Rispin Mansion

Perched on a hillside above Soquel Creek in Capitola, this 22-room, 10,000-square-foot mansion was built in 1921 for Henry Allen Rispin, a wealthy oil baron. Designed in a Mission/Spanish Colonial Revival style, it has four levels, reinforced concrete walls with plaster finish, tiled hip and gabled roofs, an arched entry portico, balustraded terraces and a large chimney with six flues. The 6.5-acre grounds hold a concrete pool and fountain, rock walls and steps, and a ca. 1922 well house. Rispin lived here from 1921 to 1929, during which he acquired most of the town, renamed it Capitola-by-the-Sea, and worked to turn a summer tent colony into a year-round resort, until the stock market crash ended his fortune. The house was left vacant for decades, and vandals destroyed much of the interior. The City of Capitola bought it in 1986 and found it structurally sound, with its exterior largely unaltered. It was listed for its link to Rispin and Capitola's resort development.