DOWNTOWN PINOLE FROM SUMMIT DRIVE: Pinole’s rolling hills provide magnificent vistas of the downtown area in the early 1900s. This photo showing Quinan Street and Tennent Avenue reveals the Pinole-Hercules School #1, which opened in 1906, occupying a barren hill on the west edge of the city, and the Downer Mansion, built in 1900, in the distance on the Hercules border, and many of the buildings on Tennent that burned down in 1908. Notice the several water towers dotting the back yards. Quinan Street is one of the few areas in the city that has been preserved; sadly, many historic structures were torn down in the name of progress. The once-barren hills in the background are dotted with homes. FERNANDEZ MANSION: The home Bernardo Fernandez built in 1894 is the most well-known building in Pinole. The 22-room mansion was built along the waterfront on land purchased from Dr. Samuel J. Tennent. Fernandez had a thriving shipping business, with schooners, wharves, warehouses, and a store. He owned most of the Pinole Valley lands and ranches. His family gifted the land for Fernandez Park and for a waterfront sewage-treatment plant. Dr. Joseph Mariotti, and his wife, Gretchen, bought the mansion (photographed here by Larry Neptune), lived there for decades, reared a family there, and saved it from destruction. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places. may 2015 MARKETPLACEcontrac osta .com 27
Contra Costa Marketplace - May 2015
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