Santa Cruz History ~ Carmelita Cottages Conclusion (Part 5)

photo taken by Dana Bagshaw:
newspapers brought by Traci Bliss to our
August 21st performance of "La Boheme Santa Cruz"
at the Carmelita Cottages

Welcome to Part 5 of my 5-part Santa Cruz History ~ Carmelita Cottages Series! It's inspired by the historical play I was in: Dana Bagshaw's "La Boheme Santa Cruz". The performances are done at this point. But I'm obsessed, so here we go!

There were a lot of things I wanted to write about before that I was omitting to keep things short and sweet - yeah, right - and so now I'm going to include a lot in the conclusion.

Part 1: Introduction to Carmelita Cottages and Dana Bagshaw's play, "La Boheme Santa Cruz"

Part 2: Captain Dame

Part 3: Lottie Thompson Sly

Part 4: Henry Thompson

Part 5: Conclusion (you're reading it now)

I wanted to talk about the re-established of the Carmelita Cottages as a hostel after Lottie Thompson Sly's death in 1955. 

In her will, written in 1953, Lottie clearly stated that the Carmelita Cottages were to become a park "for the public to enjoy", and the property to be "cleared and properly landscaped". She also ensured life tenancy to a woman named Abra Budworth, a good friend of her's and a former music student. Essentially, Lottie decided to leave her property to the city, instead of leaving it to Abra, but still made sure Abra had somewhere to live. (Abra Budworth sang at several funerals at the Odd Fellows Cemetery, where Captain Dame, Ellen Dame, and Lottie were buried.)

21 years after Lottie's death - when Abra Budworth died in 1976 - the property was finally passed down to the city of Santa Cruz. 

An important condition of Lottie's will stated that in the occasion that Santa Cruz failed to meet her requirements - that is, establish a public park on the grounds - ownership of Carmelita Cottages was to be passed down to Stanford University. 

Captain Dame's cottage, late 1880s, from Calisphere.org

In an unexpected turn of events, the city of Santa Cruz teamed up with Stanford University's lawyers to decide how to meet Lottie's requirements. Hm.

In 1979, Santa Cruz agreed to demolish the five cottages, all by 1984, and two of them immediately in 1979. This decision was made under pressure from Stanford University's lawyers, who considered this the correct path to meeting Lottie's requirements. Was this their genuine attempt at satisfying the will's demands or simply a strategic move to enrage the local population, we shall never know, but enrage the people it most certainly did. 

Especially enraged by the city's decision were the tenants of the Carmelita Cottages, who were being evicted as a result of this decision. Honestly speaking, I'm not sure what Lottie was actually trying to achieve with her will, because she knew that the Carmelita Cottages had many permanent tenants, most of whom were elderly women whose lives would have been uprooted by this.

In 1980, the city of Santa Cruz changed their mind, decided to keep all the cottages,  and renovate them as historical landmarks. By July 1, 1984, all the units were vacated, the cottages were renovated, and the property was made into an official park.

After this, people began thinking about potential uses for the now vacated cottages. Eventually, it was decided that City Parks and Recreation Commission should support a bed and breakfast there, privately operated. The City of Santa Cruz rejected this idea, as they were worried about the social implications of evicting lower-income tenants to maintain a fancy bed and breakfast. 

The Hostel Society then decided that Carmelita Cottages would be the perfect place for a European style hostel. A conflict ensued, as the city decided that a hostel at the Carmelita Cottages would ruin the "neighborhood's residential character". It's unclear what exactly the city wanted to do with the cottages, as it sounds like they were contradicting themselves.

The Hostel Society appealed this ruling and, after gathering hundreds of signatures from people residing in the neighborhood, were able to receive a lease to the cottages in April of 1985. Since the City of Santa Cruz had officially labeled the cottages as a historical landmark, mere months after attempting to demolish the whole thing, the Hostel Society was now forced to live a logistical nightmare, adhering to strict guidelines and fees. Although the city leased the property to the Hostel Society at a nominal fee, the money required to maintain the historical landmark label placed by the city was too great for the Hostel Society to manage, in addition to the renovation and other expenses. By 1990,  the Hostel Society was ready to give up, since there was no funding and no additional support for the restoration and transformation of the cottages. They stopped trying to turn the property into a hostel, but had to continue maintaining the grounds because their lease wouldn't end until another five years. Coastal Conservancy swooped in to save the day, offering to seek out more funding for the project if the Hostel Society would continue with their efforts.

Coastal Conservancy successfully acquired a money grant for the Hostel Society, and in 1991 the Hostel Society signed a 30-year lease with the City of Santa Cruz. (And it seems like that lease is coming to an end this year??) At the time Rick Hyman's chapter was written, the cottages were meant to open in the summer of 1993. 

"Rich Hyman, a planner with the California Coastal Commission in Santa Cruz, recognized the Carmelita Cottages' potential as a hostel over ten years ago. He chronicled their early history in a chapter of Every Structure Tells a Story, (Santa Cruz Historical Trust, 1990)".

It was extremely fun for me to do all of this online research on the historical characters while preparing for "La Boheme Santa Cruz". I'm so hooked that I might continue writing historical posts on The Freako Diva!!!

James Henry Thompson's
headstone at Evergreen Cemetery
in Santa Cruz, photographed by me

In terms of non-online research, I actually decided to visit the burial sites of Henry and Lottie, since both were buried in Santa Cruz. As I mentioned in Part 4 on Henry Thompson, Henry was buried at the Evergreen Cemetery in Santa Cruz, up the hill from Costco Wholesale. The tombstone itself is chipped off on the top, but it looks like in 2013 a chipped off part was found. I went to Evergreen Cemetery at the beginning of August, and it took me about 45 minutes to find Henry's grave, surrounded by other members of his family. The land for the cemetery was donated by his grandparents. Here's an interesting article on Evergreen Cemetery and on Traci Bliss' book, mentioned in Part 4. 

While I was there, I met a guy who told me he overlooked the cemetery and that a few years before they hired goats (from Felton I think, I don't remember) to clear out the overgrown greens on the hillside above the cemetery. I also met a black cat there, who was napping under the Blackburn family headstone and was extremely suspicious of me. 

Captain Dame's gravestone,
photographed by me
at the Odd Fellows Cemetery
in Santa Cruz

On August 19, I went to the Santa Cruz Memorial Park - which includes the Odd Fellows Cemetery  - in search of Lottie's grave. The Odd Fellows Cemetery is significantly larger than the Evergreen Cemetery, and after searching for Lottie's grave I ended up accidentally finding Captain Timothy Dame's. It was slightly buried and I had to clear off some of the grass growing around it before I could see the entire stone. I assumed Lottie and her mother Ellen were buried somewhere around, but couldn't find anything but open space surrounding Captain Dame. 

After about an hour and a half of wandering around aimlessly, I called the Memorial Park office and asked them if they could help me. They told me to come to the office, where the man with whom I spoke over phone gave me a map and marked Lottie's burial location on it. (10/10 customer service)

I took the map and it brought me right back to Captain Dame, meaning that Lottie is in fact buried somewhere around Captain Dame but her stone (as well as her mother's) must have sunk into the ground over the years. 

I had a great time performing in Dana Bagshaw's "La Boheme Santa Cruz", with the lovely cast and team! And I also thoroughly enjoyed researching these people's lives and seeing how intertwined different communities in Santa Cruz were and still remain with one another. Thank you for reading!