City of San Juan Capistrano
Completion: April 2010

As part of the preservation and restoration, the Montanez Adobe was seismically upgraded, the roof was replaced, the porches were restored to their original historic character, and a historically appropriate earthen floor was installed.

The restoration removed an ill conceived 1980 earthquake structural seismic retrofit.  The retrofit, a cage of steel columns, was never an effective structural bracing system for adobe and deemed highly visually obtrusive. The restoration installed an effective and hidden structural seismic retrofit. The roof was replaced with historically appropriate hand split redwood shakes. Each shake is 36 inches long. The porch posts were replaced with hand-hewn redwood posts stained to appear as weathered wood. The rammed earth floor was hand leveled in place and finished with a coating of linseed oil.

The Montanez Adobe was constructed circa 1794 and was one of 40 adobes near the San Juan Capistrano Mission built to house Native American Mission neophytes. It is currently listed in the National Register of Historic Places both individually (#75000450) and as a contributor to the Los Rio Street National Register Historic District (#73001216).  Polonia Montanez, the legal owner in 1875, was the town’s midwife and a “captain of the pueblo,” which refers to one in charge of the religious instruction of the village children.

Our job was to look like we had never been here.