Juan de Anza House


The Juan de Anza House, also known as the Anza House, is a historic house at Franklin and Third Streets in San Juan Bautista, California, USA. Built about 1830, it is a well-preserved example of residential construction during California's Mexican period. As an architectural type example, it was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1970.

Description and history

The Anza House is located in the downtown area of San Juan Bautista, at the southwest corner of Franklin and Third Streets. It is a single-story adobe structure, built out of vertically placed wooden poles and mud bricks, with exterior and interior finishes of lime plaster. It is covered by a low-pitch gabled roof with redwood shingles, which extends across an open veranda extending the width of the building, supported by simple square wooden posts. It has four bays on the front, three of which are occupied by doors or full-height windows. A wood-frame addition extends across the full width of the rear, covered by a shed roof. The interior has five rooms, some of which have 19th-century redwood floors.
The house was probably built about 1835, during the period when California was part of Mexico, and after the Mission San Juan Bautista was secularized. Its construction methods clearly predate developments in the late 1830s, when American methods of frame construction began to be merged into the Mexican vernacular adobe style. In the 1870s Francisco Bravo adapted the building for commercial use as a cantina, and it has generally been used for commercial purposes since then.