The Riviera · Santa Barbara

Living above the city.

The view homes, and everything a view costs. This is the Riviera the way I'd explain it to a friend.

The Riviera is where you live if you want to see Santa Barbara every day in its full glory: the red roofs, the harbor, the islands floating on the channel. These are the view homes, and the neighborhood has more character and charm per winding block than almost anywhere in the city. The honest physics of a hillside come with it: the roads up and down are narrow and serpentine, walkability is limited compared to the flats, and lots are often sloped, so multi-level homes are the norm, though single-level living absolutely exists up here if you hold out for it. Yards can be modest or terraced or simply traded away for the panorama. Nobody buys the Riviera for the lawn.

How it got this way.

The Riviera was designed to be looked at, and to look from, almost from the start. In 1913 a group of investors led by the banker George Batchelder, remembered as the Father of the Riviera, bought the hillside, named it for the French coast it reminded him of, and did two things decades ahead of their time: buried the utility lines underground, and laid out the lots so that no home would block a neighbor's view. The hill's other engine was the State Normal School that opened up here in 1914; the faculty cottages built beside it became the El Encanto hotel by 1918, and the school itself eventually grew into UCSB. One villa up here was even offered to Franklin Roosevelt as a summer White House; Pearl Harbor ended that plan.

The honest part.

Every Riviera trade is the same trade wearing different clothes: the view costs convenience. Getting anywhere means the winding descent and the winding return, walking to dinner mostly isn't a thing, and hillside homes ask more of maintenance, of parking, of moving day. Fog can sit below you while you're in sunshine, which locals consider a feature. If the daily glory of looking out over this city is worth those costs to you, nothing else in Santa Barbara scratches it. If it isn't, the flats will fit better, and both answers are right.