One word: Chickens. So, if you were a chicken rancher, made wealthy by selling your wares down the Petaluma River to San Francisco and beyond, and you wanted to build a new house to suit your family’s status, first, you hired an architect. And not just any architect…a sophisticated and highly skilled architect that you could trust to design the stateliness you sought. In Petaluma, this meant Brainerd Jones, or for a few lucky properties (5 in all) Julia Morgan.

In Katherine Reinhart’s book “Petaluma: a History in Architecture” it is suggested that an incredible 80 percent of the buildings in the city’s historic west side core have been designed by Jones-although many have been lost to redevelopment.

Typical Jones details of the 1905-1920 period, seen in dozens of houses throughout town, include roofs that flare out at the end like Chinese pagodas, giving even his most Eastern of Colonials a curious Asian flavor. Dormer roofs often flare as well, and he loved paired dormers and heavy window boxes.

Other Jonesian motifs include X-shaped window patterns found in porch and dormer windows, three-dimensional pyramidal beam ends in fireplaces and cabinets, bands of windows a la Frank Lloyd Wright prairie style and small windows sandwiching larger windows. These motifs are prolific throughout buildings of the period, whether they were actually designed by Jones or by a copycat.

His brick houses of the 1920s, several of which line stately, tree-lined    D Street  are wonderful compositions of arches, turrets, arcades and gables. One of Jones’ notable houses boasts a crenellated corner-oriented entryway, and windows that vertically span the two-story living room complete with a Juliet balcony and elegantly ample brick fireplace.

Jones designed many commercial buildings as well including the Carnegie Library, the Silk Mill and the Opera House building in the heart of Petaluma’s downtown.