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In This Issue...
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History
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The Master of Lent House
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The Master of Lent House
Capitola's Resident Bon Vivant Enjoyed Horses, Good Friends, and the Best View in the County
By Sarah Weston
Al Lent bought the prime piece of real estate in Capitola because he loved to fish.
An avid sportsman, he would watch with field glasses from his home on the bluff by the north end of the railway trestle, looking down to Soquel Creek and waiting until the trout and steelhead began to run. Then he would grab his fly rod and head down the hill.
He was also a generous man who would share that love with any kid in town who was interested.
"He would put a silver dollar on the street in back of the house," recalled his granddaughter Dorothy Lent Washam. "He would give you a fly rod and have you cast. If you hit the fly on the dollar, you got to keep it."
Washam lived with her grandfather in the landmark Lent House until age 12.
Her mother, Lent's daughter, died in childbirth, and Lent took her in and raised her in a household that she describes as full of love and laughter. She remembers poking fun at her grandfather when traces of his New York boyhood came out in phrases like "Thoity-thoid and Thoid Streets."
Al Lent moved to Capitola in 1912 from Concord, where he had been something of a gentleman rancher.
In New York he'd had an uncle who was an attorney or judge – as the family story goes — and that uncle had left him the means to live comfortably.
The Move to Capitola
As a young man Lent had been good friends with baseball Hall of Famer Harry Hooper.
Hooper owned a house on Depot Hill in Capitola, and when Lent came to visit his friend, he fell in love with the seaside community.
"He saw some property on the hillside that was for sale, and they say he bought it for $10," said Washam. "I don't know how true that is, but I'll go along with the story."
Lent made the two-day trip down from Concord by horse-drawn wagon with his son Buzz.
Lent loved horses just as much as fishing. He had a stallion named Chief that he rode in parades, and the Lent House banister was often bedecked with various saddles.
One Mexican saddle was adorned with all manner of sterling silver ornamentation, while another was trimmed with abalone shell.
Lent's neighbor was a young Brad Macdonald, who was busy at the time remodeling the home along Soquel Creek that would become the Shadowbrook Restaurant.
Washam described Macdonald as a "young up-and-coming Al Lent," and with the little granddaughter the two would frequently go horseback riding up the coast, over to Soquel and up in the hills.
Meeting Molly
Al met his second wife Molly (Washam's grandmother had passed away) through their love of horses.
She would ride her own horse, in the company of her two dogs, over to Capitola from Palo Alto.
Molly was well suited to life in Lent House, as she loved gardening and was an excellent cook.
But her special talent, one in which she expressed her own love of horses, was woodcarving.
She was intimately familiar with horse anatomy and made very accurate carvings, "almost like a doctor," said Washam.
"She made miniatures so tiny out of wood that you think that if you held it [that] it would break.
They're just lovely." According to Capitola Museum Director Carolyn Swift, councilman Ron Graves, who visited the Village as a child, recalls her carving an entire carousel of horses.
The house itself suited their eclectic characters.
Washam describes it as a little square village house which was added to as time went on.
The house's signature feature, its second-floor cupola, was added as Washam's bedroom and play room.
A Museum By The Sea
Washam remembers the home as a kind of mini-museum, with arcane trophies gathered from Al's constant bartering over the phone with one person or another.
The walls were hung with fishing rods on hooks, and there were hats with various stories, like the golf hat once worn by actor Bing Crosby.
There was a Chinese hand-carved gaming table with a marble top on which sat a revolving fish tank.
Most memorable were a set of stained glass windows from the 1915 Panama Pacific Exhibition, one of which is currently on display at the Capitola Museum.
Al Lent died in 1969, at the age of 90.
"He was a bon vivant, very well liked," remembered his granddaughter. "I knew him to be a jokester, a gentle soul, a funny man."
Washam remembered the many friends that attended Al's funeral. "There was joy in the faces," she said. "God, he was a scamp."
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