Plaza House

The Plaza House was commissioned in the 1880s by Philippe Garnier, a French entrepreneur and real estate developer who had rebuilt his fortune after earlier financial ruin. Following his successful recovery as a director of Farmers and Merchants Bank in 1879, Garnier embarked on an ambitious building campaign in the Plaza area between 1888 and 1890. He retained the prestigious architecture firm Kysor & Morgan, whose founding partner Ezra F. Kysor had previously designed the iconic Pico House and Merced Theatre across the street. The Plaza House was conceived as a combination hotel and commercial building, with retail stores occupying the ground floor and the intimate Plaza House Hotel on the second floor. Notably, the building was constructed on the site of an adobe house that had belonged to a French sea captain and his wife, marking a transition from the area's earlier residential character to its commercial future.

The structure exemplifies the Italianate architectural style that dominated Main Street commercial buildings nationwide between the 1860s and 1880s. The two-story brick structure features a distinctive plaster-finished facade, punctuated by original cast iron storefront columns that support the street-level commercial spaces. Groups of double and triple windows on the upper floor are elegantly topped by segmental arches, creating a rhythmic pattern across the facade. The building's most striking feature is its elaborate bracketed cornice and decorative false gable parapet, which bears Garnier's name at its base. Inside, visitors can still appreciate the historic stair hall with its original wood staircase and wood wainscoting. The building's ornamentation was unfortunately removed after the 1971 earthquake, but has since been carefully reconstructed during the recent rehabilitation.