Historic Santa Cruz County ‘Redman-Hirahara’ house faces possible demolition ...Middle East

WATSONVILLE — The fate of the Redman-Hirahara house, once a center of agriculture in Watsonville, now rests in the hands of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors.

The board will be voting next month on whether to approve a recommendation by the Santa Cruz County Historic Resources Commission to delist the property from the national Register of Historic Places and demolish it. Located on Lee Road off Highway 1 near the Riverside Drive exit, the house has been vacant since the ’80s and has fallen into disrepair, causing the county to consider it for demolition.

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Historian Sandy Lydon was saddened by the situation but felt it would be difficult to fully restore the property in its current condition and that federal and state grants would be unlikely in the current climate.

“I would love to see it saved, but it’s gonna be a heavy lift,” he said.

A storied history

The Redman-Hirahara house was built in 1897 for the Redman family who had moved to the Pajaro Valley in 1865 and ran a farm that grew potatoes and sugar beets. Wanting to live in a house that more resembled city life, the Redmans tapped William Weeks — an architect who constructed hundreds of buildings throughout California, including the current Santa Cruz High School campus and the Casino Arcade at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk — to build it. Sitting on 14-acres of farmland, the mansion was constructed in a Queen Anne style with decorative wood and a rounded-corner turret above Venetian windows. Patriarch Kendrick Redman lived in the house with his wife, Louise, and son, James.

The Redmans grew a variety of crops, starting with sugar beets after Claus Spreckels built his processing mill in 1887 and then berries after Ed Reiter and Richard Driscoll introduced the fruit to the Pajaro Valley. Among the many farmworkers were Japanese migrants.

Following the death of James’ wife, Ella, in 1937, the farm was sold to J. Katsumi Tao and again to Fumio Hirahara, a minor who gained the title in 1940 for a $10 deed transfer.

However, the signing of Executive Order 9066 — which forcibly relocated Japanese Americans to internment camps in retaliation for the Japanese military’s bombing of Pearl Harbor — resulted in the Hirahara family being moved to a camp in Arkansas. The property was watched over by attorney John L. McCarthy, who acted as a guardian for Fumio in exchange of a sum of no more than $50,000 to lease the land for crops, maintenances and expenses.

Upon their return, the Hiraharas housed four other displaced Japanese American families in a one-story carriage barn on the property.

“Housing was in short supply because the war had used it all up,” said Lydon. “The Hirahara family made it possible for families to use that one-story building as a hostel, a temporary residence until Japanese families could find housing.”

The Hirahara family continued to operate the farm until it was sold in 1982 to Palo Alto real estate developer Ryland Kelley, who had also developed the nearby Pajaro Dunes. Lydon said Kelley intended to use the house as a real estate office to advertise Pajaro Dunes.

“The building is horribly visible from the freeway, and he could use the house as an attraction: Put some signs on it and fix it up, and then that would then springboard traffic, lure people to go there, turn left on Beach Road and go out to Pajaro Dunes,” he said.

Lydon said Kelley gave a lifetime tenancy to matriarch Tayo, the only Hirahara family member who lived there full time by then. She remained at the house until she died in 1986, and the property was declared vacant.

Later woes and restoration efforts

The Redman-Hirahara house was red-tagged after the foundation was damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. Over time, the house became more dilapidated, but in 1998, a nonprofit called the Redman Foundation was formed to preserve and restore the property. A few years later, Lydon said the Hirahara family’s name was added, and the organization became the Redman-Hirahara Foundation.

Lydon, who served as a historic consultant to the foundation, said the goal was to convert the property and the surrounding land into something of an educational and cultural center that would serve as a focal point of the Pajaro Valley’s agricultural history while directing people to other historic resources such as the Agricultural History Project at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds.

“The visibility of the house was so startling from the freeway that we began to develop ideas that we changed over time to use the house as a centerpiece for interpreting the history of the region,” he said.

Lydon said this history would have focused on the Pajaro Valley as an agricultural center and would have had information on the Redman and Hirahara families. He said there were a lot of stories worth telling, from Weeks’ status as a major player in local architecture to the Redmans making enough money off growing sugar beets to build the house — amid a major depression, no less.

“It’s a slam-dunk place to interpret the history of the valley,” he said. “It’s got a wonderful, positive feel to it.”

In 2004, the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places, which preserves buildings with historic significance.

Redman-Hirahara Foundation members were able to lift the two-story structure off its foundation to allow for the damaged underpinnings to be replaced. However, no further progress was made, as the organization filed for bankruptcy in 2009 amid the Great Recession, and the property went into foreclosure. Watsonville-based company Elite Agriculture purchased the property in 2015.

Current demolition efforts

Per Santa Cruz County Code, complete demolitions of historic landmarks are required to go before the Historic Resources Commission for a public hearing and then recommended to go before the Board of Supervisors for final action. The commission voted at its Feb. 10 meeting to recommend the board demolish the property and delist it from the National Register.

A Jan. 5 letter from historical consultant Kent L. Seavey to Santa Cruz County senior policy planner Matthew Sundt that was included in the commission’s staff report detailed some of the issues with the property, including a loss of decorative components, holes in the walls, the structure not resting on a foundation and no apparent connections to sanitary sewer or septic systems, electricity and utilities.

Seavey wrote that the property has been subject to vandalism over the years, poses a fire hazard and has been declared uninhabitable by the Santa Cruz County building inspector. Additionally, he wrote that the area’s agricultural setting has been compromised by the construction of commercial properties, including a Chevron station down the road and a complex across the street with a Hampton Inn, Starbucks and Arco station.

“The National Register designated property should be no longer regarded as an historic resource, because it has lost its historic integrity, both physically and environmentally as constructed in 1897,” Seavey wrote.

While Lydon is saddened by the property’s pending demolition, he felt it may be too far gone to save.

“I think we could have done it, say, in 2000 when there was federal money available,” he said. “We just couldn’t get the kind of traction.”

Lydon said the situation is a reminder of the importance of preserving history.

“Maybe the current conditions have rendered history a luxury, which is too bad,” he said.

The date for the item to go before the Board of Supervisors is yet to be determined.

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