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Montecito Park
I
n 1902/03, Francis Townsend Underhill, a multi-talented, wealthy
New Yorker who had established two ranches in Santa Barbara
County, decided to take up architecture. He designed and built a small
cottage on six parcels of Montecito Land Company land near the
Country Club. He called his charming bungalow
La Chiquita.
Events
took him to San Francisco for a few years, so he sold
La Chiquita
to Walter Stuart Douglas, a mine owner and manager from Bisbee,
Arizona.
Douglas and his wife, Edith Margaret (Bell) Douglas, had come
to Montecito to escape the Arizona heat in 1903, and Margaret had
fallen in love with
La Chiquita.
In a 1907 letter to her parents, she
wrote, “You can imagine my surprised delight on driving through
Montecito four years ago to come to a tiny cottage, whose situation
was almost identical with my childhood’s home [Innellan, Scotland].
The lawns in front, the pink hydrangeas, the ocean across the road….
But few days passed before the house was mine, and shortly after, I
added my pink rose garden and the bowling green.”
When Underhill returned to Santa Barbara circa 1906, he
designed a new
La Chiquita
for himself and his intended, Carmelita
de la Guerra Dibblee. The house was an instant hit with his friends
who wanted him to design homes for them, so Underhill opened an
architectural firm. In 1915, the new
La Chiquita
was lauded as one
of the 12 best country houses in America by
Country Life in America
.
Among Underhill’s many commissions, he designed the Montecito
estate house for fellow yachtsman, horse breeder, and Union Carbide
owner, C.K.G. Billings.
Four of the five Douglas children were born in the Montecito
cottage, which had been renamed
Inellan
, inexplicably dropping an “n”
from the name. Over the years, the house expanded as the family did.
In 1908, Walter Douglas purchased the holdings of the Montecito
Country Club and several other area residents to form a deluxe
vacation-cottage complex called Montecito Park. Local architect
Joseph L. Curletti was hired to design and build additional cottages
until there were nine rentals plus
Inellan.
In addition, the property
included a gardener’s cottage, servants’ quarters, a greenhouse, and a
garage. A pier, bathhouse, and gazebo stood above the beach.
Landmarks
(above)
The Parrott family, winter visitors, prepare for an excursion in
1901. The building on the right is the Santa Barbara Country Club; the
others are the shingled cottages that grew up around the club and were
rented out by their owners. These cottages became part of Montecito
Park. (Courtesy Montecito Association History Committee)
(below)
A
lantern slide of
Inellan
circa 1920 shows its expansion from the simple
one-story cottage designed by Underhill (Courtesy Library of Congress)
