The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone facts for kids
 |
|
|
Other name
|
The CIA at Greystone |
|---|---|
| Type | Private |
| Established | 1995 |
| Undergraduates | 300 |
| Location |
2555 Main Street, St. Helena, California 94574
|
| Campus | Suburban |
|
Greystone Cellars
|
|
| Area | 13 acres (5.3 ha) |
| Built | 1888 |
| Architect | Percy & Hamilton |
| Architectural style | Richardson Romanesque |
| NRHP reference No. | 78000725 |
| Added to NRHP | August 10, 1978 |
The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone is a special cooking school in St. Helena, California. It's a branch of a bigger cooking school called the the Culinary Institute of America. This campus is found on a road called State Route 29/128.
At Greystone, students can earn two-year degrees in cooking and baking. They can also take shorter courses to get a certificate in these areas. The CIA at Greystone and another campus, the Culinary Institute of America at Copia, together form the school's California branch.
The main building on campus is a huge stone structure. It's about 117,000-square-foot (10,900 m2) big and is known as Greystone Cellars. It was built way back in 1889 for a man named William Bowers Bourn II. It was first used as a place where many different wine makers could work together. The building changed owners many times. From 1945 to 1989, it was owned by the Christian Brothers and used as a winery. The school bought it in 1993. This historic building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, which means it's a very important old place.
Contents
History of Greystone Cellars
Building a Famous Winery
The Greystone campus is built around the old Greystone Cellars building. A wealthy businessman named William Bowers Bourn II had the idea for this building. His family was rich from owning a gold mine and a shipping company. William Bourn II spent his summers in St. Helena when he was young.
In the 1880s, wine sellers in San Francisco were buying wine from Napa Valley at very low prices. This was because most Napa Valley wine makers didn't have places to store and age their wines. So, Bourn decided to build a large winery where many wine makers could work together. He was in his early 30s at the time.
Bourn teamed up with another businessman, E. Everett Wise. They got support from other people in the Napa County wine industry. They hired architects George Percy and Frederick F. Hamilton to design Greystone Cellars. Italian stonemasons built the outside walls, and another company handled the concrete work.
The building plans used new materials and technology for the time. This included a new type of cement called Portland cement. This cement was used to hold the stones together and was also poured over iron rods inside the walls. The third floor was built with strong wood to support heavy wine barrels. The architects planned for the cellars to hold two million gallons of wine. They also planned for thirteen tunnels behind the building to hold another million gallons. However, these tunnels later fell apart because of water and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Many local workers were hired to build the winery. They often lived in tents near the building site and cooked their meals there. The first stone was laid on June 15, 1888. Inside it, they placed bottles of wine, local newspapers, and old coins. The building was finished around June 1889. It was first called the Bourn & Wise Wine Cellar. Later, Bourn bought out Wise and named it Greystone Cellars.
The building cost $250,000, which was a lot of money back then. When it was finished, the architect George Percy said Greystone Cellars was the biggest wine cellar in California, maybe even the world! It was also the first winery in California to use electricity for power and lights. But in 1894, a plant disease called phylloxera hurt the grapevines, and Bourn decided the winery wasn't making enough money.
What Happened Next?
Bourn sold the building for a low price to Charles Carpy. The California Wine Association then took over the property and kept using the Greystone Cellars name for their wine. A year later, the Bisceglia brothers bought Greystone. They made sacramental wine there until 1930, and then again starting in 1933. The Carpy family kept some of the land, including a Victorian house nearby. That house burned down around 1929 and was replaced by a Spanish-style house that the school now owns.
In 1940, the Brothers of the Christian Schools (known as the Christian Brothers) started using the property. They bought it in 1945 and made sparkling wine there from 1950 to 1989. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The Christian Brothers sold the property in 1989. This was because they were selling less wine and it cost too much to make the building stronger against earthquakes.
The Heublein Company bought the property in 1990, shortly after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The earthquake damaged the Greystone Cellars building, making part of it unusable.
Becoming a Culinary School
In 1993, Heublein sold the property to the Culinary Institute of America. The school bought it for $1.68 million, which was much less than its estimated value of $14 million. The Culinary Institute of America then spent $15 million to fix up the building and make it safe from earthquakes.
After all the work was done, the school opened the campus in August 1995. At first, it offered certificate courses. In 2006, the campus started offering two-year degrees. In 2015, the college decided to buy part of Copia, a museum in downtown Napa. The school plans to open another campus there, called the Culinary Institute of America at Copia. This new campus will have the CIA's Food Business School. The Greystone campus was getting too small, so the school bought the northern part of the Copia property for $12.5 million.
Greystone's Architecture
The Greystone Cellars building sits on a hillside on the west side of State Route 29/128. It's about a mile north of the main part of St. Helena. The building is huge, with 117,000 square feet (10,900 m2) of space, three floors, and a basement. It's about 400 feet (120 m) long, 76 feet (23 m) wide, and 66 feet (20 m) tall. Its walls are 22-inch (56 cm) thick! When it was a winery, it could hold 3.5 million gallons of wine.
The building was designed in a style called Richardson Romanesque. This style uses big arches, stone window frames, a low roof, and simple, strong stonework. The outside of the building is made of light gray volcanic stone from the local area, held together with Portland cement. The decorations are made of red stone. William Bourn, who had it built, wanted only gray stones on the front of the building. The roof originally had black slate tiles.
The building has a front part that sticks out, measuring 50 by 20 feet (15 m × 6.1 m). This part held the main entrance, an office, and a room for tasting wine. The old office has walls and ceilings made of oak wood. It also has a stone fireplace. The old tasting room has mahogany walls and ceilings, a special wooden floor, and wine racks. The windows are made of polished glass with colorful stained glass at the top. These tasting and sales rooms still look much like they did when they were first built. This front part also has a 20-by-20-foot (6.1 m × 6.1 m) stone tower that goes above the roof. It was built to hold a large water tank. A driveway goes around the front and back of the building.
Inside, the building has two separate sections with a large hallway between them. Originally, there was an iron staircase and a special elevator that went to the third floor. Each side of the hallway on every floor had three wide doors. Iron pipes were put through the walls and floors to move wine from one part of the building to another.
Over the years, some things have changed. The front lawn and flower beds were paved over, and a new driveway was made through the stone wall.
What Students Learn
The campus offers different programs for students. These include:
- Two-year degrees in cooking skills (culinary arts).
- Two-year degrees in baking and making desserts (baking and pastry arts).
- A master's degree program for learning about managing wine businesses.
- A 30-week cooking certificate program.
In 2013, about 60% of the 300 students were in the cooking degree program. About 23% were in the baking and pastry degree program, and 17% were in a certificate program.
School Facilities
The main school building is the Greystone Cellars building. Inside, you'll find:
- Teaching kitchens where students learn to cook.
- The Wine Spectator Greystone Restaurant.
- The Bakery Café by illy.
- The Spice Islands Marketplace, which is the campus store.
- The De Baun and Ecolab Theatres, which are auditoriums for cooking demonstrations and lectures.
- Administrative offices.
- The Margie Schubert Library, next to the teaching kitchens.
Teaching Kitchens
The teaching kitchens at Greystone are huge, about 15,000-square-foot (1,400 m2), and are on the third floor of the main building. They were designed without inside walls so that people could move around easily and share ideas. These kitchens look different from regular stainless steel commercial kitchens. They use materials like granite, stone, tile, and wood.
The kitchens have special Bonnet stoves and many different cooking tools. These include rotisseries (for roasting meat), induction cooktops (which use magnets to heat pans), a stone hearth oven, convection ovens (which use fans to circulate hot air), combi steamers (which can steam and roast), French tops (flat cooking surfaces), and many large mixers. The baking and pastry kitchen has 16-foot (4.9 m) long granite and oak tables for preparing pastries and dough.
On the first floor, there's a 5,000-square-foot (460 m2) Viking Teaching Kitchen. It's designed for 36 to 40 students at a time. The equipment in this kitchen was given by the founders of Viking Range Corporation. It was installed in 2010 as part of a big update to the building's first floor. This update also included a chocolate-making area and the campus store.
Restaurants on Campus
The Gatehouse Restaurant is a casual restaurant where students from the degree programs work. They serve modern food made with local ingredients. The Bakery Café by illy is run by students in the Baking and Pastry Arts Certificate program. This café offers sandwiches, salads, soups, fresh pastries, breads, coffee, and teas.
Two other restaurants used to be on campus: the Conservatory Restaurant and the Wine Spectator Greystone Restaurant (WSGR). The WSGR was run by students in the cooking degree program. It focused on using local and seasonal ingredients. The dining room had open cooking areas so guests could watch the chefs work. These restaurants closed around 2016 when the campus changed its organization after buying Copia.
Student Homes
Vineyard Lodge II (middle)
Guest House (bottom)
The campus has homes for 130 students. There are three main buildings: the 18-room Guest House, the 41-room Vineyard Lodge I, and the 30-room Vineyard Lodge II. Students can have single, double, or triple rooms. The Guest House is right on campus. The Vineyard Lodges are about three-quarters of a mile (1.2 km) mile away, but there's a shuttle bus to take students back and forth.
The newest student home, Vineyard Lodge II, was built around 2009. The school expected more students to enroll, so they needed more housing. This building has two stories, 31 dorm rooms, a kitchen, an activity room, and an outdoor deck. The school wanted it to be good for the environment, so it has solar panels for electricity and a system for wastewater. It's also built with metal frames instead of wood, which helps prevent termites, mold, and fire.
Other Cool Places
- The De Baun Theatre is a kitchen where chefs give cooking demonstrations to the public. It has 48 seats.
- The Ecolab Theatre is a large auditorium with 125 seats. It's used for cooking demonstrations, lectures, and food and wine tastings. It has a 22-foot (6.7 m) cooking area and big video screens.
- The Rudd Center for Professional Wine Studies is in an old distillery building from 1889. It's used for programs about wine. It has special classrooms where students learn to taste and smell wines carefully. It also has a wine cave that can hold 4,000 bottles and a private dining room.
- The Spice Islands Marketplace is the campus store. It sells cooking equipment, cookbooks, uniforms, and food ingredients. Next to the store is a "flavor bar" where guests can try different tastes.
- The Ventura Center for Menu Research and Development has 8,000 square feet (740 m2) of classrooms and a kitchen designed like a theater.
- The Williams Center for Flavor Discovery is in the old gatehouse building. Students use it to study flavors in food and wine. The results of their tasting tests are shared with people in the food industry to help them understand flavors better.
See also
