How we clean Orange
The streets radiate off the Plaza, and inside that mile there are over a thousand buildings from between 1880 and 1940 still standing and still lived in. It is not a museum quarter. People raise families in these houses, rent rooms to Chapman University students, and put a second car on a driveway that was built for a Model A. Porches, wood sash windows, picture rails, transoms above the doors, and kitchens that were remodeled in 1948 and again in 1994.
Cross Tustin Street and the city turns ordinary, then turns rural. The flats are 1950s and 1960s ranch tracts. Orange Park Acres, up against the hills, keeps acre parcels, bridle trails and no sidewalks by design. Santiago Hills and Serrano Heights are newer two-story houses climbing the ridges to the east. Four different visits, and the only thing they share is the dust that comes off the canyons every time the wind turns.
Orange homes, structurally
Old Towne houses run 1,000 to 2,400 square feet on deep lots, one story or one and a half, with narrow doorways, steep back stairs and a detached garage off an alley. Post-war Orange is 1,300 to 1,800 square feet, single level, slab on grade. The hillside tracts push 2,500 to 3,500 across two floors. Orange Park Acres runs largest of all, with mudrooms and back porches that do real work.