National Register of Historic Places

Pereira Octagon Barn

San Luis Obispo, San Luis Obispo County, California
Listed
January 15, 2014
Type
Building
Period
Industrial
Ref No.
13001068

About this property

The Pereira Octagon Barn of San Luis Obispo is a historic structure located on the southern outskirts of San Luis Obispo, California. It was built in 1906 by Henri LaFranchi, a young Italian-Swiss immigrant and the owner of a small meat market, John Damaso, an Azorean immigrant and a carpenter by trade, and a third, unknown man identified only as a “milk farmer.” Since there were no other octagonal barns in the area, the builders may have worked from patterns of octagonal construction in farm journals or catalogs. The first user of the barn was Italian-Swiss immigrant Antonio Stornetta, who leased the barn for his Santa Fe Dairy operation until 1917. Joaquin and Josephine Pereira, with Josephine's sister Eleanor and her husband Manuel Garcia, purchased the property in 1920 and made it part of an adjoining dairy operation in the Los Osos Valley. They were typical of many first- and second-generation Portuguese Americans, who followed in the footsteps of the Italian-Swiss in the dairy business. The Pereira-Garcia operation was called the Home Dairy. It had a pasteurization and bottling plant at 719 Higuera Street and made daily milk deliveries throughout the city of San Luis Obispo. Dairy operations continued into the 1950s when small-scale dairy operations were no longer economically viable. The barn then supported a small-scale cattle operation and some row-crop farming. The property was purchased in 1994 by John and Howard Hayashi, who three years later entered into a lease agreement with the Land Conservancy of San Luis Obispo County. The Land Conservancy has restored the barn, which will be used as a community gathering place. The Octagon Barn (5000 sq. ft.) is made with redwood timbers and has a new, custom shingled replacement redwood roof. There is a cupola on top reaching over 40 feet above the floor. The barn is accompanied by a 2,000-square-foot Milking Parlor (1938) and a Calf Barn.

Location

4400 Octagon Wy.
San Luis Obispo, San Luis Obispo County, California
35.23664, -120.67967

Categories

ARCHITECTUREAGRICULTURE
Sources

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Nearby Historic Sites

Pacific Coast Railway Company Grain Warehouse
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2.6 mi
Angel, Myron, House
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Jack, Robert, House
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Tribune-Republic Building
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3 mi
San Luis Obispo Carnegie Library
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3.1 mi

Questions about this property

When was Pereira Octagon Barn listed on the National Register?

Pereira Octagon Barn was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 15, 2014.

What type of historic resource is Pereira Octagon Barn?

Pereira Octagon Barn is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.

What is the period of significance for Pereira Octagon Barn?

The period of significance for Pereira Octagon Barn is recorded as the industrial era.

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