Santa Barbara's Red Tile Walking Tour

Video podcast extends Santa Barbara’s dazzling new official website with a self-guided tour

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. October 14, 2008

SANTA BARBARA, CA, October 16, 2007. A new video podcast tour of Santa Barbara's original pueblo district brings another dimension to the city's visually stunning, all-encompassing official web site, www.santabarbaraCA.com.

Before their trip, travelers bound for the American Riviera can watch Beyond the Rooftops: Santa Barbara's Red Tile Walking Tour to get a preview of historic adobes and more recently constructed buildings that embody the best of the seaside city's Spanish-style architecture, with its wrought-iron details, white walls of adobe or smooth stucco, and memorable red tile roofs. Or they can download the tour to a personal music device and, once in the city, spend a morning or afternoon visiting the sites in person. Either way, their memories of the distinctive Santa Barbara architectural style will be that much more vibrant and personal -- and they'll probably know more about the city's architectural heritage than most locals do!

The video can be viewed or downloaded at www.santabarbaraCA.com/podcasts (or go to www.santabarbaraCA.com, click on "Fun Stuff," and select the tab titled "Podcasts"). The companion map can be downloaded from the site, and is also available at the Visitors' Center (1 Garden Street at Cabrillo Boulevard) and several locations on the tour.

Narrated by John O'Hurley, who played catalog king J. Peterman on the TV series "Seinfeld", the 16-minute-long video podcast leads visitors on a relaxing amble through the oldest part of town, the original Santa Barbara pueblo. Encompassing 12 small, easily navigated blocks, the tour includes 17 stops and 22 historic adobes dating from the late 1700s through the 1800s, plus many of the structures built in the Spanish-revival and Moorish styles mandated by community leaders after the devastating earthquake of 1925. Podcast amblers will also discover flower-bedecked courtyards, hidden passageways, and notable restaurants, theaters, museums, and architecturally significant government buildings. The terrain is flat, the distances between stops are short, and because everything is either on State Street or just off it, a revivifying snack or an iced mocha is never far away.

The Santa Barbara County Courthouse - on the National Registry of Historic Places - serves as the starting point for the tour, which is where walkers join company with deep-voiced Mr. O'Hurley. Occasionally lapsing into the amusing verbosity of his J. Peterman character on Seinfeld, the host provides commentary as the tour progresses, beginning with quick descriptions of some of the more notable aspects of the Courthouse. He mentions, for instance, that the famous Sunken Gardens were a bull ring in colonial times and that the paintings in the second-floor Mural Room were created by a background painter for film director Cecil B. DeMille. But just as an in-person visit is the only way to get a true sense of the magnificent Courthouse, so too only a trip to the top of the 80-foot-tall bell tower can provide the bird's-eye (pre)view of the red-tile district that awaits exploration below.

From the Courthouse, the tour leads past the architecturally eclectic downtown branch of the Santa Barbara Public Library and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, home to a marvelous mural, Portrait of Mexico Today, the only such intact mural by artist David Alfaro Siqueiros in the United States. From there, it's on to La Arcada Court. Framed by tall Spanish-revival buildings and lined with shops and galleries, the narrow lane conjures images of Spain - except, perhaps for the assortment of life-size bronze sculptures, including one of Ben Franklin sitting on a bench reading a paper.

The tour then focuses on a series of historic adobe buildings that formed the center of the original Santa Barbara pueblo in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Tour-takers will visit Hill-Carrillo Adobe, Casa de la Guerra and Plaza de la Guerra while passing through El Paseo, another narrow lane that opens onto a courtyard that offers an ideal setting for an outdoor lunch. From there it's on to the Ore~na adobes and Presidio Avenue (the oldest street in Santa Barbara), the Presidio defense compound, the elegant Lugo adobe and the El Cuartel adobe, which happens to be the second oldest building in California. Along the way, visitors will find plaques and texts painted onto the sides of the buildings, explaining their historical, social, and cultural significance.

From the original pueblo adobes, the tour finishes at the Lobero Theatre, a Santa Barbara favorite first put up in 1873, then rebuilt in 1924, a year before the big earthquake, which, fortunately, did not knock down the newly refurbished Lobero.

A half-block from the theatre, all the State Street attractions wait. But with a new-found appreciation for Santa Barbara's architectural heritage, those who took the tour may find themselves more interested - for a time, at least - in just what kind of red-roofed building a shop is in rather than what might happen to be in a given shop.

VISITOR INFORMATION

Contact the Santa Barbara Conference & Visitors Bureau and Film Commission at 800.676.1266 or www.santabarbaraCA.com to request a free copy of the annual Santa Barbara County Visitor Magazine.