THE SITE: Chula Vista Heritage Museum, 360 Third Ave., Chula Vista.
THE PLACE: This quaint museum in downtown Chula Vista features one exhibit a year. The current exhibit opened May 1 and focuses on houses built from the 1880s to the 1930s, when Chula Vista was known as the lemon capital of the world.
Photographs of turn-of-the-20th-century houses and the families who lived in them are prominent throughout. The architecture of the homes varies from bungalow to Craftsman, Mediterranean to English Tudor and Cape Cod revival to Victorian. Bulleted lists describe elements of each architectural style, such as stucco, glazed brickwork, cross-gabled roof or bay windows.
Three glass cases contain an array of elegant antiques. A pair of ladies' dainty gloves are near a 1911 Woman's Home Companion magazine that sold for 15 cents. A note next to a beaver top hat says that it belonged to a bean farmer who settled in Otay Mesa in the 1890s.
Additional items include baby shoes and wooden blocks, small eyeglasses, a set of silverware and a ceramic chamber pot. Other well-preserved articles are a couple of rocking chairs, sewing machine, quilt and an early telephone.
Two mannequins model the style of dress during the time. One wears a floral-print bonnet and skirt; the other looks proper all in black. Eight hats of different sizes, shapes and colors surround the more formal “lady.”
Visitors may get a laugh upon reading the enlarged copy of an advertisement in the June 13, 1889, National City Record. The ad encourages buyers of the new tracts of Chula Vista land to “build a neat, tasty, modern house, that will not cost less than $2,000!”
The city of Chula Vista has deemed more than 200 houses and commercial buildings historic resources. Most of the homes are between Interstates 5 and 805, framed by Broadway and Hilltop Drive and C and L streets. Others stand on First and Second avenues and on the alphabet streets running east and west.
In conjunction with the Friends of the Chula Vista Library, the museum is sponsoring the Chula Vista Historic Home Tour today between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Guests can pick up tickets for $23 each, a program and a map at the museum. The self-guided tour includes visits to five homes, with vintage cars and volunteers wearing period costumes.
DATES: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1 to 5 p.m., and also during citywide special events.
COST: Admission is free.
MORE INFORMATION: (619) 427-8092
ONLINE: cvhistorichomes.com
– B.P. Inman
