Toscano Hotel

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The Toscano Hotel complex is comprised of the Toscano Hotel and six associated buildings.

The hotel and kitchen are open to the public at no charge with tours provided Saturday, Sunday and Monday 1:00pm-4:00pm.

Illustrated Atlas of Sonoma County, Reynolds & Proctor, 1897

From the Sonoma State Historic Park Plan November, 1986. Used with permission.
The hotel structure, in part, is dated to the mid-1850s, with additions and alterations which are associated to the period 1880-1910. The hotel building may have begun life as the Nathanson retail store and rental library. In 1877, the owner, Christian F. Leiding, leased the structure to Frank McKeague, the proprietor of the recently burned Eureka Hotel. McKeague moved the business into the store, transforming it into the new Eureka Hotel. Shortly thereafter, the shape of the Nathanson Store-Eureka Hotel building was dramatically altered in its appearance. The structure was enlarged on its western side, enclosing a staircase. A new façade and balcony added. Leiding purchased the Casa Grande site, plus almost everything else west of the barracks to the location of the present Swiss Hotel, in 1879.

In 1886, John and Maggie Phelan appeared to be the new lessees of the Eureka Hotel, but a county directory lists the hotel’s name as Tuscano, and that the proprietors are Settimo Ciucci and Leonido Quatorolie. This arrangement survived approximately five years; in 1891, Ciucci is listed as proprietor, in partnership with his wife. Ciucci, in November 1898, purchased the hotel and an enlarged lot (67 x 600) where the hotel is situated. Behind the hotel were located several sheds, small outbuildings, and, where the kitchen is today, a cellar. Some time before finalization of the sale, a long shed was built along the property line, north-northeast of the hotel. At about the same time, Leiding constructed or allowed to be constructed a frame building in front of the adobe servants’ quarters, which was being used as a storage downstairs and apartments or rooms upstairs. The new structure was leased as a store. To the rear was a small, two-story structure, noted as a residence in 1886 and in 1897. Behind this structure were the ruins of Vallejo’s wine cellar. In 1897, the store in front of the adobe servants’ quarters had been transformed into a residence.

Settimo Ciucci built the kitchen annex in 1902 and during the next year or so acquired the remainder of the lot which now composes the property owned by the unit. Ciucci then moved the house from in front of the servants’ quarters, elevated it about a newly constructed ground floor, and had at his service nine new rooms for guests and boarders. This new structure became the Hotel Annex, and today is the area office. At the same time, several sheds, one near the kitchen and one behind the new annex, were converted into barns. This conversion may be more a case of semantics than actually major overhauling of structures. What is certain is that a number of wooden board and batten building existed at the rear of the Toscano Hotel.

Ciucci died in 1922, and operation of the hotel continued under the proprietorship of his son-in-law and daughter, Jack and Amelia Walton. When Jack died in 1955, Mrs. Walton closed the Toscano Hotel. The modification of the name from Tuscano to Toscano had occurred before Cuicci’s death. The Sate of California acquired the Casa Grande-Toscano Hotel lot in 1958.

In the process of restoration in the 1960s, many of the earlier architectural elements of the earlier store and the Eureka and Toscano Hotel were inadvertently removed from the building. The main building today represents the period when the hotel was in transition between the Eureka Hotel and the Toscano Hotel.

• Sonoma State Historic Park Plan, November, 1986

• llustrated Atlas of Sonoma County, Reynolds & Proctor, 1897