Restoring the county's historic courthouse Restoring the county's historic courthouse (June 01, 2005)

By Marion Softky

Almanac Staff Writer

By some time next summer, downtown Redwood City may become an honest-to-goodness tourist destination.

Visualize the courthouse block, located across Broadway from the Fox Theater. The clunky Depression-era concrete building will be gone. In its place will be a landscaped plaza leading to the historic courthouse with its tall dome, and with the pillared portico restored to its 1908 magnificence.

Several hundred people gathered May 25 to celebrate groundbreaking for the demolition of the 1939 annex that wrapped around the front of the original "Temple of Justice."

"We will restore the past to create a new future for Redwood City," said Supervisor Rich Gordon.

The historic courthouse that is being restored is actually San Mateo County's fifth, said Mitch Postel, president of the San Mateo County Historical Association, which runs the county's history museum where judges once presided and supervisors steered the county. Actor Bela Lugosi, better known as Count Dracula, was even married here, noted one speaker.

Back in the mid-19th century, San Mateo County started out doing its business in a rented stable. The first two-story official courthouse was dedicated in 1858. The jail occupied the basement, which was used for other functions, including recruiting for the Civil War, according to a 1997 article in "La Peninsula" by the late Sewall "Skip" Bogart of Portola Valley.

That courthouse lost its second floor in the great earthquake of 1868. The next real courthouse -- topped by a 10-foot-high "Lady Justice" carved out of wood -- opened in 1882.

By 1902, the county needed another courthouse and commissioned a new stone building with a high dome. Construction started in 1904. The 1906 earthquake severely damaged the new courthouse and the two old ones. Only the dome was left standing intact.

"The Temple of Justice" was inaugurated in 1908, and remained a landmark until the Depression, when the New Deal was trying to rev up the economy and create jobs. The Public Works Administration funded construction of the three-story addition that eliminated the stately portico and covered the original plaza, pushing the building up against Broadway.

Historical and architectural purists loathed the new facade. The late Portola Valley historian Dorothy Regnery, who got the building listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, deplored the "horrible design, poorly planned." She wrote: "A less appropriate style could hardly be imagined."

The restoration will cost $12.5 million, Mr. Postel estimated. Tearing down the building and creating a new Courthouse Plaza will cost $7.5 million, to be paid by the Redwood City Redevelopment Agency. San Mateo County is contributing the site and the building.

The historical association is spending about $5 million in privately raised funds to improve the inside of the building, Mr. Postel said. It has already restored the elegant Courtroom A, with its colored glass dome, installed a commercial kitchen, and upgraded restrooms, he said. It is now starting work on three new exhibit galleries.

"It will be fabulous when that facade comes down," said Undersheriff Greg Munks of Portola Valley, who is chairman of the historical association board.

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