People Saving Places Through Preservation
2020 Award of Merit Recipient
The 405 Jefferson Street home award was presented by NCL Board Director, Dan Cutright. His remarks, “Napa County Landmarks Award of Merit for Category 2, Rehabilitation and Adaptive Reuse of an historic structure at least 50 years old.
Art and Kelly Reyes, owners, and Chris Craiker AIA, architect, are responsible for this recently remodeled home. This renovated turn of the century Bungalow sits prominently at the corner of Pine and Jefferson Streets in the historically designated Fuller-Abajo district. It is thought to have been built around 1900 which is consistent with the opinion of the project’s architect, Chris Craiker, who noted the structure originally had a rock and mortar foundation, common before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The home, originally a single family residence, also spent many years as a boarding house. We do not know who the original owner or builder was. Owner Art Reye’s construction company performed the work.
The house retains much of its original look with the front porch walkup and shingled siding. Inside, it features 5 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms, lots of ‘nooks’ and clever usage space for storage, a finished basement and a dramatic modern makeover of the kitchen/dining area. High quality fixtures, appliances and period style interior moldings complete the living space. The back porch is covered and open on three sides making it usable as a very pleasant, fair weather living space. Added over the garage at the rear of the property on the Pine Street side, is a very functional and appealing Accessory Dwelling Unit with one bedroom and one bath.
An interesting side note of local history is that the house sits next door to what was once the locally famous, Napa Landmark now gone, the Green Lantern Bar. The bar was a classic neighborhood blue collar bar, open 24/7 to accommodate the normal night owls as well as swing shift workers off during the day, from employers like Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Basalt Rock and Kaiser Steel, among others. Access to the rear parking lot of the bar went across the rear of 405 Jefferson and so utilized common ingress/egress on the Pine Street side. One can only imagine the owners or tenants of the boarding house took easy advantage of the short stroll to the rear entrance of the bar!”
