When a Home is more than just a House – It’s a Stable. Or pieces of it…

By Ann Jarmusch

There is a handsome house with supersized arched windows in Mission Hills, which is a fine example of the Mission style. But it’s more than that — this home on Sierra Vista is unique because it can trace pieces of its heritage to the long-dismantled Diamond Carriage and Livery Co. stables and social hall in downtown San Diego.

Built in 1911, the house initially belonged to Bertha and Arthur Cordtz and was built by H.H. Spears.

Arthur Cordtz is listed as a real estate agent in the 1912 city of San Diego directory. Elsewhere he gave his occupation as “carpenter, houses,” according to Janet O’Dea and Allen Hazard, Mission Hills residents who came across the Cordtzes while preparing an application for a Mission Hills Historic District with the city. A grandson told the owner of another Cordtz-built house in the neighborhood that his grandparents traveled around the United States building houses, selling them, then moving on.

Arthur Cordtz’s twin occupations evidently served him well, especially if it was he who had the vision to recycle four huge, arched windows, two wrought-iron balconies and yards of oak flooring from another fine Spanish Renaissance-Mission-style building in San Diego. That two-story structure — the Diamond Carriage and Livery Co. building, at Broadway and Second Avenue –was demolished to make way for a theater developed by the mega-developer John D. Spreckels.

We think of the Spreckels Theatre as an important historic landmark, and it is, but the elegant Diamond Carriage Co. building that preceded it was hailed as the “most perfect example of old Mission style

of architecture in California” by The San Diego Union on Sept. 28, 1896. Designed by architects Zimmer & Reamer, the first floor housed carriages and horses in box stalls.

The reportedly well-insulated second floor was devoted mostly to a public hall. At 1,600 square feet, it was the largest social hall in San Diego and the Union reported that among its early occupants, if not the first, was the successful William McKinley for President club.

Five identical arches — two pairs of recessed windows flanking the arched entrance – graced the Broadway façade of the Diamond Carriage Co. When the company bit the dust, these dramatic windows were salvaged and reinstalled along the front and one side of the Cordtz house in Mission Hills. Measuring more than 7 feet tall by about 10½ feet wide, the windows allow natural light to pour into the house, said its current owner, Julie Greenberg. For privacy, she had custom shutters made for the front windows.

Curvy, basketlike balconies were salvaged from among several on the Diamond Co.’s upper exterior and positioned in the center of the house, directly off front and rear bedrooms. Greenberg doesn’t know what happened to the other balconies, although she’s looked for them around town.

She heard that a roller rink operator rented the hall above the stables, which could explain the marred condition of the narrow oak flooring that ended up in her house. The flush floorboards, only 7/8 of an inch wide, are dinged from intense wear.

Greenberg recalled that when she and Robert Irving bought the house more than 20 years ago, it didn’t really do justice to its Mission roots. Someone had sprayed the outside of the windows with texture coating and painted the house bright peach and sky blue. The couple smoothed and toned it down to Mission-white paint with soft green trim.

The imposing house again fits the Union’s 1986 description of Mission-style architecture: “the most pleasing style…that can be placed under the California sky.”

Ann Jarmusch, who lives in South Park, writes about art, architecture and historic preservation for local and national publications. She can be reached at [email protected]