Historic Homes Tour: 1215 24th Street

This unique house was built for (and possibly by) a Swiss immigrant named Paul Emil Joseph in 1902. He was then working as a cabinet-maker for the Southern Pacific Railroad, honing carpentry skills that he seems to have put into good use in his new home, judging by the distinctive woodwork both inside and out. Joseph, his wife Nannie, and their two children lived at 1215 24h for only three years before relocating to Ione, where he had been hired as an instructor by the Preston School of Industry (now known as Preston Castle). He taught woodcraft at the school and also operated its plaining mill for several years. His pupils made the woodwork for the Assembly Hall based on six-foot-high scale model that they also had produced, and which was exhibited at the State Fair and Irrigation Congress in 1907. Twelve years later, Joseph sold the Sacramento house, which he had retained as a rental property until the death of his tenant, James Harney. The next owner was Edward Hafty, general storekeeper for the Southern Pacific. Six years later the house was bought by another SP employee, Joseph Bilger. He and his wife Anna owned 1215 24th for the longest period of time, from 1925-1968, occasionally taking in lodgers. In the late seventies, the house was purchased as an investment by a preservation-minded realtor, Bonnie Fitzpatrick. Her son Sean and his wife spent two years restoring the house before it was included on the SOCA tour in 1980. Paul Joseph's home is a gracious representation of that period when different centuries and styles converge. Its form expresses the simpler ideas of the new twentieth-century Craftsman era, while many of its details survive from the late nineteenth-century Victorian era. This transitional period type is known as the "Shingle style," even though shingles are the least prominent of its features. The top-heavy gable roof that fills the second story is a major characteristic of the Shingle style, with its flared over-sailing eaves upheld by scrolled brackets and rafter tails. A two-sided bay window, supported by an inverted starburst prop, projects from the upper part of the gable. The two stories are separated by a frieze decorated with a plaster-festooned swag.

On the ground floor below, a canted bay window and recessed front porch are sheltered under the flared gable eaves. Distinctive details of this bay window include the use of curved glass-a modern industrial invention for that era-and the scrolled brackets both above and below. The front porch features slender Ionic columns atop wood piers, and turned balusters are used in the stairway and porch railings. Additional carved woodwork surrounds the front door's window. The adjacent casement window is filled with stained glass and framed by woodwork whose motifs repeat those in the front bay at the left. All of these exterior decorative details are just a prelude to those adorning the interior. Its woodwork is even more elaborate, with a number of features that are unique to this house.