960s, then Montecito Fire Chief Don […]
A pertinent historical and classical portrait exhibition is on view at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum titled, “Clarence Mattei (1883-1945), Portrait of a Community,” curated by the museum staff in conjunction with Santa Barbara historian Erin Graffy. Mattei’s portraits feature local to international luminaries, politicians, film stars, and the elite. His father Felix founded Mattei’s […]
It was Shuku when a band of nearly 300 Chumash lived on the point of land that today marks the boundary between Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. It became Rancheria San Mateo after the Spanish settled the area in 1782. It became El Rincon (the corner) after the Mexican governor of Alta California granted the […]
In 1854, Pope Pius the IX consecrated Thaddeus Amat y Brusi as bishop of Monterey. The reluctant prelate (he had tried to ditch the papal appointment) moved the headquarters of the diocese to Santa Barbara where he planned to build a cathedral for the relics of the newly beatified Saint Viviana. Arriving in December of […]
An impressive fountain sprays high into the sky at the point where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers converge to form the Ohio River. The waters from the fountain come from yet a third river that runs underground to add its own effluence to la belle rivière. Here, at this historic confluence in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is […]
The town is awash with the news that Betsy Green, local historian and author, has published a book about the “pictures” that were filmed at some of Montecito’s most notable estates. Betsy, a transplant from the Chicago area and former staff editor of World Book Encyclopedia, has written an encyclopedia of moviemaking in Montecito during […]
In the 1920s, American Santa Barbarans, enthralled with the mystique of Santa Barbara’s romantic Spanish past, set about preserving the rapidly-disappearing adobes. Ester Hammond purchased and paid for the preservation of the Hill/Carrillo Adobe, architect Louise McVhay completely renovated the Gonzalez/Ramirez adobe to reflect her vision of a romantic ranch house, and Irene and Bernhard […]
John Muir once wrote, “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you… and cares will drop away like the leaves of Autumn.” The Santa Barbara Historical Museum’s latest exhibition celebrates the region’s increasingly popular hiking trails and public lands. Isolated by COVID, locked out of their gyms, and finally […]
Oenophiles and gourmands were out in force at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History when, after a two-year pandemic hiatus, it hosted the region’s premier wine and food event, attracting 1,000 supporters to the beautiful 17-acre Mission Creek campus and raising more than $200,000 for the museum’s programs and exhibits. Around 200 VIP tickets, […]
The quest for the right way to live, the right way to be, and the search for a satisfying and happy life has spanned millennia; just ask Socrates. Between 1663 and 1820 in the United States, besides being a stimulus for emigration from the “old world,” this quest led to the establishment of over 32 […]
The Santa Barbara Historical Museum (SBHM) is having a plethora of exhibits. They recently had an evening with curator Jeremy Tessmer (from Sullivan Goss gallery), who took a personal look at one of Santa Barbara’s most acclaimed artists, Lockwood de Forest. The Museum was lucky enough to have a grand collection of his works given […]
