Through the decades Santa Barbara has been beautified by the efforts of a number of talented and innovative architects. The name of one of these, Joseph J. Plunkett, will be forever linked with one of the most distinctive buildings in the city, the Arlington Theatre.
Plunkett was born in Rome, New York, in 1900. He entered Syracuse State University in 1919. During his junior year in 1922, he and some friends took a trip to California. Plunkett never returned east and never completed his degree. Instead, he associated himself with an architect in Santa Maria, where he engaged in design work for the Santa Maria Inn. In 1923, he married, and the young couple planned to move to Los Angeles. They never got farther south than Santa Barbara, and here they settled.
The earthquake of June 1925 presented young Plunkett with a marvelous opportunity. Not only was there the need to rebuild the city, but the trend to give Santa Barbara a unified architectural look, centered on the Spanish Colonial Revival style, accelerated. So Plunkett, a great admirer of George Washington Smith, the foremost practitioner of this style in Santa Barbara, was in the right place at the right time. He joined with William A. Edwards to form the firm of Edwards and Plunkett soon after the earthquake. The following year, Henry Howell joined the duo. Howell would leave in 1928.