It’s one last cry for Franceschi House.

Although the city of Santa Barbara wants to demolish the historic home in the Riviera hills, the alternative to replace it remains unclear.

The Santa Barbara Historic Landmarks Commission offered its input on the project last week, and majority agreed that the three-story house should be toppled. Members weren’t in agreement with the Parks and Recreation Department’s plan for the site, however.

The city of Santa Barbara is proposing to demolish the structure of merit to build an interpretive garden terrace.

City officials also want to salvage commemorative features, create a paved viewing terrace, add more landscaping, and reinstall the medallions in a wall. The proposal also includes a new parking lot and interpretive signage.

Some members had strong comments. Commissioner Ed Lenvik said the city plan falls dramatically short.

“I just can’t accept the fact that we are ignoring all of Franceschi Park as part of the removal of the house,” Lenvik said. “It doesn’t fly with me at all.”

He also called for more accessibility on the pathways and integrating the house area, the patios, the parking, the plantings and the observation area.

“It is short-sighted, it is not planning,” Lenvik said. “There’s all kinds of things I see wrong with this current plan.”

The Craftsman-style house was once the home to Francesco Franceschi and his wife, Cristina, who purchased the property in 1903, along with the surrounding 40 acres. Franceschi, a botanist, built the house in 1907.

In 1927 the couple sold the home to Alden Freeman, who later donated the property to the city. Freeman, an eccentric socialist millionaire from New Jersey, remodeled the house into a Mediterranean style, adding dozens of medallions to the house. 

But the house has faced neglect, and differing opinions over its future. After years of trying to restore the house, the city, and many of the people who fought to preserve it, agreed in 2018 to demolish it and start over.

Commissioner Dennis Doordan was supportive of removing the house.

“The house can go away,” Doordan said. “It’s not crucial to what is so significant about that site.”

Doordan said Franceschi designed something special with his botanical plantings and created a part of Santa Barbara that those before him never experienced.

Freeman’s medallions, he said, were an eccentric collection and “a window into a moment in time in American political and social thought and it is worthy of being preserved.”

Doordan said the city has a real opportunity to commemorate, celebrate and educate the community about historic preservation.

“Today we tend to celebrate athletes, celebrities and oligarchs, rich and powerful people who belonged to that 1%,” he said. “Freeman was trying to recognize people who made a difference, who enriched American culture, who served, who made sacrifices, heroes, not just celebrities.”

Commissioner Cass Ensberg expressed the strongest view in favor of keeping the house. She preferred a 2015 plan to save the house. The city said it veered away from that option because there was no ongoing funding source.

Ensberg supports stabilizing the house and making it a “powerful antiquity,” with no public access.

She called the current plan unfit for Santa Barbara.

“The remains of a foundation and interpretive panels, I find them sort of depressing,” Ensberg said. “The design feels heavy, almost like a memorial, instead of a celebration.”

Ensberg said the city should create a new department of Historic Preservation to oversee the restoration of the site because the job is not appropriate for the Parks and Recreation Department.

She cited the work similar groups have done with El Presidio de Santa Barbara State Historic Park and the skylight restoration at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse Hall of records..

“It is always expensive, but it is a high priority,” Ensberg said.

The Historic Landmarks Commission did not take a vote at last week’s meeting but suggested that the city make the viewing area larger and more circular, and to create a connection between all of the areas of the site to allow easier access for people with disabilities.