Florestal: Then and Now, A talk by Marc Appleton at the historic Lobero Theatre | View in browser
In 1925, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Cooper Bryce built a Spanish Colonial Revival house designed by architect George Washington Smith on fifty-two acres overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Hope Ranch in Santa Barbara known as “Florestal.” The late historian David Gebhard considered it “one of the great houses of the era and one of Smith’s finest masterpieces.”
The house and surrounding gardens, which were developed by Mrs. Bryce with input from the horticulturalist Peter Riedel, became the family home to their children and grandchildren and endured intact and unchanged until Mrs. Bryce’s death in 1980. In his talk, award-winning architect Marc Appleton (one of the grandchildren) recounts Florestal’s story and describes the magical influence it had in its heyday, as well as what has recently happened with the property’s renovations.
