Why Pomona homes are different
In Pomona the window itself can be the historic feature, and the city treats it that way.
Pomona has three residential historic districts. Lincoln Park, designated in 1998 and the
largest, covers 45 blocks and more than 800 structures, mostly single-family houses built
between the 1890s and the 1940s in Victorian, Craftsman and period revival styles. Wilton
Heights followed in 1999 with the most varied mix of styles, and Hacienda Park in 2003, with
houses spanning nearly a century. In all three, changing a window or a door is not just a
building permit. It goes through a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Planning Division.
The city’s own records show how seriously that is taken. Its published log of minor
certificate decisions includes a denial of a request to replace original wood windows with
vinyl. In 2025 the Historic Preservation Commission took up a request to legalize 24 vinyl
windows that had been installed without permits on a contributing house in Hacienda Park,
and staff recommended continuing the hearing into 2026. And when the commission approved a new accessory unit
at a Lincoln Park Craftsman, it required single-hung wood windows matching the scale,
form and detailing of the originals, with wood trim at every window and door.
So in a district we plan the job the way the review will see it: we record what is original,
look at whether a sash can be repaired or has to be replaced in kind, and prepare the
application before anything is ordered. Doing it in the other order is how a house ends up in
front of the commission after the fact.
Outside the districts the conversation changes completely. The 1950s are Pomona’s biggest
building decade, and in Phillips Ranch, the master-planned hillside community in the
southwest corner of the city where construction began in 1965, the stock runs later still.
There, a homeowner weighs frame, glass and style on their own merits, and the historic
review question does not arise. Knowing which side of that line a house sits on is
the first thing we check.
What a job costs in Pomona
We do not publish a price list, because replacing original wood sash in kind on a Lincoln Park Craftsman, with a Certificate of Appropriateness in hand first, and replacing a sliding patio door on a Phillips Ranch hillside house are not the same job. The cost pages show which choices raise or lower a quote, and the free in-home measure is when we work one out for your house.
