The Homestead Museum - Part II

(PART II)

I continued capturing images, one after the other. Inside the houses, on the gardens, the fountain, the rooms, the blown glass, the appliances, etc. Our guide insisted I was the one to open the main door to the new house just so I could feel how heavy it was. The new house was beautifully decorated and looked ready for someone to move in.

After almost a full hour tour we finally said good bye to our guide and we headed towards the cemetery. A few more images and then we finally decided to go home, it is safe to say we were the last ones to leave the place.























All in all, a great tour worth repeating.

As one of the oldest cemeteries in southern California, El Campo Santo contains the remains of the pioneering Workman and Temple families as well as Pio Pico, the last governor of Mexican California. Within its low brick walls, the one-half acre cemetery features a Neoclassical mausoleum and a small cemetery plot surrounded by a Gothic Revival cast-iron fence.

In the early 1850s, the Workmans established El Campo Santo or "the sacred ground" as a cemetery solely for the use of their family. Along with a cemetery plot enclosed by an ornate cast-iron fence, they built a Gothic Revival brick chapel dedicated to St. Nicolas by Bishop Thaddeus Amat of Los Angeles. Among the first to be buried was William Workman's brother David, who was killed in 1855 while driving cattle to the gold fields in northern California.

At the turn of the century, the cemetery was abandoned and its brick chapel destroyed by fire. Walter Temple, a grandson of the Workmans, successfully filed a lawsuit preventing any further desecration of the cemetery. In 1917, he was able to purchase the cemetery and the surrounding 75 acres and began restoration. In place of the chapel, however, he built a cast stone Neoclassical mausoleum and moved the remains of his family inside. He also transferred the remains of Ygnacia and Pio Pico from Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles, which was being relocated in the 1920s.

Today the cemetery is restored and maintained as a California State Historic Landmark and is open to visitors through a self-guided tour described in the free brochure available at the museum office.

For additional information on the museum.
CLICK HERE!

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The Homestead Museum

So, as I mentioned before I spent all Saturday with my sister. After we rested and she forced me to watch a Cafe Tacuba concert on DVD while she cooked we finally left again at around 3:30 pm in search of more cool images from the La Puente area.

The Homestead Museum is about five minutes away from were she lives also about five minutes away from where I used to live except when I was there I never cared to go visit. So we decided that would be our destination. We got there and I immediately started shooting, my finger was trigger happy I really liked the houses which belonged to the Workman and the Temple families. Only thing is that there was a high protective iron fence that took away from the beauty of the houses.



















There was hardly anybody there, I noticed that they closed at 5:00 pm on Saturday and asked my sister to go and inquire about the guided tours so that we could plan for a next time. A nice lady came out and said if you want I can take you in right now, she usually stopped at 4:00 and it was already 4:15 pm so I immediately said we would love to take the tour.



So she got her key, opened the big gate let us in and locked it again as soon as we walked in, the next 45 minutes we took a trip into history. A history that started when California was still Mexico. She told us all about Mr. Workman, and English man that married a Mexican woman and Mr. Temple whom also married a Mexican woman. (Pretty mart guys I say).

As she started telling us the history of the place, the street names we see when there started to make sense. She was very knowledgeable of the details that such tour required and best of all when I asked if I could take pictures inside the place she said I could take as many as I wanted.



















So what follows will be a pictorial of the Homestead Museum which is located in the City of Industry. I will borrow some of the captions from their website but the images are all mine, so make sure to visit it for more information.

As one of the oldest houses in California, the Workman House survives as a unique testament to the changing architectural styles and domestic tastes of the nineteenth century.

It originally stood as a simple three-room adobe, built shortly after the Workman family's arrival in November 1841. With the success of their cattle ranch, they continued to remodel the house by adding rooms. By the 1870s, new wealth in vineyards and wheat farming allowed them to completely transform the Mexican-era adobe into a modern American house, building a second floor, adding a variety of decorative details, and finishing the outside to resemble brick and stone. Believed to have been designed by early Los Angeles architect Ezra Kysor, the picturesque country home reflects the architectural tastes that were popular in mid-19th century America.

Today the exterior of the Workman House is restored to its 1870s appearance. The interior retains its appearance from the 1950s and awaits restoration. Visitors can see the house by taking a free guided tour.

The Workman House is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a California State Historic Landmark.

In 1917, Walter P. Temple and his wife Laura used their wealth from an oil discovery to repurchase seventy-five acres of the family's original rancho. The Temples soon commissioned well-known Los Angeles architects Walker and Eisen and later Roy Seldon Price to construct La Casa Nueva or "the new house." Built between 1922 and 1927, this 11,000-square foot Spanish Colonial Revival mansion is noted for its fine architectural crafts, especially stained glass, ceramic tile, wrought iron, and carved wood. By 1930, the Temple family had lost the house and it became a boys' military school and a convalescent hospital before it was acquired by the City of Industry in the 1970s.

Restored and completely furnished to its appearance in 1928, La Casa Nueva is open for free guided tours that interpret the history of southern California from 1830 to 1930.

La Casa Nueva is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and its landscaping has won regional and state awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects.

(TO BE CONTINUED!)

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