Post, Joseph W., House
About this property
Joseph W. Post House is historic house located on the Highway 1 in Posts Summit, approximately four miles to the south of Big Sur, California. Erected in 1867, the homestead evolved through five generations of the Post family settling the Big Sur coast in California. The House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 12, 1985. In 1848, William Brainard "W.B." Post (1830-1908) came to California after a voyage around the Horn of Africa from his native Connecticut, making landfall in Monterey. From 1848 to 1850, he worked at a whaling station near Point Lobos, spending half a year at sea. He then found employment on the James Meadows' Ranch in Carmel Valley. In 1850, he married Anselma Onésimo, a Christianized Carmel Mission Rumsen Native American girl and the sister-in-law of Meadows. Post decided to obtain land in the Big Sur region and filed a Homestead patent for 640 acres (260 ha) below Sycamore Canyon, at the end of the existing, making him one of the Big Sur region's first homesteaders. In 1867, the Post Ranch House was built as one-story house using locally sourced redwood, split and planed by hand on the premises. Across successive generations, the Post family extended and enhanced the original home. An addition was the construction of a two-story wing to the north in 1877, reflecting the New England design of a Saltbox-style house. The initial Post Homestead had a trail from Monterey to the Big Sur region. The trail was gradually improved and made into a road when Monterey County declared the Old Coast Road a public road in 1885. The Homestead House is crafted from redwood, with horizontal sidings, including hand-split and planed lap, as well as milled drop siding. The house, irregular in plan, rests on a foundation made of mud sill and has several low and steep-pitched gable and shed roofs, all covered with wood shingles. The initial structure was built in 1867 and comprised a rectangular, one-story, single-room dwelling, complemented at the southeast by a shed-roofed sleeping area. The gently sloped gable roof extended on both sides, stretching into open porch roofs upheld by vertical wooden posts. Entry to the connected shed-roofed section was through an outdoor door, situated at the juncture of the porch roof on the southwest side and the shed roof on the southeast. A raised wooden porch is still visible on the rear (northeast) of the building. On the front (southwest) side, the initial wooden porch has been substituted with a poured concrete stoop, completed before 1955. The windows consist of consistently designed 6/6 double-hung sashes, with a single window present on both the front and rear and on each side of the shed. On the front elevation, there are three manufactured doors with screen doors, and at the rear, there is one door.
Location
Categories
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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Questions about this property
When was Post, Joseph W., House listed on the National Register?
Post, Joseph W., House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 11, 1985.
What type of historic resource is Post, Joseph W., House?
Post, Joseph W., House is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.
What is the period of significance for Post, Joseph W., House?
The period of significance for Post, Joseph W., House is recorded as the industrial era.
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