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"View Slideshow\n\nIt's the kind of place where people check in with their pugs\u2014registering the little darlings as Jack and Jackie in the guest book\u2014and where fellow guests will recognize both the dogs' famous namesakes and the fact that the 35th American president and his wife honeymooned here. Such is the lore surrounding the San Ysidro Ranch, a fairy-tale-picturesque resort in Santa Barbara, California, that was once owned by film star Ronald Colman, hosted the nuptials of Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier and has inspired writers from Somerset Maugham to Sinclair Lewis. San Ysidro's 19th-century history as a citrus ranch only adds to the nostalgia and romance that hover over the place like the scent of navel orange blossoms.\n\nIf, by the end of the 20th century, its historic stone buildings, storybook cottages and rambling gardens were beginning to look a little shabby, the ranch was beloved enough that visitors were willing to overlook its flaws. San Ysidro was sort of like everyone's favorite maiden aunt, the one with the good bones and the slightly ratty sweaters. In 2000 the property was purchased by Ty Warner, the so-called Beanie Baby billionaire, whose plans to renovate the place sparked concern among the faithful that any \"improvements\" would compromise its understated charms. They can breathe again. Auntie has emerged from a three-year, $150 million face-lift\u2014and, frankly, she looks amazing.\n\nWarner interviewed a number of architects for the job, but it's hard to imagine a more likely candidate than Marc Appleton. Appleton, whose grandparents commissioned architect George Washington Smith to build one of the finest Spanish Colonial Revival houses in Santa Barbara and who has fond memories of dining at the ranch as a boy, has made the restoration and construction of period revival residences in California and elsewhere the cornerstone of his career. When he was approached by Warner, he articulated two key concepts. \"I said that I felt a successful project would be one where those familiar with the ranch would come back and be a little confused as to what was new and what was old. The second thing was that I felt this was more of a landscape project, almost, than an architectural one. Because I think what guests at the ranch come away with is this marvelous setting with the gardens and trees.\"\n\nAt the same time, the architect harbored no illusions regarding the scope of the job: \"There isn't a single building that wasn't totally restored or, in some cases, rebuilt entirely.\" He is quick to credit Warner's commitment to the project. \"It's rare that a client as busy as he is gives the time to champion such high quality or becomes as personally involved in the details as he did.\"\n\nThe cottages scattered around the property (two were added, for a total of 41) were taken down to the studs and \"brought into the same mode\" of the classic California ranch house, with board-and-batten siding and pitched shingle roofs. To make them more private and intimate, Appleton designed entrance courtyards and enlarged patios. Amenities like spas and indoor-outdoor showers were installed, but not at the expense of character. The footprints of the bungalows were maintained, and their homey hallmarks (exposed beams, stone fireplaces) still enchant.\n\nThe ranch's two restaurants were given a new kitchen, and the sandstone structure that houses them was refreshed. Appleton replaced its old wood deck with a stone terrace that matches the building's exterior and takes full advantage of the ranch's ocean and mountain views. Under the terrace he put in a private dining room styled after a wine cave, and under the dining room he installed a 5,000-bottle wine cellar. The historic ranch houses that function, respectively, as the reception area and a second private dining room were invisibly restored.\n\nAs Appleton intended, it's the improvements to the grounds that you notice first and last. Now you make the turn off San Ysidro Lane onto a gravel drive that winds below a dreamy canopy of gnarled olive trees underplanted with drifts of lavender. \"It was part of our concept that we were reminding you of the agricultural beginnings of the ranch,\" he explains. With the assistance of landscape consultants Laurie Lewis, Sally Paul and James Hyatt, he expanded the property's citrus groves and herb and vegetable gardens and enhanced the central garden with a new lily pond and rose arbor. Warner selected oaks and peppers to supplement existing specimens, and the premises have been replanted with highly fragrant perennials. Surely California's agrarian past was never this pretty\u2014but then, mythologizing the state's history is as old as the state itself."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/hotels-ysidro-0762008>