October 17, 2001

When "shadows" outlast stone and marble

One of the few real advantages of getting older, outside of the very obvious fact that it means I've avoided dying to date, is the perspective it gives me about what's permanent and what's not.

When I had a cup of coffee on top of the World Trade Center ($3.78, May 2000) I chose not to buy a souvenir cup. I figured I could always pick one up on my next visit.

Growing up in Santa Rosa, two landmarks I expected to stay forever, absent the next 8.3 on the Richter, were the courthouse in the center of town, and the Carnegie Library, an ivy covered, dressed stone structure on 4th and E, a tribute to the Italian stone cutters responsible for its beauty and character.

As permanent as I thought the stone and marble of mid-forties downtown Santa Rosa, so I contrasted as temporary ("shadows" my teacher called them) the black and white movies of the time. A movie was made, came around for a short time, perhaps with a return visit or two in the dowdier movie houses not long after. Then it disappeared. "Shadow of a Doubt", a Hitchcock masterpiece of 1943, made in Santa Rosa, was an exception and lasted longer than most, but even it disappeared from the consciousness of most Americans well before 1950.

Santa Rosa, a city of about 17,000 in 1950, is now almost eight times that. While the city prospers, both library and courthouse are gone, removed not by earthquake or fire, but to make way for "progress." The library that replaced the institution of my youth has more space, more bookshelves and magazine racks, tables and chairs, even computers, but it's lost much that made the library so memorable a part of my youth. Santa Rosa needed a new and larger library, but the old building should have been saved and another use found. The courthouse was declared a seismic hazard, but the effort to demolish it showed it might have survived a 10 on the Richter. Now the only places I find those magnificent buildings of my youth are old postcards or a video of "Shadow of a Doubt." It turns out Hitchcock's movie was the longest lasting monument after all. It's outlasted stone and marble, as well as Joseph Cotton and Hitchcock himself.

Many Santa Rosans, in retrospect, probably wish they'd fought harder to save library and courthouse. At least they have the movie. Pacificans have far fewer memorable buildings than does Santa Rosa, and no Hitchcock thrillers.

We must preserve what little we have. The Little Brown Church is worth saving, both for its own sake and because we have so few other buildings built especially for public purposes.

The Little Brown Church, which young people know only as the Pacifica police station, was built in 1910, one of three built along the route of the Ocean Shore railroad by the Presbyterian church of that era.

When the city bought the church, in 1983, council and staff recognized its historic importance, and accepted the great responsibility involved in its care. That today the old building needs a new roof, a serious paint job, and a great deal of general repair only points up the problems inherent when a strapped city government "defers maintenance" repeatedly on buildings that deserve better treatment. When Pacifica police relinquish the building in favor of new quarters in Vallemar, I hope the city will make a series of right and responsible decisions to preserve a building that's been so important a part of this community and its people.

E mail Paul Azevedo at Paul@thereactor.net. Check his website at http://www.thereactor.net.