Historic Castro-Breen Adobe of San Juan Bautista illuminates the
lives of those who called it home
It may not sport the once-planned robotic tech of a fake horse
whinnying or an animated rubber chicken flapping its wings, but San
Juan Bautista State Park’s newly renovated Castro-Breen Adobe is
sure to be a winner among school children.
Historic Castro-Breen Adobe of San Juan Bautista illuminates the lives of those who called it home
It may not sport the once-planned robotic tech of a fake horse whinnying or an animated rubber chicken flapping its wings, but San Juan Bautista State Park’s newly renovated Castro-Breen Adobe is sure to be a winner among school children.
On March 11, the historic building that was home to Military Gov. Jose Tiburcio Castro and the prolific Breen family in San Juan Bautista during the 1800s will re-open its low-hanging doors to the public. The two-story adobe, a centerpiece in the town’s Mission Plaza, has undergone a three-year, state-funded $1.65 million makeover that, more than anything, preserved the building itself – especially from earthquakes.
Inside, visitors will get a crash course of what life was like for the Spanish Californians and Irish-American people who lived in the building, and for the Native American Mutsun who lived outside its doors. Life-sized wooden cut-outs of the adobe’s most prominent occupants, accompanied by a few replicas of artifacts, timelines and many educational panels, tell the Castro-Breen story, geared toward the thousands of field-tripping fourth graders who traditionally have filed through the adobe’s doors every year since the 1960s.
“We wanted to give equal weight to the Castros and the Breens,” said state park interpreter Pat Clark-Gray, as she gave reporters a sneak preview of the restoration earlier this week. “Before it was more Breen. And we also wanted to give more information about the Mutsuns.”
Clark-Gray said the new tour that awaits school children complies with a new state standard for fourth-grade history and social studies. But it’s an important story for all residents of the area. The Castro-Breen Adobe was the first outpost of “civilization” established in San Benito County. It was home to the first military governor of the state and then the first Anglo family to settle in the area.
From hacienda to Breen manor
Mission Indians built the 10-room adobe between 1840 and 1841 for Don Jose Tiburcio Castro, Prefect of Monterey and Military Governor of California, in the days before U.S. statehood. After Castro died in 1841, his son, Jose Antonio, took over and became a strong force in the Mexican era of California’s early days after he overthrew an unpopular Mexico-appointed governor and took on the job himself. He lived in Monterey but kept the San Juan adobe for his headquarters.
Then in 1848, the immigrating Irish-Catholic Breens arrived in San Juan Bautista. The 10-member family was impoverished but had survived the crossing of the Sierras with the Donner Party just two years before. A mission priest put them up, and then Jose Antonio Castro allowed them to stay in his adobe headquarters.
In that same year, young John Breen, then only 16, ran off to join thousands of others in pursuit of gold and came back a year later with $12,000 worth of gold dust – a fortune at the time. The family bought the home from Castro, plus 400 acres of prime ag land in the San Juan Valley.
The Breens were the first Anglos to live in the area, yet learned Spanish and spoke it around the house in order to be more in tune with the community. As San Juan was a stagecoach town, the Breens were known for their hospitality and often put up travelers overnight.
The Breens moved out of the adobe after the death of matriarch Margaret Breen in 1874. A woman named Mrs. Flynn then occupied the home and turned it into a boarding house. In 1933, the Breen heirs sold the home to the state and it became a National Historical Landmark in 1970.
Since the 1960s, the Castro Breen Adobe had been a “house museum,” furnished mostly with late 19th century items and delicate 140-year-old artifacts, a labor of love developed by Ms. A. Elkington, who relied on Breen descendents for information about the layout of furniture and usage of items in the two-story home. According to docents interviewed in 2003, the things inside the home were authentic and “period correct” if they weren’t the original Breen artifacts, and everything was preserved almost exactly the way the Breens of the 1800s had lived among them, except the kitchen, which is not in its original location.
The great adobe debate
For those who fondly remember the standard museum fare that once adorned the landmark’s interior, the change might take a while to embrace. Before the renovation, visitors would walk through the 10-room home, and although most of it was barricaded with wooden pickets to keep 9-year-olds from becoming little human bulls in china shops, it was like peering into a window of time. An old-fashioned piano, a spinning wheel, a butter churn, a tiny pair of button-up high-heeled ladies boots, a memorial wreath made from hair collected through generations of a pioneering family, combined with a musty “old house” smell in the still air – all these things and others made the visitor feel he or she were in a simpler albeit rougher yesterday.
State park officials are quick to note that while the items that were taken out were “period correct,” they weren’t necessarily those used by the Breen family or Prefect Castro in the 1800s.
Most of those artifacts have been placed in storage or given back to the families – mostly to the modern-day Breens – who loaned or gave them to the State Historic Park for display in the famous home.
After the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, the California Department of State Parks undertook a survey of all unreinforced adobe buildings in the state to determine their vulnerability to further quake damage. It took the better part of 12 years, but when it was time to re-do the Castro-Breen Adobe, in early 2003, State Parks hired an outfit called the Sibbett Group of San Francisco to come up with an interpretative plan for the concept and details for the new and improved Castro-Breen Adobe.
The company offered a Disneyesque wonder world of “edutainment.” In the entry hall that introduces the General Castro’s tack room, an electric-powered horse puppet was to have poked her head inside the room looking for food. When visitors stroked her nose, she was to let out a friendly whinny.
Children were to be able to touch and interact with objects, such as wooden crates of new home furnishings that were to represent the joyous moment when John Breen returned rich from the Mother Lode and secured the family fortune. Motion sensors would activate a “mischievous” rooster atop one of the crates, that would flap its wings and make noise when visitors walked by.
In another room, Don Jose Castro’s office was to feature a life-sized cut-out of the governor, a model dog guarding his desk, and sounds of creaky footsteps would be heard, again through motion sensors.
Such an ambitious plan for the famous adobe would have undoubtedly delighted the 60,000 school children that visit the adobe on field trips every year. But when the town’s historical purists got wind of the plan, they raised a collective protest so loud, State Park officials scrapped the concept with little discussion and went back to the drawing board.
Compromise maintains integrity
In the end, the restored and redone adobe features no flapping roosters, no frisky horses or creaky footsteps. Instead, large cut-outs depicting the Breen ancestors, the Castros and notable Native Americans of the area tell the tale in a much quieter way. There are some interactive displays: a video in Spanish and English inducts visitors to the adobe at the entrance, and a large waist-high relief map of the area shows Native American trade routes of the area in relation to other Central Coast outposts at the time. Children can flip through a large cartoon-like diary John Breen kept as a youth, and the words are accurate.
Throughout the first floor, educational panels explain the history of the home and its importance to California legacy. The fact is, visitors come away actually learning and retaining much more about the Castro-Breen Adobe than they would tripping motion sensors.
Interpretive specialist Clark-Gray said she gave a trial run to a group of fourth-graders, and they were thrilled.
“We know these displays are really catching their attention,” she said.
The second floor was left much as it was, in the house museum style the adobe offered for 40 years. Three bedrooms depict different periods in the home’s heyday, and the old artifacts – an ancient sewing machine, period clothes, pitchers and candle holders – are there for those who liked the adobe as it was before.
Much of the money for the project can’t be seen because it was spent on the seismic retrofitting, and since the specialists were dealing with an old adobe historical landmark, the work required painstaking care. More money was required for a fire suppression system and for the special track lighting needed for the displays.
Much of the design work was done by Don Amos, exhibit coordinator for California State Parks. Artwork for all the background and figures was done by David Rickman, one of the country’s foremost historic illustrators.
“It represents one of my best efforts, and I think – humbly, of course – that it’s one of, if not the best exhibits we have in State Parks,” Amos said in a fact sheet about the project. “I am truly honored to have been a part of it, and I can not praise all the people who worked on it enough.”
A private reception is planned, by invitation only, on March 10. On March 11, the Castro-Breen Adobe will be officially open to the public once again.
