When I first start writing this blog, it is Carmel’s architecture that I find fascinating.  But Carmel gives us even more by recording and saving folders on each home in its one square mile. This makes it possible to glimpse the life that went on in that house.  What an extraordinary gift. 

I first find this out when I research my own little bungalow. What – a newspaper illegally run from my garage? Wow!

Then when the Register of Historic Homes is started, Enid Sales and then Kent Seavey  meticulously research each home.  Mr. Seavey’s reports make for fascinating reading whether you are an architect or historian.,

It is his writing that serves up the “skinny” that helps me imagine the people who lived and loved here.

The Mary Orrick home has 2 names- as do many Carmel Homes.

 

The first name honors the woman who designs the house. She buys the land in 1926 and models the design after her 12 -bedroom Tudor home on the 12th green at Pebble Beach. She scales it down to 4 bedrooms and makes it a rental property . 

I walk by the two-story house and can not resist. 

Up the drive.

Up the steps.

This exuberant lady greets me.

I walk to the bench in the front  lawn to look back on the house.

Kent describes the architecture as both Tudor Revival and Post Medieval. “Google” and I toss these terms around for a while and I decide to move on.

Mary’s husband, William Orrick, is a successful San Francisco Attorney.  He loves to golf- so the vacation home at Pebble Beach which is still in the family. 

He is also a founding member of the Cypress Point Golf Club.

Google Images

And the law firm he built is now world-wide. 

As I approach the front door to knock, I see the second name, La Casa del Obispo.

This name is given by a later owner, the Episcopal Bishop os the Diocese of California, Bishop Karl Morgan Black.

Google Images

He broke ground for Carmel’s All Saints Church. A beautiful church several blocks from my house.

Google Images

But now all I know is I love the front door with its cheerful basket of geraniums. I knock on the door and then tuck my card in the basket and make my way around the house.

“Welcome to the Sea” a sign proclaims.

What an exquisite leaded glass window.

“Sleepy” is dozing under a large tree.

An arbor beckons

And leads into a u shaped courtyard.

A tiny garden sits under the leaded glass windows

A pig sniffles about

A rose climbs the wall

And an otter swings from a window box.

The leaded glass back door is flanked by 

A scowling rabbit.

He sends me back through the arbor

Where Sleepy still dozes.

I am down the path and back to the street. 

I read that the current residents “have made a concentrated effort to keep up the historic character of the building”- Kent Seavey

“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.” 

― L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl