More than half of Americans in 2000 inhabited cities and rural areas with less than 25,000 people.  Santa Paula, in the Santa Clara River Valley, cradles about 30,000 people on approximately four square miles of ground.  Santa Paula is a small but surprisingly typical American city.

In 1780 Santa Paula was a small Spanish Asistencia (or Estancia, a kind of outpost) to the Franciscan Mission St. Bonaventure.  Records connect it to the Portola expedition of 1769, which introduced the coastal interior of Southern California to Spanish exploration.

Nearly 100 years after the Asistencia was established, N. W. Blanchard came to California via Panama, purchased land, laid out a town plan, and began to plant citrus.

In 1902, thirty years after the beginning of industrial citrus, the city of Santa Paula was formally incorporated. The Union Oil Company of California was founded within its boundary twelve years prior.

Santa Paula presides northerly over the middle of the Santa Clara River Valley.  It sits between the foot of the Topatopa Mountains to the north and the Santa Paula Creek/Santa Clara River confluence to the south.

Santa Paula’s orientation, about seventeen degrees west of north, derives from the local geology of the Transverse Mountain Range, along with Santa Paula Creek and the Santa Clara River in close proximity.  It is also an echo of Spanish colonial planning.  Cities in New Spain were laid out diagonal to the cardinal axes to modulate wind, light, and temperature in ways that were not otherwise attainable.

So, how to compose an American City?

Santa Paula is organized around three streets.  Main and Santa Paula Streets, running east-west, are crossed by Tenth Street., which merges with Ojai Road (SR 150), running north-south.

Main Street looking east, parallel to the Santa Clara River.

Tenth Street looking north, at Main.  Santa Paula Creek runs parallel to the east.  In the distance, Topatopa Mountain turns Santa Paula Creek toward the camera.

Santa Paula Street parallels Main Street, runs about a quarter mile to the north, also following the Santa Clara River.  It is residential by contrast to Main and Tenth, but of a complimentary scale.

Together Main, Santa Paula and Tenth generate the pattern for Santa Paula's most original, most interior neighborhood, which hides in plain sight and is locally unnamed.  It has a gridiron layout and is the most dynamic and most diverse neighborhood in the city.

The Pavilion at the Mill/Santa Barbara Street crossing makes a commemorative center in the middle of the city.  It captures the intersection that generates Santa Paula's layout and the unity engendered by that layout.

Three things bridge local extremes of topography and architecture, and enhance the sense of unity in the gridiron:  First, the streets are wide, overly at times, but enough to provide room to linger and to appreciate the prospect, which is variable.  Second, the consistent orientation means that all of the views are cast in a similar light.  This may sound mysterious, but it's important.  But perhaps most important is the fact that every thing in the gridiron, by virtue of its organization, is no more than two turns away from every other thing on the gridiron.

Except for the things behind the things that interrupt the gridiron, which are also important. 

But the most important thing to remember in Santa Paula, the lynchpin behind the city and its neighborhoods, is Santa Paula Street.  Here's why.

This view of Santa Paula Street looking north, between 7th and Walnut Streets, is a masterclass in simple street design.

The first thing in view is the shade in the foreground, which obscures the street and the garden beyond it.  The shade, cool, is provided by unseen trees behind that mirror the trees in view.  The trees have a pattern.

One layer, more decorative, right upon the street,  ornaments the public thoroughfare.  A second layer, more mature, in closer proximity to the homes beyond, guarantees the shade of the closer trees and modulates their cadence for the viewer.

On one side of the trees there is a street lamp, on the other is a somewhat monumental, possibly manufactured, home.  The texture of the latter blends it with the former.  Not to mention the light.

The house in view is exquisitely Victorian.  With three plus steps off the ground, a tower, and two attics above the second floor, it more than compliments the Union Oil Building at Tenth and Main while proffering facets that lie beyond the immediacy of more highly trafficked streets .

While the architecture on Santa Paula Street recalls the size and scale of Main and Tenth, the landscaping, commemoratively American, echoes the surrounding mountain habitat.  The houses offer many of the details and compositions that can be found in the more elaborate neighborhoods beyond.  Meanwhile their dimensions surpass, that is to say embrace, all of the public and civic construction to be found in town.

Like it or not, in Paris, Rome, London, Beijing, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, and other towns, height is the oft neglected, at times subverted, key to preservation and continuity.  In Santa Paula, height is also regarded.

In the city of Santa Paula, an eponymous street is a window to the rest of the city.

Here's what lies about the center.

gaz