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Brochures tout the Santa Barbara County Courthouse as “the most
beautiful government building in the United States.” I haven’t seen
enough government buildings to know how true that statement is. But the
courthouse is certainly interesting enough to be a reason for visiting
Santa Barbara. It’s an unusual experience to wander around a functioning
public building (with working courtrooms and offices) that’s also a
county park, a popular tourist attraction, and a genuine work of art. I
highly recommend taking one of the daily free tours led by volunteer
docents. If you have a decent docent you’ll learn all about the
building’s history and architectural quirks and enjoy it a lot more.
The courthouse is San Francisco architect William Mooser’s fantasy of a
Spanish-Moorish palace, occupying an entire downtown square block. It’s
complete with archways, turrets, sculptures, a red tile roof, and a 26
meter high clock tower (“El Mirador”). In the center of the complex is
the Sunken Garden, a frequent venue for concerts and ceremonies.
The Sunken Garden was the site of an earlier courthouse, built in 1872.
An earthquake in 1925 destroyed it, along with much of Santa Barbara.
The new courthouse, completed in 1929, was part of a project that
completely rebuilt the downtown area in the “Spanish Colonial Revival”
style of adobe with white stucco and red tile roofs.
If it’s a nice day, an elevator ride to the top of the clock tower will
literally be the high point of your visit to the courthouse. From the
observation deck you’ll have a great view of the courthouse and its
red-tiled roof, along with the city, mountains, and ocean that surround
Santa Barbara. You can also see the distinctive ironwork close up.
The courthouse exterior is festooned with arches, asymmetrical gates and
entryways. Even the light fixtures are quirky. The “Spirit of the Ocean”
fountain adjoins a Roman-style triumphal arch that leads to the Sunken
Garden.
The interior is just as imaginative and whimsical. Corridors are
open-air “loggia” arcades with strange light fixtures and Tunisian floor
tiles. Originally intended to provide cooling air for buildings in sunny
Spain and Italy, the loggia arcades undoubtedly save money on air
conditioning in the summer. But they’re probably much less practical
during a cold and rainy February.
Dan Sayre Groesbeck, a set designer for Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood
epics, painted a mural that covers all four walls of the large room
intended for county Board of Supervisors meetings. The mural depicts
the Spanish colonial history of the Santa Barbara area from 1542 through
1846. Today the Mural Room is the setting for weddings, concerts, and
public meetings. Next to the Mural Room is a tiled staircase and rose
window.
I first visited the Santa Barbara courthouse in May 2001. I couldn’t help noting the contrast between it and the very newest courthouse in Los Angeles, where I had the unhappy experience of doing jury duty a year earlier. That building is a nine-story concrete tombstone with green-tinted windows and a large semicircular metal lattice on top— an abstract depiction of a gallows, perhaps? It casts its shadow over an isolated industrial park near the airport. Even a year and a half before the terrorist attacks of September 2001, anyone entering the building had to go through the metal detector and X-ray security gauntlet found at airports. Possibly to keep visitors occupied while waiting, the Authorities thoughtfully provided signs detailing the many things one is forbidden to do or possess while in the building.
Everyone we jurors encountered felt compelled to apologize for problems with the facility. The jury supervisor apologized for the lack of adequate parking, the lack of proximity to public transit, the lack of a cafeteria, and the lack of anything within walking distance. Judges apologized for the courtroom decor (which resembled office cubicles) and for the cramped jury boxes that would make economy-class airline seating seem spacious. And lawyers were constantly apologizing for violations of normal etiquette caused by the unconventional and dysfunctional layout of the courtrooms. A few months later the newspaper ran an article about workers’ complaints that the building’s ventilation system was causing a variety of illnesses.
Here was a courthouse hostile not merely to criminals and jurors but to judges, lawyers, employees, and the public. I’m forced to conclude that whoever designed it was interested only in creating an impressive (and oppressive) Monument to Bureaucratic Arrogance. In their grandiose plans they apparently forgot that people actually were going to use the building! Unlike the Santa Barbara courthouse, it was clearly designed to be an intimidating and even repellant monstrosity. Nobody would (or should) venture anywhere near it unless officially summoned there, either to serve the State or to face its awesome wrath.
Perhaps this difference exemplifies the changes in American society
over the last quarter-century. The Santa Barbara courthouse possibly
reflects a time when government was (relatively) open, friendly,
accountable, and trustworthy. So the designers put the courts and
offices in a building that was readily accessible to the public. It
symbolized citizens’ pride, in both their architectural treasure
and in the institutions it housed. Similarly, the fortified mausoleum in
Los Angeles possibly reflects how its designers regard the relationship
between citizen and Government at the turn of the 21st century.
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