{"nrhp_refnum":"75000450","name":"Montanez Adobe","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"31745 Los Rios St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"San Juan Capistrano","county":"Orange County","state":"CA","lat":33.50161857300003,"lon":-117.66459709499998,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1975-04-21","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Historic - Aboriginal","Education","Architecture","Religion"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A one-story, two-room adobe house at 31745 Los Rios Street in San Juan Capistrano, Orange County, California, believed to have been built around 1790 by and for the Mission's Juaneno Indian neophytes.","why_significant":"The nomination argues it is one of only a few surviving late 18th-century adobes and possibly one of the oldest continuously inhabited dwellings in California. It is also tied to Dona Polonia Montanez, who ran a chapel in the house and served as the community's spiritual leader, teacher and nurse while the Mission stood abandoned between 1886 and 1910.","narrative":"This small adobe house on Los Rios Street in San Juan Capistrano is thought to be one of about forty dwellings built in the 1790s by Juaneno Indian neophytes of the nearby Mission. Its two rooms have 20-inch adobe walls, and the original porch tile and recessed plank doorways survive. Later changes included a pitched roof added in the mid-19th century, board-and-batten rooms from about 1900, and a rebuilt north wall after the 1933 earthquake. The house is also linked to Dona Polonia Montanez, born about 1829, who kept a small chapel there. While the Mission stood empty from 1886 to 1910, the chapel served as the village sanctuary, and she taught religion to the children and worked as midwife and nurse. The Historical Society received the property in 1973 and planned to remove later additions, restore the original two-room core, and open it as a museum and library.","period_of_significance":"18th Century","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Vernacular","criteria":[],"status_note":"Condition is rated fair and the building is altered. It was donated to the Historical Society of San Juan Capistrano on a 99-year lease in 1973, with restoration and use as a living museum and library planned.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:55:31.353002-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_CA/75000450.pdf"},"photo":null,"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/123860282","wikipedia":null,"wikidata":null},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/california/orange-county/montanez-adobe-75000450/"}