Anne Hathaway Cottage, Sacramento

Built circa 1921, this Tudor Revival cottage is located within Sacramento’s Curtis Park neighborhood. The property became known as the ‘Anne Hathaway Cottage’, because of its resemblance to a 16th-century cottage at Stratford-upon-Avon in England, which was inhabited by Anne Hathaway prior to her marriage to the playwright William Shakespeare. The Anne Hathaway Cottage in Sacramento’s Curtis Park was designed by the architectural firm of Dean & Dean, and the home was built by J.C. Carly, who was associated with the Better Homes in America Movement during the 1920s. The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019.

In the early 1920s, this private home was designed in the Tudor Revival / English cottage style for Ernest M. Kimberlin, the manager of the Owl Drug Company in California. The cottage was named for Anne Hathaway, the wife of the English playwright, William Shakespeare, who resided in a similar 16th-century cottage in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. The Sacramento version of the ‘Anne Hathaway Cottage’ bears a striking similarity to the original, with a rustic half-timbered façade and a dark-shingled roof that was intended to resemble the traditional thatched cottages found throughout the English countryside.

The ‘Anne Hathaway Cottage’ in Sacramento includes many architectural features associated with the Tudor Revival / English cottage style of architecture that was popular throughout the 1920s. These features include heavy wrought-iron strapwork, a shingled awning over the main entrance, and a double ‘eyebrow’ roofline above the casement windows on the second story. The style is also reflected in several other homes throughout Sacramento’s Curtis Park neighborhood. In 1923, the Anne Hathaway Cottage won sixth place nationwide in the Better Homes of America Contest, which came to Curtis Park for the first time that year.

The 1920s-era Better Homes Movement encouraged local communities to improve housing by making residences “more convenient and attractive.” It gained widespread attention through a campaign launched by Marie Meloney, editor of a national magazine, The Delineator. Meloney organized an Advisory Council that worked with Herbert Hoover (then serving as Secretary of Commerce) to promote the voluntary improvement of housing throughout the United States. President Warren G. Harding formally endorsed the movement in a letter to Herbert Hoover during February 1923, and the campaign was also supported by the governors of 30 states.

Partly because of the widespread attention toward the Better Homes of America Movement and Contest, the Tudor Revival style of architecture continued to spread to various neighborhoods throughout the country during the 1920s. However, the movement has since received criticism for its inherent racism in exclusively favoring white communities. According to the annals of the Better Homes Movement, its primary mission was to help American families improve their homes, while also focusing on “community improvement, urban-rural relationships, and dissemination of information on housing and homemaking subjects.”

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California State Historical Resources Commission To Consider Eleven Properties for Action", California Parks Department. July 23rd, 2019. Accessed September 14th, 2023. https://www.parks.ca.gov/NewsRelease/898.

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