On a day when temperatures in Davis passed the century mark by early afternoon, residents of Old North Davis marked the 100th anniversary of their neighborhood with festivities that included a potluck dinner and a visit from the Cal Aggie Marching Band-uh.

And while the band’s appearance was a special treat, residents have been gathering for potluck dinners and community meetings here for as long as most of them can remember.

Jean Risley has lived in the neighborhood the longest — more than 40 years now.

She and her late husband, Ted, always went to all the parties and potlucks and helped deal with neighborhood issues over the years — from parking to speeding cars — all while watching the neighborhood evolve.

“A lot of the houses have changed,” Risley said. “But there are still some beautiful houses here.”

Risley was speaking from the back yard of Rick Robbins and Simona Ghetti’s home. They own what is believed to be one of the original bungalows built along Sixth and D streets when the Bowers Addition was created in 1913. Now called the Old North Davis neighborhood, the area stretches from B to G streets and from Fifth to Seventh — a 12-block area in all.

Dennis Dingemans has lived on C Street since 1973, when he snatched up an old house — built in 1917 — practically the day it went on the market. The retired UC Davis geography professor watched the neighborhood change in many ways over the years, but noted with some pride that the area neither deteriorated nor gentrified.

And what attracted him to the area — the mixed neighborhood as well as its proximity to downtown and campus — continues to attract new people, like a UC Davis history professor he said had recently moved in.

Steve Tracy, meanwhile, has lived in the neighborhood for some 40 years altogether and bought his current house 22 years ago.

“A lot of the original owners were here when I moved in,” he said.

He recalled when his children were growing up, there were some 25 children living in homes on a two-block stretch of D Street. Now, though, there are maybe five children, he said.

“Generations come and go,” Tracy said, adding, “this cycle will repeat itself. That’s an interesting thing for me to see … the cycle.”

Kathleen Groody remarked on the cycle as well.

“It’s really changed since I’ve been here,” she said.

Groody moved in to her 85-year-old house on C Street in 1988 when she was a graduate student at UC Davis. The house had been on the market for a while, she said, because it needed work.

“It didn’t sell because it hadn’t been updated,” she said, “but the good thing was, it hadn’t been updated.”

The house was owned at the time by the Thomas family, which owned the downtown drug store Quessenberry’s, Groody said.

Since moving in to the neighborhood, Groody said she’s noticed a cycle of houses being bought and fixed up, then declining a little when they become rentals, then going through the process again.

Through it all, however, the sense of community remained, as evidenced by the gathering Sunday, as well as the city of Davis proclamation on the neighborhood’s centennial, which declared the 12-block area “one of our town’s heritage landscapes that should be cherished and preserved.”

According to the city of Davis 2003 Historic Resources Survey, there are five bungalows remaining in Old North Davis that were built in 1913, with the first sidewalks laid in February of that year and the first house completed in July 1913. The Bowers Addition was named after Charles William Bowers, a prominent Davis resident at the time and a major force behind building the neighborhood.

By 1921, there were 31 houses built, Dingemans said. That had doubled by 1933 and by 1953, the neighborhood was almost 90 percent built out.

— Reach Anne Ternus-Bellamy at [email protected] or 530-747-8051. Follow her on Twitter at @ATernusBellamy

OldNorthDavis1W

Longtime residents Jean Risley and Dennis Dingemans share a laugh while chatting at a party Saturday celebrating 100 years of the Old North Davis neighborhood. Wayne Tilcock/Enterprise photo

OldNorthDavis2W

Maisy Martin, 3, dances to the sounds of the Cal Aggie Marching Band-uh at a party Saturday celebrating 100 years of the Old North Davis neighborhood. Wayne Tilcock/Enterprise photo

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