Casa de Machado y Stewart
Old Town San Diego State Historic Park
2707 Congress Street, San Diego CA 92110

Courtesy ISArchitecture.com

Photo by Marlena Krcelich

BUILT C. 1835 BY JUAN MANUEL MACHADO, a retired Presidio soldier who arrived in San Diego with the Leather Jacket Company in 1781, the simple adobe brick structure initially had only two rooms, a sala or living room and a bedroom. A covered veranda was incorporated at the south side of the structure. Framed with ridge poles fastened around overhead beams by rawhide strips, the roof was made of tule thatch packed with dried mud, and covered in terra cotta tiles.

After raising his large family here, Machado gave this home to his daughter Rosa, who married Jack Stewart. He was an American pilot boat operator from Maine, who was once a shipmate of Richard Henry Dana, Jr. One of Stewart's claims to fame was his involvement in the sensational local trial of Yankee Jim Robinson, who was convicted of attempted grand larceny in his efforts to abscond with the Plutus, Stewart's pilot boat. With Stewart serving on the jury, Yankee Jim was sentenced to death and was hanged at the site where the Whaley House now stands.

Jack and Rosa Machado y Stewart raised eleven children in this home and made many changes to the structure, adding rooms, installing mulit-paned windows, and whitewashing the walls. The last family member to reside in the ancestral home was Carmen Stewart Meza, who lived there for 50 years, until a flood forced her to leave in 1966. The house was acquired by California State Parks and restored to its earlier appearance in 1973.

Old Town San Diego State Historic Park LINK