Stylistic Gems of El Camino Real

Jennifer Pfaff, the president of the Burlingame Historical Society, has penned the front-page article for this quarter's society newsletter titled "Overlooked Gems of El Camino Real".  It's a real gem of a piece, too.  You all should be members and get your own hardcopy mailed to you, but for those who have not yet joined I am going to pluck out just the architectural styles mentioned as "gems".  As part of the ECR project, Caltrans engaged a team of architectural historians from AECOM.  That's the source of this list:

• Bungalow Style single -- family homes found all over B'game but not nearly as many as we originally had.
• 1920 Mission Revival commercial automotive architecture - the C & D auto shop tucked away on the south end of ECR (see below).
• European Eclectic Revival - apartment building with arched windows and Flemish parapet end walls.
• Stucco Box apartment buildings - the technical term for our post-WWII flat-roofed structures.
• Podium Style - like The Viking building by Danish architect Mogens Mogensen.
• International Style - like our 8-story Burlingame Towers
• New Formalism Style - like Arcamino West on Arc Way.

This is quite a list for a three-mile stretch of historic road. It seems AECOM might have missed the Art Deco Adeline Market on the list.  Wouldn't it be nice if some of these had some historical protection?

The next Historical Society walking tour is August 6th when the Willborough neighborhood gets the spotlight turned on it.  Learn about the 22 Tudor style homes by joining tour guide Joanne Garrison at 1pm where Palm Dr. meets Willborough Rd.  Here's our Mission Revival shop

Comments

[Jennifer Pfaff]

Hi Joe,

Thank you for the nice comments:)

Regarding the Adeline Market, the consultants did indeed include the structure in said report.

The gist of the summary boils down to the following: two aesthetically disparate building periods combined: 1925 Spanish Revival and 1941 futuristic Streamline Moderne, with substantial losses to the historical integrity and workmanship (ie. neon sign removal in 1984) with most of the 1925 storefront sections being heavily modified in the 1980s. Not associated with a master architect, nor builder.