Crooks Mansion: Benicia's Eastlake Survivor
Near Vallejo, California
Perched on a rise above the Carquinez Strait, the Crooks Mansion at two eighty-five West G Street is a surviving example of the Eastlake style of architecture in Benicia. The house dates to around eighteen ninety, and the Crooks family lived here until nineteen seventy. The Crooks family were longtime Benicia residents.
The Eastlake style, named for the English designer Charles Eastlake, emphasized bold geometric ornament and rectilinear shapes as a reaction against the curvaceous excesses of Victorian excess, and the Crooks house applied that vocabulary to a private residence. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy-eight, the house was restored in the nineteen eighties after a period of decline.
