In Remembrance of Artist Bob Morris
Bob Morris’ artistic and architectural style can be seen throughout Old Town Temecula. His signature piece, the Butterfield Square, was located at the corner of Front and Third streets. His 1890s Western building facades were fabricated from repurposed historic buildings and other elements adding an air of authenticity to his work. Another Morris also created the two grand arches that greet visitors entering the historic district. On September 2, 2016, Bob Morris invited me to his home and gave me a tour of his property. It was a visit that I will always cherish.
Tucked in the Santa Ana Mountains, nestled in the Deluz community, Temecula’s greatest
architect resides on his one-of-kind ranch. There is no address on the side of the road, just an antique sign of a finger pointing the visitor to a gravel road that leads across a wooden bridge and under the canopy of ancient oaks. A dilapidated hay wagon somberly welcomes the visitor as the driveway turns west towards the house. Upon arriving, my eyes search for a way to absorb the wonder that is laid out before me.
It is a tapestry of wooden buildings with 1890’s Western façades. An antique 1936 fire engine labeled,
“The Sod Buster Racing Team”, resides in the silence like a wise old king. Oak trees, buildings, piles of
metal and antique machines seem to assemble as musicians playing a majestic symphony about the artist’s life.
The front door on Bob’s home was once used at the Butterfield Square. I give it a short rap. Soon the artist appears in the adjacent broad front window, wearing a white weathered hat and a bigger-than-life
smile perfectly framed by his gray beard. With a twinkle in his eyes, he calls out, “Come in! Come in!”
Upon entering the enclave, I immediately feel the front room is embracing me like a warm bear hug during a cold winter morning. He swung out and shook my hand with an iron like grip. His weak physical features masked the strength in his hand. This was a hand that had forged, out of metal and wood, great works of art. Age had not robbed him of his amazing talent.
I was ushered in towards a couch, where I sank deep into the cushions. He swung open the front door, and escorted his court into the sanctuary. The first to arrive was Blue, a dog with long golden brown hair and a warm heart. Blue graciously presented himself, laying his head on the old wooden trunk
before me. He gazed at me with eyes begging to be petted and loved.
Next to enter was Tiger, a striped tabby that did not want to be ignored. He presented himself on the trunk, nudging his way between me and Blue. “Yesterday he brought me a rattler,” Bob announced proudly as he took a seat at his desk.
Finally, there was Bella, a short haired black cat seemingly without a care in the world. Bella did not give a second thought to my presence. She remained outside on the uneven granite stones that had led me to the front door. She seemed to turn her nose up at the world. Bob commented on her reserved
nature, “She will follow me and on occasion, she will let me pet her once or twice a day.”
My eyes searched about the room. I didn’t want to miss a single detail, but I knew I most likely would. There was the tree trunk in the center of the room reaching from the floor to the ceiling. Its presence gave the room an organic feeling. Here the artist invited the outside world in. Noticing my eyes on
the tree trunk, Bob exclaimed, “The tree fell out there and petrified. I thought it was a great ole
tree. So I brought it in. My daughter didn’t think it was a good idea, but I did it.”
There was a short boxing bag hanging off the bed. It looked out of place. “I hung that the other day. Do you want to hit it?” I shook my head. It was like being in a museum as a kid. ‘Look, but don’t touch’ was always my motto so I continued to search the details.
The bed was like a captain’s bed, or an officer’s bunk on an old steamship. It seemed that sleep was an afterthought. There was no timetable for the artist. Sleep was a time of rest in between the creative restlessness that seemed to reside in his soul.
I wanted to race through the whole house searching every nook and cranny, but here time slowed down. I had to wrestle and struggle with the fast pace of the modern world and change my internal clock to the artist’s life. It was like two great Titans warred in my mind, one wanting to charge forward, and one wanting to slowly observe the landscape. Finally, I released my patience, and sank deep into the worn red couch that had welcomed me into the artist’s imagination.
“It’s 4:00 time to put the cats up so that the coyotes don’t get them”, Bob announced. I was asked to scoop up Bella, but Tiger was no where to be found. Bella look perturbed at me as I approached her. She allowed me to dig under her round belly, and gather her into my arms. She went limp without a thought, rolling her eyes in disgust.
I followed him through a door that he tapped with a smile. “Otis elevator doors”, he announced like a proud parent. Outside once again, he opened a small cage and I ushered Bella in. A repetitive cry for Tiger resulted in the cat prancing into the courtyard. He rejoiced when he was picked up and then
looked perplexed when he was placed into the cage without a pet or a loving scratch.
The small cage was deceiving at first until the cats revealed a dark hole in the back. Here the cats had a large private room all to themselves. It was not a dungeon, but a royal suite for their comfort and safety.
A simple mound with flat grey rocks at its base was located at the northwest corner of the dirt courtyard. This was the grave of Bob’s beloved Great Dane. Unlike the house and the property that was adorned with intricate details, this grave was unassuming. If I was not told, I would have stood on it to gaze
out across the property. Why was there no grave marker, nothing to adorn the mighty friend’s
grave? It is possible deep grief would not allow the artist to perform a final tribute to one of his
great friends.
Sitting west of the main house is the bunkhouse. This was at one time his horse stalls. His two favorite horses had passed long ago, and they too are buried somewhere on the property. Nothing is thrown away, for everything can be reused and celebrated.
Outside there was a metal bathtub. “John Wayne sat in that bathtub for a movie once.” There was a shower near the entrance to the building with a yellow mop bucket sitting on the floor. “I use to take my
shower in there. I would wash my dishes in there as well.”
Entering the door, one finds a desk piled high with papers. No rhyme or reason except that it is a work in progress. He taps the desk, “This came out of the Temecula train depot.” A large antique photo showing a dozen or more naked brunettes on stage hangs over the desk. “That was a chorus line. Beautiful girls and not one of them is a blonde.” One might be uncomfortable with the image, but
to an artist it is inspiration. He draws people, quite well, and this image is a tool to assist in the artistic methods.
A short hallway leads from the office to a large room. The hallway wall is adorned with many framed pictures. My eyes are drawn to a white napkin with the sketch of the tank house building drawn on it. “I had drawn the building on the napkin and then crumbled it up and discarded it. A woman saw what I
was doing and snatched it up. Thank God she did.” The building now resides on Old Town Front Street next to the Bank building.
We then entered into a long rectangle room that once was the horse stalls. Residing over the fireplace was an enormous Winchester rifle art piece. “John Bianci commissioned that piece. I made it exactly like the rifle with every screw in place. When I presented it to John for his museum he asked the price.
I told him $800. It was more than he wanted to pay. So I brought this piece back, made a smaller one, and he bought that for $300. He wanted this larger one. So I now have it. I thought about moving it somewhere else, but no, I think it will stay there.”
This was the first inkling that the artist was still designing, still creating, never satisfied with that which he had created. Blue had found his weathered bed on one end of the room. It was next to Bob’s table, stacked with sketches, images, and bits of pieces that were placed as upcoming thoughts to a new project.
The only evidence of the modern world intruding on this timeless retreat was a small flat screen TV. It appeared only to be connected to a small DVD player. No cable, no satellite, just a simple distraction. The room was furnished haphazardly, and one had to navigate ever so cautiously. This was not a “man cave” or a room to entertain guests; this was the workspace of an artist.
At the west end of the room were two wooden partition doors that slid on a rail like barn doors. A tug on the metal handles freed the ancient centurions. Beyond laid a private sanctuary adorned with filtered sunlight. The centerpiece was a white, elongated bathtub encased in natural stone.
“This was Mrs. Dorland’s bathtub. Her husband was a tall man and it took them awhile to find a tub that he could fit in. I did work on her property for her. Eventually her health brought her to a rest home. When she passed, the caretaker of the property called me and told me she wanted to give me the bathtub. It still has the claws under it, but I put rocks around it instead. I wanted it to be natural. I don’t
use it.”
The room was amazing. There was a long bay window that allowed the sunlight to come in. The light was diffused by an ancient oak that created a canopy over the room. “I didn’t have a sketch of this
room, I just built it.” He shows a photo of his beloved Great Dane. The faithful companion used to lounge in the sunlight in the bay window and watched as the artist crafted the room.
My eyes stare at the blue tin ceiling. “That is also from the Alberhill Post Office,” he explained. There were two metal antique fans residing above the bathtub. “Go and pull on that door,” Bob instructed. A good tug and the door swung open. It was his bathroom adorned with a tin ceiling as well. The toilet and the sink were mismatched from two different time eras. The tank for the toilet was found in the ground at a Murrieta property. It was a beautiful little bathroom, with few details, but wonderful memories.
At the north end of the room was a notched stain glass window. “I cut that out and stuck it in there.” The window gave a sense of reverence to the room, as though it was a holy sanctuary where only a chosen few may enter.
Oddly there were three mismatched weathered chairs that surrounded the bathtub. Here we sat as the artist resided over his court from the bay window. Again, the anticipation warred up inside me for I knew
there was a treasure waiting to be revealed in the second floor of the house, but again we were not on my time, we were on his time. As a gracious host he asked, “Do you have time?” I sank deep into the chair’s cushion and said, “I have plenty of time.”
Here Bob gathered his strength. He walked with a cane, and needed to periodically rest. He allowed the sun to warm him as he shared more stories about the room we were lounging in. “Those doors came
from the Murrieta Grammar School.” I did a double take. I had thought the doors were barn doors from the horse stalls, but in fact they were a Murrieta treasure. I knew the old school had been burnt to the ground and to think a relic had remained from before the fire.
I recalled that there were green shingles in the front room that Bob had mentioned earlier. “Those were shingles from the Murrieta School. They were made of asbestos. I didn’t think anything of it as I cut them to the shape I wanted. I breathed all that dust and here I am.” He had used the green shingles as
“tile” behind an iron stove. Seeing these doors, rescued before a fire, I began to wonder what else
he could have saved from Murrieta.
He drew our attention to the floor next to the bathtub. Here was a cutaway in the floor with a thin round piece of an old tree trunk. “Someday I’ll finish that – maybe not in this life time, but in the next!” To the artist, this was his unfinished opus. He was never satisfied with the masterpiece he had created. He
wants to add more, but his weathered body seems to refuse.
Pointing to an unassuming “box” in the northwest corner of the room next to the doors he says, “That is my gun safe.” It was adorned with only a simple metal hook at the top of it.
“You turn that hook and it releases the wood frame at the top. You remove the wood and then you pull on the rope and the door comes up.” The rope looked to be a part of the Murrieta doors and not of the gun safe. Once the door comes up, a metal safe is revealed. It was whimsical yet practical and was another example of Bob’s creativity.
A small framed photo resided on top of the gun safe. “That is a photo of Maxine. She hired a photographer to take her picture as a Valentine present for her husband.” Maxine was lounging in the antique bathtub adorned only with a bubble bath. The sunlight entered from behind her, bathing her in a heavenly aurora. It demonstrated the cathedral like essence of the artist’s bathroom.
Now rested, our host decided it was time to visit the second floor. We rolled out of our chairs and meandered our way through the bunkhouse, past Blue’s bed, through the hallway where I took a final look at the napkin. Outside in the dirt courtyard we passed by the cathouse and reentered the main
house.
We then stepped into the small washroom with a sink that had thick rusty metal bars behind it. Bob paused and gave a high five to the metal frame. “This came out of a jail. I didn’t know what to do with the door hinge so I used it as a paper towel dispenser.” A smile and a brief laugh exits my soul. Here
everything has a purpose, no matter how big or how small.
Exiting through the Otis elevator door, Bob darts left into a bathroom. “This sink is from 1928.” It is signed underneath by the artist. “Roger Sanapoli sold it to me a long time ago. People back then were shorter. So I had to build it up.” Gazing underneath, I could see where the metal legs ended and the
wood stilts began. The bathroom door was also an Otis elevator door.
Through the living room, we exit out the front door. The patio is lined by uneven rough cut granite stones. “This was the Friedemann’s cold storage. When I bought it from them it was two walls thick.” I asked where the cold storage was located he replied, “It was at the end of Pujol Street, past the
slaughter house.”
To reach the second floor of the house, Bob must use the outside rock stairs. At the foot of the stairs we paused to look at two arched wooden doors. “These came from the Murrieta Hot Springs bathhouse.” He had been doing some work at the resort and was given the doors.
Adorning the stairs were two women statues, one looking left and one looking right. Bob’s friend had attended an auction. Unknowingly, she won the bid for the two statues. “She didn’t really want them. So I bought them. I think they look nice here.”
We ascended the rough cut granite stairs to the top landing. “Go on ahead. I have to count the stairs. There are two that are higher than the others.” With one hand on the smooth surface of a long tree branch converted into a banister, and the other on a wooden cane with a metal tip, Bob cautiously navigated his way to the top.
Once again my eyes tried to absorb and process all that I could see. A strange swinging bench attached to a machine and a belt greeted visitors. “If I attach the drive shaft to the wheel it will rock the bench.” He hit a switch and the belt and motor started up, but the shaft was not connected. When asked where
the switch came from, “It came from a submarine.”
There was a nice wooden deck with a canopy over it. The canopy was erected using four rounded wooden posts. “A gentleman came to me when I was building the Butterfield Stage and offered to sell me the posts for $100. I thought he meant a $100 for each one, but no it was a hundred for all four. So I
bought them and used them here.”
What appeared as a long wooden table that jutted out from under the canopy was soon identified as a diving board. “I once owned Judy Garland’s diving board, but I gave it to my daughter.”
The north end of the patio gave us an overview of the ranch layout. A jog right and we entered the second floor of the artist’s house. Immediately to our left was a photo gallery of his life. There were pictures of his brother, his children, old time friends, and the women who had come in and out of his long enriching life. Each image had a story, another page in the artist’s life.
Impatience won over as I gazed on the model of the Butterfield Square. Bob reached over and turned a dial, lighting up the model. “They can’t tear that one down. It took me over seven months to build that. The lamp posts are from a fishing pole.” The piece was unique. It was not designed in the standard “flat” model style. Instead, the artist created it with a slant to the right as if it was leaning to a vanishing point in the distance. The design made the model come to life, demanding the observer to enjoy each splendid detail. The artist’s abode, once on the second floor of the Square, had its window lit. It reminded me of Walt Disney’s office window that is lit on Main Street.
Beyond the living room was another bedroom. Here more of the Alberhill Post Office tin ceiling was found. This was unpainted, with rust in many places throughout the room. It was like sleeping in a museum. A quick peek into the side bathroom revealed more of the tin ceiling and an unfinished wall.
Attached to the living room was the kitchen complete with a running 1928 refrigerator. Bob paused at the bar and counter that separate the two rooms. “This [foot bar] wasn’t as long as I planned for, so I
curved it off. Then I added a book case to finish it off.” Without the explanation, a visitor would never have noticed. The two pieces flowed seamlessly together as if they were one.
A tall multi-paned window capped with an arch reached for the roof’s pinnacle. It allowed an enormous amount of sunlight in and gave a view of the approaching driveway. Residing in the window was a horse saddle, reminiscent of the years he spent riding the dusty trails.
A small door off of the kitchen led to another private patio at the north end of the second floor. There was a rickety wood spiral staircase that looked like it would collapse if a cat were to use it.
“Pick a number,” Bob commanded his audience. He had a wheel of chance with seven wooden horses each with a number on its side. With a flick of the wrist he sent the wheel a spinning. Cheers rose up from the house tops and we waited for the final outcome. Seven, but no one had called that number. So let’s spin again. Seven won again.
“That is a tuba collecting the rain water.” He had pointed to a strange spout nailed to the side of the house. The large opening drank the water from the tin roof and then allowed it to flow down a rusty chain to the ground below. “If you look closely, I have a woman holding the tuba. My daughter didn’t think it was appropriate, but I like it,” he said sheepishly. Whether it was appropriate or not, it was a simple masterpiece.
Once back into the second floor living room Bob explains, “There are two bats that sometimes live in here and I have to make sure I wipe the seats off.” We peer up into the dark recesses of the vaulted ceiling but do not see anything living up there at the moment.
Back outside and down the rocky stairs we are escorted to his Gator to take a trip to the property next door. It is owned by an 83 year old Fallbrook man that landscaped the grounds but never built a house on the property. Bob shows different features that he added to the property for the owner including a towering street lamp from Pasadena.
We drive past the front gate when once again the artist had showed his hand. Next to the gate was a horse gate designed to be opened by the horseman without having to dismount. The vehicle bounces and turns through a dusty old path with Blue darting in and out of the bushes and the empty horse corrals giving a security check.
A “mine shaft” is pointed out as we reenter Bob’s property. We cross a bridge, “I love to build bridges”, he remarks. A giant wheel resides in the center of the bridge. “This was a bell wheel from a
church.”
The creek is dry and the Engelmann Oaks and Coastal Live Oaks are thirsty. “There use to be water running through these creeks for thousands of years. The Creekside Golf course built an underground reservoir and several wells. Now the only time there is water in the creek is during a rain.” This is why Bob has a punching bag in his front living room.
Our driving tour ends at the 1936 fire engine. He then swings open the barn door and reveals the 33 Sod Buster. This is a modified tractor that was built at the Butterfield Square. It was raced in the Great Temecula Tractor Race for over twenty years. It had a hand crank to start it. “I painted three broken arms on the side of it. They didn’t know you had to hold your hand a certain way when you cranked it.” He demonstrated where to place a thumb in order to be prepared when the crank popped open.
“The engine has frozen up now. I thought about entering it in a parade, but I don’t think anyone would be interested anymore. So I think I will just leave it here.” With that somber thought, he quietly
closed the large wooden doors, placing his beloved tractor back into its eternal sleep.
The tour had lasted three hours, but I wasn’t ready to leave this place. It had captured my imagination, and stirred a longing to hear more stories. Before we left he tapped two huge metal doors next to his front door. “These here are garage doors for a Model T. This was a kit that you ordered. They didn’t
have garages back then.”
I shook his hand, the hand of steal that felt like it could crush my own. I promised that I would return again and I hoped that I could. The journey to the artist’s house was more than I could have imagined. It was a tour of his life, and a home and a window into the artist’s mind. With a final wave I drove off down the gravel driveway and back into my busy world. Blue escorted me as far as the bridge and then returned to his master’s side.
By 2018, Bob Morris’ beloved Butterfield Square was destroyed in order to make room for the Truax development of a multi-story luxury hotel. Two other buildings designed by Morris, the Clock Tower
building on Main and the Water Tank building on Front, still remain. On November 19, 2018, Bob Morris passed away at the age of 85. I never returned to his home, I always wanted to, but I never made the time. It is unknown what will become of the artist’s home, but his personal stories of his artwork and each builder’s block he used is now silent. Only a few tales and memories shared by family and friends will remain. As I drive under the arches in Old Town Temecula, I glance up and smile, thanking the artist for the historic beauty he had created for all of us to enjoy.
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