East Sacramento Preservation Speaks Out About Inappropriate Demolitions, Remodels and Historic Preservation

Application photo of proposed demolition home

The City sent out a “Demolition Investigation and Report Application for 601 35th Street.” This is a home typical of the East Sacramento area—craftsman details, charm and appropriate size and footprint for the area. And yet the new owners want to tear it down.

East Sacramento Preservation adamantly opposes the demolition. Below are the comments we submitted to the city. Interestingly, the potential destruction of this home has spurred neighborhood indignation and council member Cohn has expressed a willingness to work with community stakeholders to plan a design district in East Sacramento and perhaps a preservation district as well

Here are ESP’s comments:

“To tear down this house would be an absolutely criminal neglect of a neighborhood character-defining residence. Why do the people that want to move to East Sacramento want to immediately start tearing it down to build over-sized, faux-Tuscan, stucco boxes more appropriate for Elk Grove or Folsom? This house both embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period or method of construction and possesses high artistic values. It also makes up half of a pair of houses that were obviously built together and should remain as is.

And without more information from the City’s Preservation Office, we do not know if it represents the work of an important creative individual or master. Who is the architect? Contractor? Is it up to citizens to pay to have the historical research done? We are supposed to provide input based on a single, grainy photograph?

We’ve seen it time and time again in East Sac: someone with no appreciation for the character of our neighborhood tears down or grossly remodels a vintage home into something inappropriate in terms of scale and appearance. Then the neighbors around it sell their houses because of the loss of neighborhood charm and integrity that attracted them here in the first place and the cancer just spreads from there.

Is this the future of East Sacramento’s historic character: Death by a Thousand Cuts?”