History

Reflections of Arcata's History: The Chapman House

The Historic Property Record

Construction dates • Side cottage: 1874 • Main house: 1876 Address 974 10th Street Arcata, CA 95521 Recorded location Block 209 AP#21-142-15 Original owner H.S. Daniels Subsequent owners recorded in the account • Thomas Bair, 1880 • Elizabeth Burroughs Chapman, 1883 • Edward Huntington Chapman and Juliette Chapman Cropley, 1923 • Juliette Chapman Cropley, 1951 Owner listed in the January 1979 account Doris Elizabeth Cropley Richey, granddaughter of Elizabeth and John Chapman, with the ownership date recorded as 1961.

"Reflections of Arcata's History: Eighty Years of Architecture" by Susie Van Kirk, January 1979.

Construction Date: Side cottage, 1874; main house, 1876
Address 974 10 th Street, Arcata, CA 95521
Location: Block 209- AP#21-142- 15
Original Owner: H.S. Daniels
Interim Owners: Thomas Bair (1880); Elizabeth Burroughs Chapman (1883); Edward Huntington
Chapman and Juliette Chapman Cropley (1923); Juliette Chapman Cropley (1951).
Present Owner: Doris Elizabeth Cropley Richey, granddaughter of Elizabeth and John Chapman (1961)

• Thomas Bair, 1880

• Elizabeth Burroughs Chapman, 1883

• Edward Huntington Chapman and Juliette Chapman Cropley, 1923

• Juliette Chapman Cropley, 1951

Owner listed in the January 1979 account

Doris Elizabeth Cropley Richey, granddaughter of Elizabeth and John Chapman, with the ownership date recorded as 1961.

"The finest there is in this section and probably there is no dwelling in the country that will compare with it in appearance." — Humboldt Times, 1876

Italianate Architecture

The 1979 account describes Chapman House as a 1½-story Italianate residence. Its defining features include a truncated hip roof, a front pediment and a recessed entrance topped by a transom. Pillars support the flat-roofed stoop, while the paired slant bays feature bracketed cornices and colonnettes. Brackets, dentils and other decorative details also ornament the house's main cornice. The side cottage has a veranda. The property stands above street level behind a concrete retaining wall, with plantings, trees and an old orchard recorded among its grounds.

A captain's walk once stood above the main house's truncated hip roof. When the house was constructed in 1876, the editor of the Humboldt Times praised its appearance in the quotation above. Van Kirk's account presents the house as a distinctive example of its architectural period. Writing in 1979, she noted that it had undergone little alteration and still closely resembled the Thomas Bair residence depicted in Elliott's 1882 lithograph.

The Chapman Family

Elizabeth Burroughs Chapman

Mrs. Chapman

John Grinnell Chapman II

Mr. Chapman

The Chapman Family Story

Elizabeth Burroughs Chapman purchased the house in 1883, seven years after its construction. Originally from Port Orford, Oregon, she had married John Grinnell Chapman II in 1872. John was born in New York in 1832 and became a California forty-niner. Unlike many of his fellow forty-niners, he maintained his connection with mining for decades, retiring in 1901. After arriving in Humboldt County in 1852, he opened a mercantile store on the Salmon River and operated a pack train between Union and the mining districts. In the early 1870s, he became superintendent of Gold Bluff Beach. Elizabeth and John had four children: Edward H., Elizabeth, John G. and Juliette. Juliette's daughter, Doris Elizabeth Richey, and her husband, Roy, were living in the family home at the time of the January 1979 account.