Sinsheimer

Sinsheimer

If you have visited downtown San Luis Obispo you will know the name Sinsheimer. It's that building where a fancy restaurant (Giuseppe's) is now at (on the corner of Chorro and Monterey). 

Here's a link to a YouTube video about the family and the store.

Here's a wonderful image of what the inside of the store was like when it opened in 1884.

And here's an actual photograph of the interior from 1890.

And check out this identification card that refers to the Sinsheimer Building as Granny's General Store.

Gaslights hung from the high ceiling where a "Lampson" money carrier -- a forerunner to the later "zip tube"-- was connected to a conveyor belt. Clerks put the sales slip and the customer's money into a small wooden cup and pulled a cord that sent the cup to the back office.

Sinsheimer Brothers Store is significant because of both its architectural and historical merit. Founded in 1876 by Bernhardt and Henry Sinsheimer, the business was originally located in a small adobe structure near the Mission. In 1884 the store moved to its present site. In 1892 A. Z. Sinsheimer and family assumed control and the building has remained as originally constructed through the years.

Bernhard Sinsheimer was also a land owner. In 1887 he was granted a land patent for 120 acres located in Township 31 South and Range 14 East in Section 34. And below that is a map of where the property was located.

Aaron (A.Z.) and his wife Jeanette had seven sons and two daughters. Two of the sons, Louis and Otto, stayed in San Luis Obispo and ran the store and became well known locally. In 1919, Louis was elected mayor and reelected for twenty years, until 1939. When AZ died in 1919, 'all of the businesses in town closed between eleven and one o'clock in his honor'. Louis, Otto, and a sister Gertrude, were left with the family Victorian, in a large garden at the northwest corner of Marsh and Osos Street, backing onto San Luis Obispo Creek. Louis died in 1951, and Gertrude remained in the house until her death in 1960, with the old house being demolished in 1962. In 1964 a modern Spanish-style office building was built for the San Luis Obispo Savings and Loans Association.