Historic Homes Tour: 1311 22nd Street

With its wide over-hanging flat eaves and horizontal emphasis, 1311 22nd Street conveys the essence of Prairie-style architecture. The fenestration below the eaves is a formal composition centered on a ribbon of five casement windows, flanked by a single narrow round arched window at each side. All of these second-story windows are placed over formal planter boxes. This symmetrical upper story is offset below by a full-shed porch with a gabled entry at the right. Simple squared piers flank this entry at the top of the stairs. A large tripartite window fills the wall on the left, and the front door is flanked by glass sidelights (possibly a later alteration). A gabled porte-cochre is attached to the left side of the house, providing a formal automobile entry. Because it matches the gabled front entrance on the right, the overall effect is symmetrical, just as with the upper story.

The youngest of the houses selected for the 2018 home tour, 1311 22nd, was built by and for a contractor named Gene J. Pendergast, who secured the permit for his "$4,500 residence" in November 1912, three months after buying the lot. He and his wife, Harriet Ede Pendergast, raised their two sons, John and Gene, in the new home. The spacious house featured a ballroom where family parties were held, and where Harriet, a music teacher and vocalist, hosted informal "musicales."

After working for the Southern Pacific Railroad for several years, Gene Pendergast was actively engaged in the construction business. Among other buildings, he was responsible for the Pendergast Apartments, one of the largest structures of its type in the city when it was erected in1921, (1515 Tenth St.; demolished). In 1938, the Pendergasts moved out to the suburbs and rented 1311 22nd to Etta Rose Baker. Etta shared the house with her daughter Mertice (died in 1939) and son-in-law Arnold Noah Walsh, a local pioneer in radio and sound systems. An experienced boarding-house manager, Etta began to rent out furnished rooms in her home in June 1938. Ten years later, she purchased the property from the Pendergasts. She, her other daughter Edna Baker Cullivan (who inherited the house when Etta died in 1959 and who also rented rooms), and her grandson John Francis Cullivan lived in the house for a combined total of forty years, making them the longest owner-occupants in the house's history. The next owners, Michael F. Richardson, and M. Jane Ramey converted the house to a bed-and-breakfast. It was part of the Amber House group, to which the house next door, 1315 22nd Street, still belongs. Now, however, 1311 22nd is again a single-family residence, just as it was in the Pendergast years.