El Encanto

By late 1916 only three of James Warren's units on the Riviera had students in them, a poor return on housing built for the State Normal School across the street. Artists took the rest, the landscape painter William Otte among them, and in 1917 Warren had Winsor Soule draw a main building for a cottage hotel. It opened in 1918 and has stayed one. The hill reads as a small village: brick paths wind between Craftsman bungalows and white Spanish Colonial Revival houses under terracotta roofs, through seven acres of garden that Charles Frederick Eaton first laid out and that guests say are kept immaculate. The pool is heated and looks over the city to the Pacific, with a white-flowered hedge along its far edge and the sea a pale haze beyond it.

Recommended for couples who want Santa Barbara from above rather than from State Street, and for families of three generations: a Deluxe Double has two double beds and sleeps four, and the Oak Tree Suite sleeps five. There is no kids club. There are Children's Horse Encounters instead, and for everyone else private rides along the beach or the coastal bluffs. The hotel also takes guests about an hour inland to the Santa Ynez Valley, to taste with the winemaker at a private estate over a chef's picnic. Back on the hill, the Dining Room grows its own herbs and vegetables, and dinner can be out on its terrace, facing downtown and the Pacific. The cheese is made from the milk of the hotel's own dairy cow, the one resident of the hill expected to earn her keep.