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spr ing
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summer
Montecito’s
National Landmark
The House of the Blacksmith
T
he date was June 29, 1925. The time, 6:44 a.m. George
Fox Steedman was staying at the Santa Barbara Club when
the earthquake struck. Much of downtown Santa Barbara
was destroyed in an instant. Mr. Steedman had just finished building
his George Washington Smith-designed house in Montecito halfway
between the foot of the nearby mountains and the sea. He took a taxi to
his property to view the damage; there was none, not even a crack. His
Andalusian gem was intact, so he checked out of the Santa Barbara Club
and moved into his new home that very day. His family – wife Carrie, and
daughters Katherine and Medora – would follow shortly thereafter from
by Lynda Millner
Saint Louis. It would be their summer home until 1930, when Steedman
retired from the family business and moved full-time to his beloved
Montecito home, where he died in 1940 at the age of 69.
Mr. Steedman had been diagnosed with a heart condition in 1922,
and came to Santa Barbara that same year to visit his brother. Steedman
was also being treated for diabetes (by Dr. William Sansum, the first
person to have injected manmade insulin into a patient and who later
The front of Casa del Herrero suggests
inspiration drawn from an Andalusian
farmhouse with its asymmetric design,
irregular window openings, and
decorative ironwork