Peninsula woman honored for preserving California landmarks.

After a storied career preserving architectural treasures, Carmel’s Enid Sales was recently named California Preservationist of the Year by the California Preservation Foundation, a statewide organization for preservation.

“It sounds like a big deal, doesn’t it?” laughs Sales. “I guess I’ve just been doing it a long time.”

A very long time. In the early 1950s, Sales was a young woman with a mild interest in architecture and construction living in San Francisco. When she discovered how quickly local contractors were tearing down the city’s rich forest of Victorian houses and buildings, she grew alarmed and decided to do something about it. So began a unique and wildly successful career in preservation.

“When I saw what was happening to the Victorians I went out and got a contractor’s license—the first ever issued by the state to a woman,” she says. “I remember sitting in that room taking the test surrounded by men.”

Armed with the contractor’s license, she used it to rehabilitate the Victorians.

“I was the only one doing rehabilitation work with my contractor’s license,” she says. “It was pretty unusual for the time.”

Recognized as a forward-thinking visionary, she was hired by the city’s redevelopment agency in 1966. With a staff of six architects under her, Sales managed to save over 350 buildings in the 10 years she worked for the agency. It’s hard to understate the importance of her work during this transitional time. Today, San Francisco is defined by the very buildings she helped preserve, sometimes going to great lengths to do so.

“I think the most impressive thing we ever did was move 13 two-story Victorians from one neighborhood to another in the middle of the night,” she muses. “We had to block traffic coming off the highway and take down the trolley and power lines so we could get them through.”

While the power was off, one of the city’s famed trolley cars rolled away and Sales’ crew barely got it stopped in time before it could cause damage.

In 1976, Sales retired to a vineyard in Healdsburg where she spent the next 10 years growing grapes and relaxing.

“But I’ve never really been able to retire,” she says.

In 1986 she moved to the Monterey Peninsula and got re-involved with historic preservation. Today she is the executive director of the Carmel Preservation Foundation, which did the first historic survey of the city.

She also belongs to the county’s Historic Resources Review Board and is the program chairman of the Alliance of Monterey Area Preservationists, an organization that lends its experience and clout to other smaller preservationist groups.

I think [organizations like AMAP] are going to be the coming thing,” Sales says. “One organization that helps everyone.”

Most recently, Sales and AMAP helped save Marsh’s Oriental Building in downtown Monterey, which the Catholic Diocese wanted to demolish. Instead, a historian and retailer named Jerry Jannsen will move his oriental arts business into the space and renovate it.

For Peninsula residents, that means a foundational piece of architecture will continue to anchor downtown Monterey. For Sales, it’s just another day’s work for the California Preservationist of the Year.

AMAP will sponsor “The Economic Value of Preservation,” a forum featuring Richard Roddewig, a land-use lawyer with a special interest in land-use economics, and Bruce Judge, who will discuss the economics of architecture, 10am Friday at the Monterey Conference Center’s Ferrante Room. a wine and appetizer reception follows at 4pm. The cost for the forum and reception is $25/members of AMAP, the Heritage Society of Pacific Grove, or employees or officers of the City of Monterey; $30/general.