Sense of Style Pervades San Juan Capistrano, Inside and Out
Just call this tour “Capistrano by Design,” and begin at the Decorative Arts Study Center, where design is the raison d’etre.
10:30 to 11:30: Enter through a stone and ivied trellis passageway to a courtyard that provides the focus for a gallery, library, gift shop and English folly garden.
The street-side cottage that now serves as an exhibition gallery dates to the 1880s and was moved from the San Juan Hot Springs up Ortega Highway when that operation went bankrupt in the Depression. The gallery’s interior changes radically with each design exhibition.
Antique dealer Gep Durenberger bought the site for his shop in the 1960s with the cottage in situ. He added a bungalow in the ‘70s for living quarters, adding doors, windows and fixtures that he found on buying trips abroad. He sold the complex to the city in the ‘80s.
Durenberger’s bungalow now houses the library, the study center proper boasting 1,500 volumes on architecture, furniture, gardens and silverware. Anyone can use the resources, but the books do not circulate.
Throughout the rooms hang paintings and photographs of Elsie de Wolfe (1865-1950), the first interior designer, who once occupied the same quarters outside Paris as Marie Antoinette.
Incidentally, an authentic 18th-Century English folly garden--follies were fanciful buildings not intended for habitation, in this case a child-size cottage--captures the playful spirit of the gardens across the channel that inspired Queen Marie. The gift shop is currently in full swing for the holidays.
11:30 to 11:50: The building occupied by Durenberger & Friends down the street is also somewhat historical.
Now offering “antiques and decorative arts for home and garden,” the site was the former residence of the family that owned the local ice house. The back gallery once served as an auto repair garage. Today you ring a bell to gain entry to the shop through a garden courtyard; interior vignettes show 18th- and 19th-Century English, French and American furniture and accessories. The objects are offered by a half-dozen dealers.
11:50 to noon: The inventory at Studio 5 Designs is similar, but more of the decorative accessories are Asian, which go well with the English and French pieces.
Noon to 12:45: Just up a small hill, the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library sits like some fantasy fortress.
Designed by architect Michael Graves and dedicated 10 years ago, the library defies easy description, showing influences as diverse as ancient Egypt, pre-Columbian Americas, classical Greece and Renaissance.
Time your tour right, and your procession up its front steps will be heralded by the tolling noon bells of the Mission Catholic Church nearly opposite.
The city wanted a special building, and it got one. The cathedral-like “gallery” has clerestory windows and pillars. The tiny nook with the faux marble fireplace near its far end is an inspired postmodern detail.
Outdoors are trellis reading gazebos laced with bougainvillea and a secluded memorial reading patio offering shaded benches and white wrought-iron chairs; the reflecting pool of the courtyard recalls the Alhambra in Spain.
The adjacent Friends of the Library Bookstore offers paperbacks for 35 cents and, unless otherwise indicated, hardbacks for 50 cents. Magazines are 25 cents, except Architecture Digest, which sets you back twice as much; on the bright side, National Geographics are a dime.
12:45 to 1:30: More latticework, bougainvillea and wrought iron--this time on the windows--at El Maguey de San Juan, but also Penafiel umbrellas and banana plants.
If the inside of the restaurant resembles a thousand other taco stands, the insides of its tacos do not. A blackboard lists a selection of tacos ($1.20 to $1.50) not often found elsewhere and not on the printed menu.
Chief among them are tender tongue tacos dripping in a delectable tomatillo sauce; the tongue, or lengua, plate is a house specialty. Birria tacos feature oven-baked marinated beef and pork. Buche is pork belly. The chicharron, or pork skin, taco is very tangy and has a spongy consistency. Chorizo tacos feature the Mexican sausage usually encountered at breakfast.
Sit outside, and you’ve got a view of the church, basketball courts and the library.
San Juan Capistrano
1. Decorative Arts Study Center
31431 Camino Capistrano
(714) 496-2132
Open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Suggested donation, $3.
2. Durenberger & Friends
31531 Camino Capistrano
(714) 240-5181
Open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
3. Studio Five Design
31511 Camino Capistrano
(714) 240-1474
Open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
4. San Juan Capistrano Regional Library
31495 El Camino Real
(714) 493-1752
Open Monday and Tuesday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Wednesday, 1 p.m. to 9 p.m.; Thursday, 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.; Sunday, 8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.
