‘Someplace Special’

Old Towne is about seven miles from Brenda Cunningham’s day job as an office receptionist in Tustin. It might as well be a world away.

“I feel so good when I come here, like I stepped back in time,” said Cunningham, waiting for lunch to arrive at an outdoor table at Felix Continental Cafe on the Old Towne Plaza.

Next door, Hank Mascolo, the plaza’s honorary mayor, lounged outside Hank’s Barber Shop, the business he opened in 1956, and offered his opinion about the recent addition of a square mile of downtown Orange to the National Register of Historic Places.

“The only thing that’s changed in all the years I’ve been here is they took out the cocoa palms and put in canary pine trees,” Mascolo said, standing in front of a barbershop window decorated with an “America: Love It or Leave It” sticker.

“I think it will bring in more tourists,” he said. “I’m a property owner and I don’t like other people telling me what to do, but this way, we know they can’t touch anything now. If someone wants to build a high-rise, they can’t.”

The State Historical Resources Commission voted unanimously in February to nominate the turn-of-the-century neighborhood, including the plaza and about 1,200 homes, for the national listing. It was officially added this month, joining historic places like Gettysburg and the Golden Gate Bridge.

The designation is mostly symbolic, though property owners may qualify for federal preservation grants and tax credits for restoration projects. The city already places strict guidelines on construction and renovation in the downtown area.

The listing covers a square mile centered at Plaza Square Park, a distinctive traffic circle filled with groomed trees and shrubs that dates back to 1886.

“It embellishes what we already have,” Mayor Joanne Coontz said. “It signals that this is someplace special and that we need to take care of it.”

Old Towne Orange has been recognized for decades for its quaint character, evoking a bucolic time when orange groves thrived and people still strolled after dinner.

Hollywood movie makers love the spot, choosing it for backdrops for films and television commercials. It doubled as Erie, Pa., in last year’s “That Thing You Do!” directed by Tom Hanks, who had fall-colored leaves stapled to the trees to evoke a more Midwestern feel. In 1995, it fronted as a small Wisconsin town in a USA cable movie starring actress Mare Winningham.

Last week, Vanessa Glaymore, a freelance film-location stylist from Redondo Beach, arranged potted and silk red-and-pink geraniums to hide a sidewalk trash can for a commercial being filmed to showcase the new Toyota Avalon.

“This is such a neat place, and I never even knew it existed,” she said.

David Leach, a British native, discovered the area four years ago thanks to a work transfer. His employer, Fiberite, which produces composite fabrics for aerospace, is on Cypress Street in the expanded historic zone.

Leach said he immediately fell in love with the town, as have his children, ages 5, 7 and 9. The kids’ favorite hangout is the soda fountain at Watson’s Drug Store on Chapman Avenue, which opened in 1899 and is the county’s oldest pharmacy.

“This is one of the few cities here that has a focal point,” Leach said.

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Scott Parker, Watson’s current owner and pharmacist, has lived in Orange for 27 years. In 1970, he bought the business, founded by Kellar Watson Sr.

“I came to Orange because I decided I could find a nicer life here,” Parker said, settling into a chair in Watson’s vintage restaurant, where about 30 members of Orange High School’s Class of 1943 still meet the first Saturday of every month.

“Orange is a town you feel safe in,” Parker said.

Wafa Haaidar, whose family owns Papa Hassan’s restaurant near Chapman University, said she’s proud of what her adopted hometown has accomplished.

“It’s like a big family,” said Haaidar, who owns the Sunshine Inn in Cypress but drives to Orange for a decent cup of coffee.

“This is what I miss from my home” in Lebanon, she said. “If one house has a funeral, the whole neighborhood shares in it. If one house celebrates, everyone celebrates.”

Fred Smoller teaches political science down Glassell Street at Chapman University, the county’s first four-year college. In 1954, the college moved into the old high school campus, whose first building dates to 1905.

Orange civic life converges on the plaza--an important psychological orientation in a county essentially composed of contiguous suburbs, Smoller said. He applauded the Old Towne Preservation Assn. and the group of residents who spent nearly four years pushing for the national listing.

“If you looked at the real estate section last weekend, home prices went up 26%,” he said. “This will further motivate people in Old Towne to continue their efforts at development. I’ve seen people move from places like Irvine and buy a house with an intrinsic value that’s essentially worthless because they want to be here.”

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Hiro Sakata and Oki Sugu are toy designers from Yokohama, Japan, who visit Orange for three weeks every year. They scour the city’s signature antique stores for old-fashioned teddy bears and stuffed toys, which they take back to Japan for design ideas.

“We love the antiques,” Sakata said as he and Sugu rested on a sidewalk bench surrounded by a dozen brown bags bulging with threadbare and smudged toys. “We make them into teddy bears.”

Mascolo said he hopes more businesses are lured to downtown to complement antique shops sprouting from nearly every corner. There are a few holdouts to the vintage craze: The Army-Navy store on Glassell Street is thriving; the Irish pub O’Hara’s sports its shamrock sign next to the Son of Light Theater, owned by the Baptist Church.

And there are other signs that the 1890s have moved squarely into the 1990s. Diedrich’s Coffee recently opened in the home of the old Orange Daily News, a Mediterranean-style building circa 1920 that anchors a corner of the plaza. On Friday, the newest plaza business opened--Penetration X, offering a grand-opening special of free body piercing with the purchase of jewelry.

“Oh, my,” said Councilman Mike Spurgeon when told of the latest addition. “I guess I wasn’t invited.”

Spurgeon, a fourth-generation Orange resident, wasn’t a gung-ho supporter of the national listing. He attempted unsuccessfully to persuade his city colleagues to wait on seeking the listing until they knew exactly what the designation would mean to property owners.

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For example, the state and federal governments have yet to provide detailed information about how the listing might change current zoning and planning requirements. Work permits already cost from $230 for minor changes to thousands of dollars for full environmental impact reports.

“I don’t want to be a sourpuss, but I’m taking a wait-and-see attitude on it,” Spurgeon said. “We have a lot of other things that I think need more attention in the city.”

Some plaza property owners share Spurgeon’s uneasiness.

Carlos Gallegos, who bought the barber shop from Mascolo several years ago, said he has had his disagreements with the “hysterical society.” He said it took three years for the Design Review Board to approve a simple red canvas awning.

“Orange is a beautiful place. People will come down here whether it’s historic or not,” he said.

Coontz said property owners needn’t be concerned, because the city’s existing restrictions already are tougher than either state or federal rules for historic places.

She’s eyeing the listing’s potential for grants and other funds to spiff up more of the downtown area, as redevelopment money did for the old Santa Fe train depot. The Old Towne Brewing Co., a new microbrewery, officially opens Monday in the renovated 1938 depot, located about two blocks away from the plaza.

“To me, the listing is only the beginning of a lot of positive activity,” Coontz said. “We’d like to link the depot with the plaza. We’d like to encourage people to keep their properties up. We need to keep working on the plaza, whether it’s landscaping or improving sidewalks and streets.

“This is the emotional and historic heart of Orange. We undoubtedly need to do more.”

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Plaza Promenade

The Orange Plaza was established in 1886 and has been the social and commercial hub of Orange ever since. The plaza is among the county’s oldest and best-known landmarks and has been featured in several movies, including the Tom Hanks film “That Thing You Do!” What you’ll see on a stroll around the plaza:

1. First National Bank (Wells Fargo Bank): The Beaux Arts building, with vaulted ceilings and carved wooden inlays, was erected in 1928 for $47,500.

2. Watson’s Drug Store: Opened in 1899, it has been at its present site since 1901. Best known for its old-fashioned soda fountain and grill, it is also the oldest pharmacy in Orange County.

3. Chapman University: The university sits on the site of what was originally Orange High School. There are five buildings in the neoclassical style. Walking tour map of the campus is available at the publicity office.

4. Orange Daily News: This Mediterranean-style building, built about 1920, housed the Orange News (a weekly) and later the Daily News until the paper was closed in 1968. The clock standing in front of the building was installed by the city in the 1980s--a recent addition to a series of street clocks that has adorned the sidewalks since the 1880s.

5. St. John’s Lutheran Church: The third version of St. John’s was dedicated in 1914. An ornately carved altar is lighted through leaded stained-glass windows imported from Germany just before World War I began.

6. Hank’s Barber Shop: Hank Mascolo bought the International Barber Shop on the plaza in 1956, and it’s been Hank’s Barber Shop ever since. Mascolo sold the shop to Carlos Gallegos, who has kept it as Hank’s. Inside, the shop uses an antique cash register from the 1880s; the worn orange plastic barbershop chairs date to 1922.

7. Orange Train Depot: Built in 1938 to replace the original 1888 structure, it has been refurbished and now houses a microbrewery and restaurant. City officials hope Old Towne’s historic registry listing will provide funding to redevelop the two-block area between the plaza and the depot.

Sources: Orange Community Historical Society and individual businesses; Researched by JEAN O.PASCO / For The Times