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prohibited. The No-Saloon group took out ads with headlines that
screamed, “The Saloon At Its Best is the Worst Thing That Ever Cursed
This Land.”
Francis T. Underhill added his voice to the fray by writing the
editorial, “Prohibition, Mother of Deception.” He wrote, “The education
of temperance is estimable while the insistence on enforced total
abstinence is absurd.” He believed that many prohibition advocates were
undesirable fanatics. “It is very trying to note the almost sacrilegious way
in which the Scriptures are made to serve the end of the prohibitionist,”
Captain Francis T. Underhill served during the Spanish-American War (photo
courtesy of Santa Barbara Historical Museum)
Underhill was more than willing to create plans for the eclectic tastes
of his clients. His designs ranged from Classical Greek and Roman
edifices to English half-timbered manor houses to Mediterranean villas
and Swiss chalets. David Gebhard wrote, “He usually confined historical
references to a few salient details – the principal entrance or an interior
fireplace, for example. In their Cubist plaster volumes, his houses come
quite close to the simplicity of design that we associate with concurrent
work by Irving J. Gill.”
Among his many commissions, he designed homes for fellow
yachtsman, horse breeder, and Union Carbide owner, C.K.G. Billings’
Alston Road estate; Arrow Shirt mogul Frederick Forrest Peabody’s
Solana
;
president of Waldorf-Astoria Hotel Company George Boldt’s home and
the clubhouse at Bartlett Polo Field along Middle Road.
One of his most remarkable projects was the Roman bathhouse and
lower garden for George Owen Knapp’s
Arcady.
The Roman pavilion
contained changing rooms and an indoor pool, and its ceiling could
slide open to bathe the interior with sunshine and fresh air. Immediately
outside was a terrace beyond which lay a large oval swimming pool and
then a children’s pool and a decorative lily pond. A 1,200-foot walk of
small pools, stairs, terraces and a grotto cascaded down the slope to end at
a teahouse.
Poor health would eventually lead his doctors to order him to give up
his architectural pursuits and to go back to the land, and his commissions
dwindled after WWI.
Underhill Opines
Francis Townsend Underhill was involved in many aspects of
community life. To name a few, he served as vice-president of the Civic
League which organized the festivities for the visit of the Great White
Fleet in 1908, was involved in the Good Roads Movement, and was an
investor in the Rincon Causeway project. He designed a dormitory for
the Deane School and served on its board. He was a charter member and
four-year president of the Santa Barbara Club, the Society of Los Alamos,
both La Cumbre and Santa Barbara (Montecito) country clubs, and
Commodore of the Santa Barbara Yacht Club.
On issues before the city, he was not shy about expressing his opinion.
In 1907, the Anti-Saloon League placed an initiative on the December
municipal ballot asking that the sale of liquor in Santa Barbara be