His honor, the Village Smithy

John Catlin was elected mayor of Carmel in 1932 on the condition that the office wouldn't interfere with his business as the village blacksmith. A former lawyer in San Francisco, Catlin gave up that career to move to Carmel and work as an artist and blacksmith. He opened his "Forge in the Forest" in 1923 at Junipero and 6th Avenue, where the Surf 'N Sand General Store is today. After Catlin was elected, any mayoring that was needed between council meetings had to be brought to his shop. The business name was moved a block away to 5th and Junipero Avenues in 1944, when another artist and blacksmith, Francis Whitaker, paid Hugh Comstock $1,200 to build a new "Forge in the Forest" there. Whitaker worked there as a blacksmith for the 13 years he was on the city council, then the building became an artist's studio and, in the 1970s, a restaurant and saloon.

Storybook Architecture

(Photo: This was the last cottage Hugh Comstock built. It was completed in 1929, just months before the stock market crash. Courtesy of Linda Yvonne.)

"Storybook Architecture" is the name given by scholars to a delightful genre of buildings erected in the 1920s and 1930s in the U.S. and England. (The style is also called "Hansel and Gretel," "Doll's House," "Fairy Tale" and "Provincial Revivalism.") Carmel is graced by many of these structures, created by Hugh Comstock. According to some sources, Comstock was inspired by illustrator Arthur Rackham. Maybe. According to John Robert Marlow, founder of www.storybookers.com, several spectacular storybook structures had been completed, or were underway, in Los Angeles by the time Comstock began work here in 1924. "Whether Comstock created his distinctive storybook 'look' independently, or was influenced by others, is unknown," says Marlow, "but without question, he was a master of the form."