The Earthquake That Built a City
Near Santa Barbara, California
At six forty-four in the morning on June twenty-ninth, nineteen twenty-five, an earthquake centered just offshore shook downtown Santa Barbara for about nineteen seconds. Thirteen people died. Most of the commercial district came down. The Masonic Temple collapsed. The Hotel Californian lost its upper floors. When the dust settled, the city had a choice: rebuild what it had, or build something else.
The Santa Barbara Community Arts Association had been pushing for architectural unity since the early nineteen twenties. The city had created an Architectural Board of Review in nineteen twenty-five, just months before the quake. When the rubble was cleared, the Association had their moment. The argument they made was straightforward: Santa Barbara had a Spanish colonial history, a Mediterranean climate, and a landscape suited to stucco and tile roofs. The new downtown should look like it belonged to all three.
Every commercial building rebuilt in the core after nineteen twenty-five went up in Spanish Colonial Revival style. The standard was enforced by the Board of Review. Variations were permitted; departure from the basic idiom was not. The result, visible from where you are standing now, is the most unified Spanish Colonial Revival commercial district in the United States.
The courthouse completed in nineteen twenty-nine is the high point of the style: a sunken garden, hand-painted ceilings, a clock tower visible from most of downtown, mosaic tile work sourced from Spain and Morocco. Architectural critics have called it the finest public building in California.
What makes Santa Barbara unusual is not just the aesthetic but the persistence. The code the Arts Association persuaded the city to adopt in the nineteen twenties still governs every building permit in the commercial core today. The National Historic Preservation Act, which created the federal framework for protecting designed historic districts, was not enacted until nineteen sixty-six. Santa Barbara was enforcing design continuity forty years before the law caught up.
