Sunshine Villa
Sunshine Villa is an assisted-living facility on Front Street in the Beach Hill neighborhood (Streetview image is from 2018). The core of the facility is a historical structure with a complex history. In 1869, John Morrow designed and built a house for F. M. Kittredge and his wife Almira Mead Kittredge.
After that, according to Chase:
In 1875, Kittredge’s sister-in-law Harriet Mead Blackburn, whose husband William Blackburn had died in 1867, erected a rear addition to the main building, converting it into a hotel called Kittredge House. . . . The new hotel was leased and operated by Albion Paris Swanton until 1883, when he left to build his own hotel on Front Street, named Swanton House. When Kittredge died in 1879, the hotel property passed to Harriet Blackburn. After Swanton left as hotelier, Mrs. Blackburn sold the Kittredge House to Pacific Ocean House proprietor Elias J. Swift. He built the present front section of the building, moving the original Kittredge house back to make way for the new addition. The thirteen-room addition was designed by John H. Williams and cost $5,000. In 1887 the enlarged hotel became known as Peakes House, for proprietor James B. Peakes. The heyday of the main building arrived in 1890, when millionaire James P. Smith, an international food distributor, and his wife, Susan (Crooks) Smith, purchased the property from E. J. Swift’s heirs for $24,500. Mr. and Mrs. Smith immediately proceeded to fit out “Sunshine Villa” as a private residence . . .. Later, the building became the Hotel McCray, and entered a long period of slow decline. In 1991, after years of decay, the hotel was completely renovated to become the entrance to today’s assisted-living facility, with the resurrected name “Sunshine Villa.”
The Smiths also got involved in the local scene, becoming one of the creators of the more-or-less annual Venetian Water Carnival in 1895. The Smiths' teenage daughter was, coincidentally, crowned queen of the first Water Carnival.
Through many name changes, "Sunshine Villa" was never forgotten. According to a Sentinel obituary: "John McCray, well known hotel man for a number of years, died suddenly at the hotel on Beach Hill early yesterday morning. . . . He was a native of Columbus, Ohio, 75 years of age. He came to Santa Cruz from Kendallville, Ind., in 1930, and first operated what was then the La Dora hotel now the Graystone. Six years later, he with his son-in-law W. H. Branyen, bought the Sunshine Villa and converted it into a hotel and apartments."
Notes
- History Pages: 50 - Beach Hill: 1870-99
- History Pages: 59 - 1895 Venetian Water Carnival
- John L. Chase, The Sidewalk Companion to Santa Cruz Architecture, 4th edition, 2023, Chapter One, item (15), pages 8, 10 [image].
- "John M'Ray Of Hotel Fame, Is Dead At 75", Santa Cruz Sentinel, Jan. 9, 1937, 3:7.
