A Shopping Center with Soul
The Montecito Country Mart speaks with a tender voice
Cali Mall Geneology
In a region as aching with natural beauty as Southern California, it’s surprising to note the disregard for architecture and design upon the retail environment. One reason people escape to Santa Barbara from the urban chaos of Los Angeles is to soak in our cohesive urban design palette: tile roofs, native plantings, a vernacular of adobe and Mission-style wood beams. Our community is, in contrast, a visual balm for the senses. As an unincorporated part of Santa Barbara County, Montecito operates independently from the City’s strict urban design guidelines but developed over time, a downtown visual language such as low slung Spanish style retail along Coast Village Road — its village-like, walkable, and human-scaled a la Carmel.
If you exit off Highway 101 at Hot Springs Road, you cannot miss the Montecito Country Mart, the town’s crown jewel of local-and-tourist-serving retail. Built in the 1960s, The Country Mart is part of a lineage of beautifully-constructed retail complexes in the Town & Country model of shopping malls. I went to college in Palo Alto where a similar complex (Town & Country Village) graces the corner of El Camino Real and Embarcadero Road with its tile roof and approachable Dutch doors: low-key yet toney shops, a grocery store, frozen yogurt joint, a spa, and a dry cleaner all iterated in a ranch-casual architectural voice. The Montecito Country Mart is smarter and prettier that it’s cousin up north, but both of these mid-century shopping centers share in common single-story construction, architectural emphasis on building materials, careful plantings, discrete public spaces to sit, and an overall outdoor experience that aligns with the California climate. And while 1980s and 1990s malls across America are dying, these stylish petite older Country Marts I have noticed, are still going strong.
An object worthy of study
I minored in architectural history so pardon my nerdy rigor on the topic of shopping centers. I think this kind of analysis matters in a time of Amazon ordering and Home Depot-style ready made construction — let us just take a moment to marvel at how this remarkable building looks and is experienced sixty years after it was built. It is a time capsule that has been lovingly taken care of. This fact warrants celebrating.
1. Doors
The gestalt of the Montecito Country Mart is achingly nostalgic, but its doors are what really speak to me. There appear to be three types of doors on the property– single with a decorative window pane, single Dutch door with a window pane, and double doors. The window pane is hand cut at the corners, in a midcentury shape that is faintly 60s googie. The remarkable thing about these doors is that developers just don’t build in this fashion — with this much attention to craftsmanship — anymore. There are fewer carpenters who can carve a door like this -- and the economics of creating them would surely be cost prohibitive in construction. They are relics of a previous era, just like a carved colonial door in a church in Guanajuato. These objects carry a spirit based on the work that went into making them. The Country Mart doors are so mid-century. They say to me, “get up from your Olivetti, Peg, and meet me at Trader Vics.”
2. Lighting
The lights that hang down from the slatted wood arcade at the Country Mart are like a paper Noguchi lamp rendered in glass – perfectly of the period. They glow at night in a way that reminds you of your first childhood trip to Disneyland, where everything was clean and safe and your mother held your hand as you stood agape at the magical glow around you. In addition to the overhead orb lights, often there are strings of fairy lights outside in the courtyard where people dine at Bettina or linger with their ice cream at Rori’s Creamery.
3. Timbers, Barney Rubble stone walls, and chic slatted wood
The shape of the Country Mart is basically two parallel lines, with shops on all sides, and a sunken courtyard space with seating in the middle. A grocery store tenant (Pavilions, formerly Vons – everyone still just calls it “Vons”) rests along one end, forming a letter U. The large beams that comprise the entire building frontage feel like they may be an Asian architectural reference– could be Polynesian, Tiki, or a reference perhaps to Japanese temple construction. The overall effect is memorable because the posts which, painted white, are the same size at elegant stone pillars but are actually made from solid timbers, like a painted telephone pole.
The stone applied at intervals along the exterior feels very Flintstones to me; this flourish, however, is pared down from becoming a caricature via preppy white washed slatted wood walls adjacent, with espalier fig trees that find light in between businesses.
4. Signs with panache
The blade signage and affixed signs at the roofline for each business mirror the shape of the doors – albeit in varying dimensions. Merci’s sign is substantial in comparison the Montecito Barber’s diminutive version of the same shape. I love this architectural echo – it’s like a stanza being repeated. An architectural chorus making its point at a shopping mall! Perhaps most enchanting are the large square shadowboxes assigned to each Country Mart tenant that display elements of their wares. The shadowboxes remind me of similar apparatus sometimes found in an old hotel’s lobby. They are a captivating visual tool that help explain what each tenant is about. It surprises me that they are not employed more often.
The Montecito Country Mart Reads the Room
One of the things that endears me to the Montecito Country Mart is that, in a town known as a tourist destination, its tenants are primarily local-serving. The Country Mart functions more like a town square than a mall, albeit with an elevated-yet-beachy sensibility. There is no Chanel Boutique, no Celine, no cheesy tourist shop – harboring that kind of tenant would suggest that the owner is not serving the shopping habits of its own. The Country Mart reads the room. This is a place where a local can find a child’s birthday present last minute en route to a party (Toy Crazy,) stop for an ice cream with when you have a car full of sandy teenagers on a hot summer night (Rori’s,) grab a loaf of great bread (Oat), a simple sandwich (Panino,) a little girl’s Christmas dress (Poppy), a sophisticated-yet-low-key bistro for a business meeting or rendezvous (Merci,) a negroni with your blind date (and maybe stay for pizza if its working out) at Bettina, a post office, an old school barber, dry cleaner, juice bar, and multiple women’s clothing options at Clic, Doen, and a few others. A significant number of the Country Mart’s shops are owned by local Santa Barbara/ Montecitoans.
In 2019 before the pandemic, my daughter and I happened to sit at a table next to the owner of the Montecito Country Mart, Mr. Rosenfield, while having breakfast at Merci. I commended him on the whole enterprise — from the building, to Merci’s pretty buildout, to the Mart’s programming (Easter Bunny, May Pole, movie night in the courtyard with popcorn!) What happened next surprised me. This courtly real estate person shared a poetic little story. Growing up in Southern California, he remembered with great tenderness the ritual of going shopping with his mother and the generosity of one particular store that would always hand him a lovely red balloon when he visited. This memory stayed with him into adulthood, and persists in the mood of his shopping center properties. It turns out there can be poetry to shopping center design. In a world that is increasingly placeless and corporatized, the Montecito Country Mart stays true to itself – as a specimen of midcentury California architecture, as a retail spot that is keeps it’s local community front-of-mind, and perhaps most soulfully, as a vestige of the Old Montecito spirit.
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Loved the video. I still miss Dobbs. Right in that corner where Rori's is. Only it took up a lot more real estate.
I love the country mart! And dutch doors!