May 27,2022

Take an Architectural Tour of Santa Barbara

by David Stewart

The red-tile roofs, white stucco walls, and wood-beam ceilings that have become synonymous with Santa Barbara’s Spanish-derivative architecture are owed as much to architects James Osborne Craig and Mary McLaughlin Craig, a husband-and-wife duo who restored and assembled many of the California city’s structures during the 1920s and ’30s in traditional Spanish form, as to the Spanish missionaries.

A new book produced in conjunction with the Santa Barbara Historical Society details the Craigs’ contributions to the coastal city, from extravagant private homes to civic buildings to courtyards. Spanish Colonial Style: Santa Barbara and the Architecture of James Osborne Craig and Mary McLaughlin Craig (Rizzoli, $55), anthologizes James Osborne Craig’s works spanning 1915 to 1922 and Mary McLaughlin Craig’s later embellishments (from 1923 until 1956), creating a fluid evolution of the aesthetic that made Santa Barbara architecturally relevant on an international scale.

Click through some of the works below.

  • David Stewart
  • May 27,2022

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