By Jim Lessenger

THE COMMANDING OFFICER’S QUARTERS OF THE BENICIA ARSENAL, the house where the commanding officer of the military installation and his family lived, is located at Army Point overlooking the Carquinez Strait. It is restored as a monument to the men and women who defended the United States throughout the 117-year history of the Arsenal, and to the historians, preservationists, and city officials who refused to allow the building to wither.

Built just before the Civil War, the first known plans for the COQ are undated drawings in the National Archives titled, “Designs for Officer’s Quarters at Benicia Arsenal, Cal.” These drawings show a two-story, hipped-roof, T-shaped structure with a modillioned cornice. A one-story porch with Doric columns extends along the entire length of the east side. The front block was an essentially square, four-room center-hall house, with service functions located in the rear wing. The plan shows that the main entrance was on the east side and the stairway was located north of the entrance hall.

Another drawing, titled, “Commanding Officer Qrs” and dated March 19, 1859, shows a more severe Greek Revival-style structure. While the shape and layout of the building were essentially the same, here the main entrance was located on the south side, with the stairway to the east. This was apparently the drawing used for construction.

The COQ’s foundations were constructed of cut and dressed sandstone blocks resembling the blocks of the warehouses and magazines. Topping the sandstone foundations was a double 18-inch brick wall with a center void that extended to the roof and served as insulation. The inner load-bearing walls and floors were also of brick, supported by massive redwood beams from the Marin Headlands.

Redwood planks were used extensively in the walls. Mahogany, imported from the Philippines, was used for the stairs, banisters, wainscoting, and other artistic features of the building. The original construction cost was $35,000.

Though constructed during the command of Captain Franklin Callendar, the COQ’s first residents were the family of Colonel Julian McAllister, commanding officer of the Arsenal from 1860 to 1864 and again from 1866 to 1886. As one of the first functions held at the Quarters, McAllister hosted the wedding of his niece to Lt. Robert Knox, USN, in the summer of 1860.

During the Civil War

During the Civil War, many Californians went east in volunteer regiments and as individuals to join the Union forces. As the Army withdrew to the east, the California Volunteers filled the void.

Hundreds of C.V. and regular infantry and cavalry officers rotated through the Arsenal during the Civil War, and the COQ became a meeting place to socialize and learn the latest news from the eastern battlefields.

The post-war construction phase

The COQ was altered considerably in 1876. The original entrance on the south side of the COQ was replaced by a one-story, polygonal bay window. The former side door on the east became the new main entrance.

At the same time, a new porch with Corinthian columns replaced the original Doric-columned porch. The curved drive was added. Formal gardens were laid out, including a reflecting pond centered on the new entryway.

The COQ quickly became the center of the social life of the post and the surrounding county. The Sunday afternoon formal teas were well attended and provided an opportunity for unmarried officers of the Arsenal to meet young ladies of good families from Benicia and surrounding communities.

In the 1890s, the first-floor parlors were remodeled and the house was fitted for gas illumination. Two centrally placed ceiling medallions bearing pendants mark the location of the original gas chandeliers.

Indoor plumbing and electricity were added in the early 20th century, and a furnace was added in 1928, at a cost of $210.

The Benet family

Perhaps the best-known family to live in the COQ was that of Lieutenant Colonel James Walker Benet and his wife Frances Rose, who were in residence from 1905 to 1911.

While Benet had an admirable military career and was an accomplished poet, he is best remembered as the father of three revered poets and literary scholars: William Rose, Stephen Vincent, and Laura Benet. Stephen Vincent Benet would later graduate from Yale and become a poet, short story writer, essayist, and novelist best known for his book-length narrative poem of the Civil War, “John Brown’s Body,” for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929.

The Benet family had frequent guests, many already famous and many who would later achieve acclaim. Among these were the novelists Sinclair Lewis and Leonard Bacon, a graduate student at the University of California who later became a professor there. In his autobiography, Bacon wrote of the COQ, “It wasn’t like an arsenal. It was like the back drop of a romantic play, all pepper trees and acacias, and fountains, and pillared porches. Merely to enjoy the hospitality of that family in such a place was more than one deserved, and to know the Colonel, for a man of my tastes, was more a delightful electric shock.”

Laura Benet wrote in 1976 a touching book titled, “When William Rose, Stephen Vincent and I Were Young.” She wrote, “Father met us at the station in Benicia and took us home to a superb house, really a mansion, with a garden and fountain at the back and an avenue of pepper and eucalyptus trees, roses were everywhere, and later there was a hedge of sweet peas. There were rooms for everyone and enough furniture to make us comfortable until ours arrived.”

Laura recalled that a chimney of the COQ collapsed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and “For several days after the quake the family sat in the living room all night, afraid to go upstairs.”

Ed Hall recalls COQ during the 1930s

When interviewed by The Benicia Herald in 1994, Ed Hall was 88 years old. But he still had clear memories of his time in the COQ in the 1930s.

“My mother had lots of parties, dances and dinner parties,” Hall recalled. “We had a beautiful garden with a sundial in the middle. There was a small garage across the little road that was big enough for one car. It was a wooden building.”

When Hall moved to Benicia in 1932, the Arsenal and its surrounding buildings did not have gas for heating, so they used coal. There was a bin for coal that heated the furnace and all the rooms in the house had steam heaters. There was a huge boiler in the basement to steam-heat the rooms.

Hall remembered meeting scores of generals and high military brass. He claimed there was a tunnel between the COQ and the Arsenal’s Clocktower. He was told it was built as an escape route in “old times” in case Indian tribes attacked, but it was never used after 1930.

The 1949 centennial celebration

For the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Arsenal, Colonel Lewis A. Nickerson and his staff organized a grand celebration.

There were open houses and tours of the shops, demonstrations of new and battle-scarred equipment, and a “kickoff” party at the COQ for the press.

Earl Warren, the governor of California, flew to the Arsenal in a new Army helicopter and landed at the brand-new landing strip that sat where Valero storage tanks now stand.

The official ceremony was held at a parade field. Warren gave a short and poignant speech that paid tribute to the work and sacrifices of the previous hundred years. Following the ceremonies, the governor and senior officers were guests of honor at a formal reception at the COQ. Later, the first floor was opened for the first time for tours by employees and visitors.

The duplex of the 1950s

By the mid-1950s, the Army felt the large house was not necessary for a single family and the COQ was split into a duplex, with the servants’ wing and dining room serving as one apartment and the main section of the house as another.

At the same time, the library was converted into a kitchen and the single-story south façade bay was partitioned and converted into a powder room. Photographs from this period show a television antenna spiking up from the Greek revival façade and the gardens replaced by a bare, brown lawn.

In 1960, the entire building was converted into office space and the partitions partially removed.

Arsenal closes, Industrial Park opens

The final chapter in the 117-year history of the Arsenal was written on Tuesday, March 31, 1964, when the last flag to fly on the post was ceremoniously lowered. That night a final formal dinner and reception were held at the COQ. In the years between 1961, when the closing was announced, and 1964, when the last flag was lowered, a group of Benicia citizens engineered a conversion of the Arsenal into an industrial park.

The initial plan was to make the COQ and the surrounding area a state park. However, the plan collapsed and the COQ became an office building for Benicia Industries, and later Humble Oil, when construction on the oil refinery began.

A plan was also floated to make the COQ into a private club. That idea went nowhere.

A restaurant, then abandoned

The history of the Commanding Officer’s Quarters in the Benicia Arsenal took a dramatic turn in 1979, when it was converted into the popular Commandant’s Residence Restaurant. Many people in Benicia recall eating at the romantic restaurant with their future wives or husbands.

But it was not to last. In June 1986, a fire in the kitchen burned through the floor; the city fire chief at the time temporarily closed the restaurant as a safety hazard. Complications quickly mounted. The former owner was found in violation of a number of health codes, and the restaurant was shut down for good by the Solano County Health Department.

In December 1986, consultant Dan Peterson of Interactive Resources was retained by the city to find a use for the COQ. Peterson reported to the City Council several options for modernizing and beautifying the old restaurant in ways that would preserve and enhance its historic flavor.

The problem: The price tag of $590,000.

Lynn Sedway and Associates were then retained and proposed an optimistic six-month schedule for finding a new restaurant owner. Unfortunately, nobody suitable was identified. The restaurant idea lapsed.

The COQ sat empty until 1991, when the Benicia Historical Society included the grand old building in its home and garden tour. When they entered the structure, members of the Society found it cluttered with trash, garbage and broken-down restaurant equipment.

Rising to the challenge, a large corps of volunteers was enlisted to clean out the building. After the tour, the Society maintained the COQ for a short period.

The city looks for another tenant

Jerry Hayes and John Silva, members of the City Council from 1992 to 1996, kept up the pressure to save the COQ and use the building constructively. Elizabeth Pidgeon of Meridian Architects was retained and ran cost estimates.

The estimated renovation cost had risen to $650,000 by that time.

The proposals of several prospective tenants were examined in depth by the city’s Economic Development Commission. City officials settled on a Pleasanton-based company, the Picnic People Company, to run the COQ as a bed-and-breakfast, a wedding center, and a base for the company’s business of operating picnics for companies and other concerns.

Economic issues soon arose. While the Picnic People were interested in rolling up their sleeves and getting to work, the city administration dithered. There were disagreements over who would be responsible for repairs and improvements. Cost estimates soared; there was a need to remove asbestos in the basement before the building could be occupied.

Overwhelmed, the Picnic People withdrew from the project.

The Benicia Historical Museum attempts a restoration

In 1993, the city of Benicia approached the Benicia Historical Museum about operating the COQ. The following year the City Council voted unanimously to lease the COQ to the museum for $1 a year in exchange for restoration and repair work. The museum entered into an agreement to manage the building for three years with a five-year renewal option.

The city contributed $40,000 to remove asbestos from around the old boiler and $25,000 for an architectural preservation study. The museum knocked down the remaining partitions and removed the peeling wallpaper the restaurant had added. For two winters the museum celebrated “Christmas at the Commandant’s Quarters.”

In 1995, a group of citizens headed by co-chairs Ray Shehan and Darlene Anderson formed a committee to assist the museum in preserving the Quarters. In all, 62 volunteers formed a consortium of the city of Benicia, the Benicia Historical Museum, and the Benicia Historical Society to obtain a lease, restore the building, and run it as a museum or other facility.

Elizabeth Pidgeon was retained by the city in 1995 to study the COQ and she assigned a basic goal of weatherproofing the building by replacing broken windows. At the time, the roof was, fortunately, structurally sound. Pidgeon focused on restoring external architectural ornaments and performing seismic safety and structural work. “The idea is to get the building back on its feet,” she said.

Unfortunately, the museum ran out of money in 1996 and decided not to renew the agreement. In that year, the city paid for a new roof for the building and bars were added to the basement windows to keep out vagrants. Rick Knight, in one of his early tasks as superintendent of Parks and Community Services, boarded up the windows.

Pat Conery, a Restoration Committee co-chair (along with Jackie Hebson), said at the time, “The problem is that there has been no heat and no water in the building since the fire. We were completely way out of the ballpark with this project and we didn’t quite realize that at first.” The museum depended upon wedding receptions and parties to partially finance its COQ operations, but the lack of kitchen facilities and a heating system made it impossible to attract such groups.

The restoration planning

In 2000, City Manager Otto Giuliani became the main driver for restoration of the Quarters. A year later the historical architectural firm of Carey & Co. Inc., of San Francisco, was selected to oversee the restoration process.

In September 2004, the city of Benicia submitted a grant application to the California Cultural and Historical Endowment. The total projected project cost was $1,250,108, and the amount requested was $625,054. Preparation for the application was extensive. Alice Carey, Nancy Goldenberg and Charlie Duncan of Carey & Co., specialists in historic preservation, provided the architectural support. Duncan served as the project architect.

By December 2004 the city had received the matching grant for $400,000 from the California Heritage Fund, administered by the State Office of Historic Preservation. Another $400,000 was funded by the city.

In early 2006, the city had received only one bid for $2.4 million for Phase I, which included only repairs to the porch, a seismic retrofit, and the heating and air conditioning (HVAC) system. Throughout 2006, however, the construction industry of the United States began its long, slow collapse, and construction costs plummeted. In November 2006, the city rejected the bid and a year later the project went out to bid again, this time for Phases I and II — the full project — included a new elevator as well as other major rehabilitation and repair work throughout the building.

Finally, in May 2008, the Pacific Coast Restoration and Rebuilding Company won the bid for Phases I and II. The cost: $2.9 million.

Restoration

Construction began June 16, 2008, with light demolition. Loose ceiling and wall plaster was removed, the roof resurface and cladding were removed, and the front porch braced. The columns were removed.

The seismic retrofit followed. The building was originally constructed of two parallel brick walls with a dead air space between them for insulation. To increase stability, holes were drilled through the plaster and brickwork on two foot centers to anchor together the two parallel brick walls. Select second-story interior load-bearing bricks were wrapped with an epoxy/carbon fiber filament system to increase seismic resistance.

The electrical, fire sprinkler, plumbing, and HVAC systems required several redesigns on the spot. In all, the building required four separate HVAC units. At the time of the rededication, the units only provided heating and ventilation. No air conditioning was installed as part of the project, though the system is designed to accommodate it in the future.

By September 2008, major problems had been detected. The most egregious involved the floor beams under the two upstairs rooms used as bathrooms by the restaurant. In placing the plumbing, the owners of the restaurant had cut away substantial amounts of the wooden beams, making the floor spans in these areas unsafe. Those areas needed to be repaired and an additional $156,772 was budgeted from the city General Fund. A month later, $103,270 was allotted by the City Council from the General Fund for 17 more changes, including repairs to sewer lines, modifications of the sprinkler system, and asbestos testing.

The installation of the elevator required that a hole be drilled into the sandstone strata under the building, a process that took seven hours. In addition, a second-floor window had to be converted into a door for the elevator. Three historic openings were used as the elevator doors — one on the first floor and two on the second. In the basement, a trench for a new footing was dug by hand into the floor. The footing formed the foundation for a new sheer wall that was part of the seismic upgrade.

The roof was replaced and the roof structure was tied into the brick masonry walls. While the same beams were used and the original tongue-and-grove construction using wooden dowels was preserved, the beams were seismically upgraded with plywood.

Plaster was replaced on the walls, ceilings and crown molding, a process that took craftsmen three weeks per room. Working on scaffolds, they constructed templates and painstakingly reproduced the crown molding to appear the way it did in the 1890s.

The porch was reconstructed using new, 6-inch wooden posts inside the old columns. The front stairs were rebuilt with an effort to preserve as much as the original wood as possible. The fire protection system was installed, window treatment was added and the electrical systems completed. New water and sewer service lines were installed, and two Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant bathrooms completed.

The handicap ramp was completed and finishing touches were added to the building. The floors were repaired and restored, including the parquet floor in the entryway. New tiles for the entryway with wood wainscot were located in Ohio and shipped to Benicia for installation. The wainscoting was repaired with mahogany imported from the Philippines, where the original wood had been purchased.

Tunnel myth debunked

“There are no tunnels here,” said Rick Knight with a twinge of irritation in his voice as he showed the basement and foundations to a group of visitors. “I have been all over this building and grounds, and know them better than anybody, and I know there are no tunnels.”

Knight took the group entirely around the foundations, showing the uninterrupted foundation stones and bricks. There were no stone or brick “ghosts” of a door or entryway.

Nineteenth-century photographs of the COQ and Clocktower show a substantial valley between the two, so that a tunnel would have had to slope downward considerably and then slope upward to the Clocktower.

“In addition,” Knight said, “there is no place in the Clocktower for the tunnel to come out.”

Finding a tenant

As the reconstruction of the COQ progressed in spring 2009, the city engaged the services of Charlie Duncan of Carey & Co. Inc. and Abby Thorne-Lyme of Strategic Economics to find a use for the building. Duncan held several forums to discuss possible uses of the building.

The public suggestions were evaluated in light of four administrative or physical constraints: the Secretary of the Interior’s standards for historic buildings, grant requirements, structural limits, and physical limits. The most impressive suggestion was a restaurant, especially given the fact that it would decrease the need for more investment from the city.

At the time, however, the U.S. was immersed in a profound economic downturn, and the chances were slim of finding a lessee willing to put $1 million of leasehold improvements into the property. Other suggestions — such as management by the museum and turning it into a tourist office and artist showcase — were also discussed.

The restoration rededication

It was a beautiful day in May 2009. A cool breeze and late afternoon sunlight bathed the COQ, decked out in red, white and blue bunting. In a scene reminiscent of 19th-century political gatherings, a podium was placed on the porch and flanked by American and California flags.

Mario Giuliani, office of the director of Parks and Recreation, acted as master of ceremonies and introduced the dignitaries, who included members of the City Council, other city officials, and staff from the California Cultural and Historic Endowment, California Office of Historic Preservation, Carey and Co Inc., and Pacific Coast Reconstruction and Building Inc., as well as a crowd of residents.

Mayor Elizabeth Patterson gave a short speech echoing the words of Gov. Earl Warren 62 years earlier, when he dedicated the building to the memory of the men and women who served at the Arsenal for more than a century. She also gave credit to former mayors Jerry Hayes and Steve Messina for keeping the project going, and to Giuliani and Michael Alvarez, Parks and Recreation director, for their efforts. Special recognition was given to Knight, the project manager, for his extraordinary skill and efforts. Ignored, however, was the fact that the cost of the restoration had swollen to $3.4 million.

A red ribbon — symbolic, perhaps, of years of red tape that kept the project from getting off the ground — was cut, and the audience entered the restored building. The visitors were immediately stunned by the beautiful parquet floors, restored wainscoting and tile strip of the entryway, the restored plaster cornices and mahogany stairs.

In all, it was an awe inspiring event for everyone who attended. And on that day, an official meeting of the Parks and Recreation Commission was held in the Commanding Officers Quarters: The old building was, once again, occupied in service to the community.

Dr. Jim Lessenger is a docent at the Benicia Historical Museum. His book, “Commanding Officer’s Quarters of the Benicia Arsenal,” is available for purchase at the museum, 2060 Camel Road. The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from 1-4 p.m.; the museum office is open Tuesday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.