Bonilla House

A black and white vintage style street sign for Bonilla House, located at 915 Santa Barbara Street, established in 1887.
Black and white photo of a family standing outside a wooden house with a picket fence, two women holding children, a girl standing near the door, and two children on the porch, surrounded by trees and bushes. 
Bonilla House, c. 1903, courtesy of the Presidio Research Center.


You may have noticed that the Bonilla House is much higher than the street that it looks in the historic photograph. That’s because Santa Barbara Street was re-graded in 1914, placing the street level significantly lower than the house. The concrete retaining wall you see today was built at that time to hold up the front of the lot, and replaced the picket fence. The house was further elevated when it was placed on piers to accommodate water and sewer infrastructure later the same decade. 

In the front yard of the house, you can see some of the stone foundations of the Presidio defense wall, built after the expansion of the Presidio Chapel in 1797. The foundation runs underneath the house and was excavated by the Presidio Volunteers in 1973, and an archaeological field school in 2009.  

SOURCES

​Murray, Fermina. “The Bonilla House: The Evolution of a Modest Family Home.” La Campana (Spring 2016): pp. 13-21. 

​“Bonilla House Restoration Work Now Getting Underway.” Santa Barbara News-Press, c. 1973.