The shape of Petaluma
Petaluma kept its downtown, which is rarer than it sounds. The iron-front buildings and the Victorian blocks around Oakhill-Brewster survived the twentieth century largely because the money went north instead. What that means in practice is a stock of tall, narrow houses with steep staircases, plaster and lath, transoms above the doors, and floor grates where a modern house would have a ceiling vent.
Cross the river and it is a different town. Old East Petaluma gives way to Payran, Cherry Valley and the McDowell corridor, where the houses are single- and two-story tract builds on regular lots, and the interiors are the ones most people picture: carpet in the bedrooms, vinyl or tile in the wet rooms, a slider onto a fenced yard. Both halves book the same way, but a west-side Victorian rarely takes the same time as an east-side four-bedroom of similar size.
The building stock here
West-side houses run 1,400 to 2,600 square feet across two or three floors, with narrow hallways, original wood you cannot flood, and windows in wooden sashes that hold dust in the corners. East-side homes are wider and flatter: 1,500 to 2,200 square feet, slab foundations, one or two stories, more carpet and simpler layouts. Fog comes up the river most summer nights, so the west side sees more mildew around window frames and in north-facing bathrooms than the east side does.