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Health & Fitness

Names on the Signs in Santa Cruz: The Institutions

A proper town needs institutions, and Santa Cruz established many of them in the 1860s.

 

Santa Cruz officially became a town in 1866, but it still had a long way to go. A proper town needs some institutions: schools, churches, governments, civic and social organizations. Those institutions, in turn, need public and government buildings, meeting halls, parks – places for the townies to do town things.

From 1791 to about 1834, Santa Cruz had exactly one institution – Mission Santa Cruz. The mission was never very successful, and by mid-century the mission complex was in pretty sad shape. The adobe buildings that performed so well in the hot, arid southwest couldn’t take our area’s rainy winters and occasional earthquakes. First the chapel’s bell tower collapsed, to be followed by the rest of the front facade in January of 1857.

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A wooden front replaced the fallen adobe in 1861, and the truncated structure was put back into service – but never again for church services. A new wooden church was built next door and given an English translation of its old name – Holy Cross. (You can see both structures in the photo – the wooden façade of the old chapel is visible through the trees to the right of the newer building)

The other pre-statehood institution was the juzgado, previously discussed in . The juzgado was an administrative center for the pueblo of Santa Cruz, constructed sometime after the secularization of the mission in 1834. The offices of the alcalde and other pueblo officials, the courtroom and the jail were all located there.

After statehood, the first County court met there. In following years, the court moved from one rented building to another. From 1860 to 1867, the court convened on the upper floor of the at the junction of Willow (Pacific) Avenue and Main (Front) Street . That room also served as a meeting place for many other groups.

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The first County Courthouse was built, in 1867, on Cooper Street (see photo). Many of us older folks remember the , which was the second courthouse, built of stone in the same location after the first structure burned down in 1894. The only other government building in 1867 was the County jail, located just to the east of today’s Holy Cross Church. The stark little windowless building, made of granite blocks, had four cells and a central hallway (see photo).

In addition to Holy Cross, several other churches were established in Santa Cruz during the late 1850 and 60s. The Methodist church on the corner of Green and Mission Streets was the first (previously mentioned in Uptown and Downtown). It was followed, in 1858, by the First Congregational Church, built on what became known as Church Street. It stood about where the Cruzio (formerly Sentinel) building parking lot is today. The oldest church building still standing in Santa Cruz is Calvary Episcopal, which opened its doors in 1865 (see photo).

The old juzgado found a new use when Holy Cross parish bought it from William Blackburn in 1862 and a group of nuns converted the Eagle Hotel into a . Just around the corner was Temperance Hall, built in 1860 and located on Mission Street across from Mission Hill School.

The name suggests that it was owned by an organization dedicated to moderating the hard-drinking habits of some of the town’s residents, but I haven’t found any information beyond the name and the fact that it was used by various groups as a meeting hall. I guess it’s time to hit the microfilm collection at the library again. Temperance Hall is visible in of Mission Hill School, posted with The River. It’s the tall building on the right with the little cupola.

Several other schools opened during the 1860s to serve the growing Santa Cruz population. Branciforte School opened in 1860, originally located on Soquel Drive where Branciforte Plaza is now. Bayview School (today’s school is in the same location) and Grant School (where Grant Street Park is now? – not sure) followed in 1865, showing that the residential areas were spreading out along the main roads out of town.

The town had to wait a few more years for a City Hall and paved streets, but by the end of the decade Santa Cruz had its first lending library. A group of citizens collected donations to buy books and Frank Cooper volunteered some space in his store, across from the new courthouse. The formerly rowdy cow town was starting to look more and more like a genteel eastern village.

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