Healdsburg is a town with history on every streetcorner, and sometimes halfway down the block too. The new exhibit at the Healdsburg Museum, “Stories Behind the Structures,” makes that point through the historic architecture still found throughout the city – representing the full deck of American vernacular housing styles, from American Foursquare to Tudor Revival.
If you’re not sure what those are, there’s a checklist test just inside the front door at 221 Matheson St. Curator Frances Schierenbeck, a professional architectural historian, provides a gallery of 15 Healdsburg buildings and their corresponding styles, which can only be revealed by opening an old-fashioned library card catalog file.
Schierenbeck, who presently works with CALTRANS, is a longtime Healdsburg Museum volunteer with a passion for historic buildings. She joined the Museum Board in 2022, and chairs the Healdsburg Museum’s Historic Preservation awards committee.
“Many artifacts we are showing are recent acquisitions that have never been displayed before,” said Healdsburg Museum Executive Director Holly Hoods. The exhibit highlights well-preserved local historic architecture, using paired photographs or drawings of an historic building when it was new, and photos of its current condition..
For instance, the Marshall House at 227 North St. was built in 1870 for the blacksmith John Marshall and his wife Sarah; its style is Vernacular Italianate blended with Greek Revival, according to the information panel, and it changed hands several times over the decades. Its most recent renovation was a high-profile job by Mark Goff and Philip Engel, who spent eight years restoring the formerly run-down residence, then sold it for close to $5 million.
The home is on the northwest corner of Fitch Street, but just a few yards west on North, a colorful rambling Italianate structure build in 1892 is found. It served as Healdsburg’s first hospital from 1908 to 1933 under Dr. J. Walter Seawell. Now the Camilla Inn B&B is found here, festooned with camellias and other floral touches, offering weekend rooms for visitors.
Many other downtown buildings are included in the exhibit, some familiar and some unrecognizable. But once the eyes are open to Healdsburg historic architecture, the evidence is everywhere – on Matheson, Center, Tucker streets and even the Plaza itself, a slowly changing focal point of the town since Harmon Heald set it aside as a commons in 1857.
One good way to open those eyes is to take a Historic Homes Walking Tour this summer, the first on Saturday, Aug. 27, starting at 10 a.m. This one introduces locals to 12 historic commercial buildings located within 3 blocks of the Plaza by means of the Clio app from the Clio Foundation, a history guide app available for download on Google Play and the Apple Store.
The present exhibit is supported by a generous grant from the Healdsburg Tourism Improvement District (HTID). It will be on display through Oct. 30, 2022. The Museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, from 11:00-4:00 pm. Admission is free.
