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Overview

Architect Henry W. Cleaveland (1827-1919) designed this textbook Italian villa in the northern CA town of Chico for the NY-born Brigadier General John Bidwell (1819-1900), commander of the Battalion of California Volunteers, and his wife, the liberal activist Annie Ellicott Kennedy (1839-1918). In the mid-1860s, Bidwell purchased a 26,000-acre estate, the Rancho del Arroyo Chico, and started construction of this house before he met his future wife in 1865. It took three years and a significant $56,000 to complete. Part of the cost derived from the house's technologically up-to-date gas illumination, plumbing and mechanical features.

The couple met in late 1865 and married on 04/16/1868 in Washington, DC, at a fashionable ceremony attended by the current President, Andrew Johnson (1808-1875), and the following one, the Civil War hero, Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885). The newlyweds selected the furnishings together and supervised the last stages of construction, moving in to the grand dwelling in 05/1868. They resided here until their deaths, his in 1900 and hers in 1918; during that time, the house became an important gathering place for visiting dignitaries and Butte County society.

Building History

John Bidwell became an early Euro-American pioneer in CA, traveling here with the Bartelson-Bidwell Party of 1841, the first group of non-military settlers to blaze a trail from Missouri to the West Coast. Arriving seven years before gold was found near Sacramento, Bidwell had located his own gold strike on the Feather River, and managed to placer mine the claim with little fanfare. He became a Mexican citizen in 1844, and, because of this citizenship, could assemble large tracts of agricultural land before CA Statehood in 1850.

A charismatic leader, Bidwell became active in CA State politics before and after statehood and developed interests in about 20 businesses in the Chico, CA, area. He was elected a Republican representative to Congress in 1864, and went to Washington, DC, the following year. It was during his time as a Congressional representative that Bidwell met the much younger Annie Ellicott Kennedy, daughter of Joseph Camp Griffith Kennedy (1813-1887) a PA lawyer who served as the Superintending Clerk of the United States Census heading the 1850 and 1860 efforts. (He was stabbed to death in 1887 by a business associate who accused him of cheating him out of money.) The Kennedys were part of the city's political society, and this exposure to current affairs, galvanized strong liberal perspectives in Annie. She became a fervant supporter of the suffrage and temperance movements.

John Bidwell made plans for the house by 1863. He commissioned the notable San Francisco-based architect Henry W. Cleaveland to design a house in the Italian Villa Style, a mode very popular in the 1840s and 1850s in the Eastern US. The mode's popularity was spread nationally through the publication of such books as the very popular The Architecture of Country Houses (1850) by Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852). Taking his cue from Downing, Cleaveland wrote and illustrated his own architectural pattern book, Village and Farm Cottages, (New York: Appleton, 1856), written with two partners, Samuel D. and William Backus. It may have been this book that attracted Bidwell's attention to Cleaveland.

It was Annie Bidwell's wish that the house be used as the cornerstone for a school for higher education. In 1887, the couple donated 8 acres from their cherry orchard for North State College. The Bidwell Mansion Association has sketched out the house's post-1918 history: "Under the terms of her will, Mrs. Bidwell bequeathed the Mansion and surrounding grounds to the College Board of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America for the establishment of a coeducational Christian school wherein the Bidwell values would continue to be taught to successive generations. However, the church found it impossible to establish and carry on such a school, and in 1923 the property was acquired by the Chico State Teachers College (later California State University, Chico). In 1964 the California State Park System gained possession of the Mansion, designating it the Bidwell Mansion State Historical Monument, later changed to Bidwell Mansion State Historic Park." (See Bidwell Mansion Association, "Story of the Bidwell Mansion," accessed 09/01/2016.) The Chico State Teachers College utilized the 26-room residence as both a dormitory and space for the Art and Home Economics programs.

Citizens in Chico became concerned about the Bidwell Mansion's decrepit state in the mid-1950s, forming the Bidwell Mansion Association in 1956. This preservation group lobbied the State of CA to take over the house from the college and restore it as a California State Park. After 8 years of work, this occurred in 1964, and restoration efforts began soon after.

Alteration

The residence was altered to adapt it for use as a dormitory and classroom-office building in the 1920s-1940s. A full-scale restoration effort began in 1964 to renew the house's historic character.