An Attic in Alameda

Photo by the author

The Bruton sisters lived in this house at 1240 St. Charles Street in Alameda, California. The  gracious Colonial Revival mansion is situated on a generous lot, set back slightly from a tree lined street. Located in the city’s coveted “Gold Coast,” an upscale neighborhood with a concentration of elegant homes, the house is one of the largest in Alameda at more than four thousand square feet. On the top floor of this elegant residence is a large, light-filled attic with expansive dormer windows and spectacular views. Today, the space serves as an office and media room--a century ago, however, this bright and spacious room was brimming with artistic dreams and creative experimentation.

The attic’s first occupants were three inventive little girls, who used the space to sketch, paint, and sculpt creatures out of homemade dough. These remarkable sisters, Margaret, Esther, and Helen Bruton, would become famous artists in the early twentieth century. Their attic art studio became a creative laboratory of sorts, where they experimented with different media and assisted each other with projects well into their adult years. In fact, the attic in Alameda became almost legendary, and it was referred to repeatedly in magazine articles and news stories as the magical birthplace of the Brutons’ artistic spirit:

In the old family home in Alameda, a stone’s throw from the water’s edge, on a street canopied by English elms and chestnuts, the three Brutons, Margaret, Helen, and Esther, are working at present at fresco, pottery and prints.  In an old-time home with a garden lying under the shade of oaks, where birds bathe in a basin, fashioned by Helen out of mosaics… and an attic three flights up, now a studio, where Margaret has painted fresco on the plastered walls.¹

The attic was a safe cocoon where the sisters had unlimited creative freedom and could “valiantly experiment in new media and manners.”²  In fact, the attic at 1240 St. Charles Street was so deeply connected with the sisters’ artistic development and achievement, that the city of Alameda designated the Bruton House an Historic Monument in 2012.

Historic marker in front of the Bruton house
Photo by the author 

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¹Beatrice Judd Ryan.  “Brutons-3.” Women’s City Club Magazine of San Francisco, July 1932, p. 16.

²Gene Hailey.  California Art Research.  San Francisco: Abstract from WPA Project 2874, 1937, p. 1.