I guess they’re painting over the brick of the H.M. Warden Jr. Building (1905) in San Luis Obispo—most memorable to me as the onetime home of Corcoran’s Restaurant, in business at that site from about 1943 to 1974. The brick, of course, is beautiful on its own.

Throughout 1904 and into early 1905, a series of old San Luis Obispo Tribune articles follow its construction from the letting out of bids to its completion, when the building, which would become a beehive of retail stores and medical offices, was praised for its beauty.

So I, being nosy, looked up the architect. It turns out that the man was a local—H.S. Laird was born in New York but came to San Luis Obispo in the late 1870s and lived out his life here. And during his time, he designed a stunning number of buildings, many of them still with us, from the 1890s and the early 1900s, are still with us. Some, like the Call Building (once the home of Gabby’s Bookstore) have been sadly reshaped, but all of them, I think, are a tribute to a remarkable architect.