Bluebird Inn
Built in 1894 by the Scots-Canadian Bowie brothers, this Carpenter-Italianate style building at Third and Polk was first operated by James Mossi as the American and Swiss Hotel and Grill. It is one of the few remaining examples of San Juan Bautista’s once flourishing hostelry trade when third street was the very busy Highway 101 where as many as half a dozen inns met the needs of travelers.
The Bluebird expresses an architectural design mode as applied to false front commercial buildings in the form of a bracketed cornice capping the parapet. The original building had a false front extending above the second story and was constructed up to the property line at the west corner of Third and Polk Streets.401 and 405 are the two storefronts and 403 is the entrance to the residential second floor.
In 1920s E. P. Giacomazzi became the proprietor and named the business the American Hotel and Restaurant. By 1926, when it became the Blue Bird Inn the downstairs rooms were converted into the lobby and dining room for the hotel. The upstairs served as a boarding house during the Great Depression. Adjacent to the Bluebird was the site of the Star Theater, the only movie theater in town from 1917 to sometime in the 1940s when it burned.
In 1934, the Bluebird transferred proprietorship from Katie Garolla to Mrs. M. Rampone, who leased the building from owner Angelo Porta. Mrs. Rampone was well known for her Italian culinary specialties, serving them in addition to the regular American-style meals that had been served in the dining room. Then in 1939 new proprietor Chris Maze re-opened the site as the Hotel Bluebird.
In 1944 the Bluebird was sold by Angelo Porta to Mr. & Mrs. Hilario Angulo, and at some point, the left storefront was occupied by a drugstore, and the right storefront became a meat market.
The Bluebird was purchased by the Ponce family in 1965 and the rooms upstairs became apartments and shops were located downstairs. Lillian Johnson Antiques occupied a shop in the building from 1965 until 1993. Other antique and retail stores have since occupied the store fronts downstairs. In 2017 the building underwent foundation reconstruction, and today the Bluebird has apartments upstairs and in the rear of the building, and shops downstairs.
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