The Barber

The Barber is one of Chico's most storied neighborhoods: a former company town just south of Little Chico Creek, between West 9th and West 16th Streets, Park Avenue and Chestnut Street. It was built in the early 1900s to house employees of the Diamond Match factory and named for Ohio Columbus Barber, the company's president. Downtown Chico lies immediately across the creek to the north.

Diamond Match built more than houses — at its peak the settlement had a social hall, a swimming pool and stores alongside its bungalows. The plant operated from about 1906 to 1975, and the village was eventually absorbed into Chico, but the housing stock still tells the story. The company's worker bungalows follow a recognizable pattern — a large porch, a basement, a front door centered between two front windows — and locals still call them Diamond Match houses. Along Broadway near 14th and 15th Streets stand the larger executive homes, including the 1904 Clough Home, built for the company's first Pacific manager and altered in the early 1920s by architect Julia Morgan.

Today the Barber remains a working-class neighborhood. Chico Country Day School, a public charter for grades K–8, sits in the middle of the neighborhood on West 11th Street, in a 1905 building once used for beekeeping and making honeycomb frames from match-factory wood scraps. Rotary Park anchors 16th and Broadway, West 16th Street — the old workers' route to the factory — remains the neighborhood's spine, and the Comanche Creek Greenway trail connects the area south toward the Midway Bike Path. To the south, the factory grounds are the subject of the Barber Yard redevelopment plan now moving through the City, anchored by the 1903 Engineering Building.

Browse The Barber homes for sale below to own a piece of Chico history.