Healdsburg by Design: Fragments in Time

Back in the day, there were orchards here. Acres and acres of plum orchards. Seas of white blossoms dancing in the bright, spring sun. Earning Healdsburg, the California town in the midst of these orchards, the moniker “Buckle of the Prune Belt.”

The plums are no more. They’re now replaced by grapes – with vines as far as the eye can see. Healdsburg lies at the intersection of three major Sonoma County wine appellations. With the only remaining homage to prunes being the name of the town’s baseball team – the Prune Packers.

Healdsburg’s buildings are a mixture of its farming past and its wine country destination present. Tasting rooms and stylish restaurants abound. Historic homes abut more modern structures. A central grid gives way to winding suburban lanes. Vernacular design persists – in older buildings not yet re-purposed and in newer buildings drawing stylistic inspiration from the past. In these photographs, I invite you to see fragments of design that caught my eye as I wondered the town.