Hodgepodge 29/365 - Salinas: Architectural Gems

On yet another geocaching foray, we were treated yesterday to some lovely houses from the turn of the 20th century in Salinas. I took pictures. Here they are, with brief descriptions:

Steinbeck House: John Steinbeck was born in the first-floor front room of this house on February 27, 1902. He lived here for seventeen years before going off to Stanford University, and wrote The Red Pony and Tortilla Flat upstairs. A plaque by the front door states that he won the Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath in 1940, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

This house was designed by the architect William H. Weeks. It is a Modified Colonial Style built in 1896 at a cost of $7,500. It was constructed for a District Attorney for Monterey County. He was the first California attorney to introduce the photograph as admissible evidence in a court case.
 

Built by Peter Bontadelli, a native of Switzerland, this home is the only example of the French Second Empire–style architecture in Monterey County. Bontadelli was one of the first painting contractors in Salinas. 

This Queen Anne–style residence was the home of one of the first pharmacists of Salinas. Horace W. Austin built this house in 1896.

William H. Weeks designed this Queen Anne–style house for Dr. H. C. Murphy in 1901. The sunburst design in the gable represents optimism. Dr. Murphy was a Salinas physician and community leader from 1899 to 1935. He was the official physician for the city's California Rodeo, which continues to this day. John Steinbeck was delivered by Dr. Murphy at the Steinbeck home a few blocks away. Dr. Murphy's son, John, was a writer, and Steinbeck acted as his mentor.

The Homer Hayward (of Hayward Lumber) House was built in 1920. It copies the thatched roofs of rural England—the Hansel and Gretel substyle of the Tudor Revival.