The Blossoming of Orange : A Stroll Through the Town’s Center Reveals Astonishing Variety of Historical Architecture

Some old-timers remember when Orange County was true to its name. Thousands of acres of citrus orchards filled the small towns with fragrances of orange and lemon blossoms. It was a time of simplicity and slow-paced lives.

Today, most of the orange groves have been replaced by suburbia, but several historic small towns remain almost intact. One such place is Orange, located between the Santa Ana River and the Santiago Creek 5 miles southeast of Anaheim. Orange was incorporated a century ago on April 6, 1888, but its history as a town begins even earlier.

In 1870, law partners A. B. Chapman and Andrew Glassell received more than 1,000 acres of land in payment for legal services rendered. The two men laid out the original town site on 40 acres in 1871. Eight lots in the center of the town site were set aside for a public plaza, intended to be the new town’s commercial hub. The plans mirrored William Penn’s design for Philadelphia, with its heart formed by two major cross streets dividing the city into residential quadrants.

New Name Needed

Originally the town was named Richland in an allusion to the land’s agricultural promise. An ad in 1872 boasted that the site “has a climate and variety of soil unsurpassed in the world, and especially adapted to the profitable growth of fruits.” That brag proved true. Soon orchards and crops grew in abundance around Victorian farmhouses. In 1875, Chapman recorded the first town maps and sought to have a post office built. However, he learned that California already had a town called Richland, so he had to change the name.

Four names representing the town’s most important crops were considered: Lemon, Almond, Olive and Orange. Chapman and Glassell invited two men to a poker game; the winner, it was decided, could give the town its new name. The winner chose Orange.

Orange grew as a quiet rural village until 1888, when word spread that a saloon was soon coming to the town. The good citizens voted on April 6, 1888, to incorporate as a sixth-class city, and among the first ordinances passed was one prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages.

Over the next century, Orange continued to grow; fruit and nut orchards slowly disappeared. Each growth period left its architectural imprint: Victorian (1874-1900), Classical Revival (1900-1910), Craftsman (1910-1925) and Mediterranean Revival (1922-1930).

Today, Old Towne Orange, the 1-square-mile surrounding the Orange Plaza with more than 1,250 structures, is one of the most intact historic districts in California. The following self-guided 3-mile walking tour leads to some of these historic places. Allow three hours, including breakfast or lunch at a cafe in the Plaza Historic District.

To reach Orange, drive south on Interstate 5, exit on East Chapman Avenue. Continue 1.9 miles east to the Orange Plaza at Glassell Street.

Begin the walk at the Plaza, where Chapman Avenue and Glassell Street intersect. Set aside in 1871, this public park was not improved until 1886. The present fountain with its tiled, circular pool dates to 1937.

Walk east on Chapman Avenue. At No. 101 stands a classically styled bank building with imposing engaged Corinthian columns, designed in 1928 by Morgan, Wells & Clements.

Watson’s Drugs at 116 E. Chapman Ave., established in 1899, is Orange County’s oldest drugstore and Orange’s oldest business. The nostalgic soda fountain is a popular lunch spot.

Royer Mansion at 307 E. Chapman Ave., built in 1905, suggests a Southern plantation with its four two-story fluted columns and second-story balcony.

The original Orange Plaza fountain splashes in front of the Orange City Hall at 300 E. Chapman Ave. The three-tiered, sculpted-metal Victorian fountain with its crafted storks stood in the Plaza from 1887 to 1936. Nearby is the city’s official tree--a Valencia orange tree.

The Ainsworth House, 414 E. Chapman Ave., built in 1910 by the owner of the city’s first lumber business and designed by his daughter, is the city’s official historic house. Note its full curvilinear front porch with Victorian-themed details. Public tours are offered Sundays from noon to 5 p.m.

Walk south on Center Street to St. John’s Lutheran Church. Designed by architect Frederick L. Ely and built in 1913, this wood-framed, brick-faced Gothic Revival church features two steeples, with battlements and steep tent roofs. Its stained-glass windows were among the last shipped from Germany before World War I.

Turn left on Almond Avenue. At No. 430 stands a bungalow built in 1910, unique in Orange for its arroyo stone facing.

At Shaffer Street, turn left and admire Walker Hall at No. 184. Built in 1926 as St. John’s social hall, the polychrome brick, Mediterranean-styled structure with its terra cotta-glazed ornamentation features a dramatic canopy over the entrance.

Built for Store Owner

Continue north to the Grote House, 169 N. Shaffer St. This residence, with its flattened hip roof, jigsaw window moldings and bracketed cornice, was built in 1889 for Henry Grote, owner of the general store.

A late-Victorian manor with a delightful wraparound porch supported by classical columns stands at 192 N. Shaffer St.

Suggestive of the Italian Renaissance with its red-tile hipped roof and symmetrical design, the Domann House at 515 E. Maple Ave., built in 1923, is one of the few brick houses in Orange.

Turn left on Maple Avenue and walk two blocks to Grand Street. On the northeast corner stands Chapman Chapel, originally the Trinity Episcopal Church. Built in 1909, this was the first church designed by Phillip Hubert Frohman, who in 1915 became the resident architect at the National Cathedral in Washington; this Victorian Gothic rural church reflects the Craftsman aesthetic with unpainted wood-shingled sidings and main portico. The parsonage next door on North Grand Street was built in 1920.

Turn right on North Grand Street, cross Palm Avenue and walk north to Chapman College. Before you get to the fountain, turn left and walk to Wilkinson Hall.

Now Houses College

Built in 1905 as the first campus building of the Orange Union High School, Wilkinson Hall reflects the popular Neo-Classical style of its day. By 1928, four other buildings in the same style were added to the school. A new high school was built in 1953 and Chapman College moved to this campus the following year.

Walk southwest to the front of Chapman Auditorium and note the three older buildings surrounding the sunken lawn. The broad lawns, shade trees, benches and public art offer a serene setting.

Walk to the corner of Glassell Street and Palm Avenue. Three blocks to the west at 350 N. Cypress stands the Villa Park Orchards Assn. packing house, built in 1933. The Santiago Orange Grower’s Assn. packing house originally was built here in 1919; by 1929, it was the largest in the country. By 1936, Orange County supplied nearly one-sixth of the country’s total orange output. The packing house is still active.

Walk east on Palm Avenue and turn right on North Orange Street to Schaeffer House at No. 221, the oldest residence in Orange, built in 1874. The two-story Victorian structure mixes styles with a double-story bay window on one side and a mansard roof on the other.

At Maple Avenue, turn right, then left on Glassell Street. Note the rich variety of commercial buildings, many with overhanging cornices. The Orange Theater at No. 172 was built in 1929. The Woodruff Building at Nos. 148-150, built in 1885, was the first brick structure in the city.

Town’s Largest Store

At the Chapman Avenue intersection, walk through the Plaza to the southeast corner of Glassell Street and Chapman Avenue; walk south on Glassell Street.

At Nos. 108-126 stands the Ehlen and Grote Building, with its glazed, white bricks and cast-iron cornice, built in 1908 for the town’s largest general merchandise store.

Orange’s citrus industry lives on at 195 S. Glassell St. Built as the Orange County Fruit Exchange in 1922, this Mediterranean-style commercial building now houses Sunkist’s citrus fruit exchange.

Victorian-Era Homes

Continue south on Glassell Street, where many of the older houses are now used as offices. Nos. 221 and 239 are two turn-of-the-century Queen Anne Victorian cottages. Another Victorian house at No. 254 is distinguished by its two front-facing gabled dormers. The Edwards House at No. 350, built in 1915, is perhaps the city’s largest and finest Craftsman house.

One of the city’s grandest Victorian homes, the Dierker House at 472 Glassell St., built in 1896, boasts a corner turret with a conical top.

Its branches spreading over 150 feet, the largest Moreton Bay fig tree in the county overshadows Glassell Street at No. 566. It was planted in 1875 by Henri Gardner upon the birth of his first son.

Turn left on River Avenue. The river-stone cairns announce that you are now in Nutwood Place, the city’s first subdivision with an irregular grid, platted in 1906 amid walnut and apricot orchards.

What may be one of the oldest California sycamore trees, thought to be between 350 and 500 years old, majestically towers above 225 River Ave.

Walk south on Orange Street to the stone stairway at the lane’s end. Before you is Hart Park, built in 1934 as a Works Progress Administration project. The park’s design includes arroyo-stone-terraced lawns that lead down to the cemented creek bed, used as a parking lot during the dry season. Walk down the stairs, past the band shell and around the Mediterranean-styled community pool. Walk north along the pool and continue up the stone-edged stairs to Grand Street.

A two-story Victorian farmhouse with a rear tower topped by a mansard roof is at 505 S. Grand St. Built in 1901, it once was surrounded by 20 acres of apricot orchards.

Turn left on La Veta Avenue and right on Orange Street. A number of Victorian and Classical Revival houses line this quiet street.

Boxy-Shaped House

An unusual Prairie-style abode, built in 1919, stands at 315 S. Orange St. The boxy shape with horizontal banding reflects the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright.

The Culver House, 205 E. Palmyra Ave., was built in 1888 by C. Z. Culver, owner of the Palmyra Hotel--now demolished--to house additional hotel guests. A multigabled roof with intricate woodwork graces the three-story house.

Built in 1891, the wood-framed Antioch Baptist Church, 192 N. Orange St., combines Victorian designs, a mansard bell tower and fish-scale shingles with the Gothic style noted by large, stained-glass windows with tracery.

Return to the Plaza and reward yourself with lunch nearby, or browse in the antique shop.