The Campbell Ranch house at Coal Oil Point, a 1920s Spanish Colonial–style estate designed by Mary McLaughlin Craig, has sat largely neglected since UC Santa Barbara acquired the property in 2007.
The Campbell Ranch house at Coal Oil Point, a 1920s Spanish Colonial–style estate designed by Mary McLaughlin Craig, has sat largely neglected since UC Santa Barbara acquired the property in 2007. Credit: Dennis Whelan photo

UC Santa Barbara is an elemental institution of the community. Most locals have some connection to the campus, either personal or indirectly.

After the UC Board of Regents acquired the land, two permanent buildings were subsequently constructed, the Library and the Physical Science building, designed in 1952 by local architects Chester Carjola and Windsor Soule, respectively with landscape architect Ralph Stevens.

A year later in 1953, the architectural firm of Pereira & Luckman of Los Angeles as well as landscape architect Eric Armstrong were chosen to create a master plan for UCSB.

The resulting design of Santa Rosa Hall by William Pereira marked the establishment of a distinct architectural vocabulary, consisting of patterned pink-toned concrete block (colored by volcanic ash) and flat tile roofs.

The design was intended to reflect the spirit of International Design, a blending of modern building materials and methods of concrete and steel with the vernacular typology of the European settlers buildings: adobe masonry, tiled roofs, courtyards and arcades.

It was followed by the Arts Complex, Residence Halls, Dining Commons, Music Building, and Library additions. There are 14 campus buildings that reflect this vocabulary.

There have been nine subsequent Campus Master Plans undertaken to guide its growth. Each revision turned away from its previous plan and architectural style, which continues today: a beautiful mess, a sort of architectural corral, held in by the natural surroundings of ocean and bluffs.

Housing Developments

The campus is moving forward with the East Campus housing project that will demolish the existing Santa Rosa Residential Hall and Ortega Dining Commons, the first and original of Pereira’s designs for campus, and be replaced with three apartment buildings of six, seven and eight stories tall.

The East Campus housing project is imagined as an infill and redevelopment effort on the east side of the main campus, and add new buildings within the existing community of five residence halls, commonly called the Channel Islands Five, the only original “set-piece” composition by Pereira remaining on campus.

The university currently has the first phase under construction, San Benito, on the former site of the Facilities Management.

Two of the Marine Corps Air Stations (MCAS) buildings that preceded the university were demolished for this project. There are fewer than a dozen of more than 75 MCAS structures remaining and no plan to preserve any of them.

These two residential development projects are meant to address the campus’ critical housing shortfalls, long delayed by the controversial and now abandoned Munger Hall proposal.

Historic Buildings in Peril

The century-old red barn adjacent to the Campbell Ranch house, once part of the historic ranch complex at Coal Oil Point, is now near collapse after years of neglect.
The century-old red barn adjacent to the Campbell Ranch house, once part of the historic ranch complex at Coal Oil Point, is now near collapse after years of neglect. Credit: Dennis Whelan photo

The Campbell Ranch house is a large Spanish Colonial-style estate designed by Mary McLaughlin Craig, built in the early 1920s for Col. Colin Campbell at Coal Oil Point.

The house was also known as Devereux Hall in a previous ownership.

The property at Coal Oil Point on UCSB’s West Campus near Devereux Slough/Sands Beach was purchased in 2007.

The house, a master work collaboration between Campbell’s widow, Nancy Leiter, and Mary McLaughlin Craig, herself the widow of James Osborne Craig, the noted architect of El Paseo and the restoration of Casa de la Guerra in Santa Barbara.

The Craigs were early proponents of the style and influential disseminators of it, and masters of the Spanish Colonial style.

The Campbell Ranch house and adjacent red barn are 100 years old and have been completely neglected since ownership transferred to UCSB 18 years ago.

The barn is near collapse. The house is desperately in need of care and attention and finding a new use within the university’s life, or it will be soon lost to time and degradation.

Need for Stewardship

While the design community values the most highly regarded repository of drawings and artifacts of Southern California architects and designers in the Art, Design & Architecture archive, UCSB steadfastly resists a policy for the preservation and conservation of its own buildings.

While Congress has created the National Trust for Historic Preservation to preserve historic buildings, there is no equivalent by UCSB for the protection of its own architectural history.

UCSB should preserve its architecture because the campus is not just an assembly of containers for learning; it is a physical record of California’s educational, cultural and environmental history.

The university’s World War II–era structures, the midcentury modern buildings designs of Pereira, and historic sites like the Campbell Ranch house together create a distinctive sense of place that cannot be replicated by generic new construction.

Preserving UCSB’s heritage does not mean freezing the campus in time. It means stewarding a unique architectural legacy while accommodating growth, ensuring that future generations inherit a campus that is both forward‑looking and recognizably, unmistakably UCSB.

Dennis Whelan is a licensed architect and planner who has lived in Santa Barbara for more than 35 years. Now retired from the UC Santa Barbara Office of Campus Planning & Design, he serves on both the Goleta Design Review Committee and the Santa Barbara Architectural Board of Review. The opinions expressed are his own.