The '89 Quake took down a lot of cool old buildings in downtown Santa Cruz, but the old Palomar Hotel made it through. It took heavy damage, but the owners were savvy enough to fix the old girl up again. Thank God. Is that a building, or what?
The Palomar's architect, William Weeks, was an interesting guy. A respected designer of high schools, post offices, and other staid public buildings, Mr. Weeks just, well, went off his meds and did something a little crazy, a little over the top. The old Palomar is a slick old Deco highrise, no question. But it's a little more. See those little disk-like things down the side of the building?
Yah! The building is covered with conquistadors! You look at the Palomar, and it stares back at you! And the old dining room, now a Mexican restaurant, is a wonderful 20s Spanish/Moorish/Chinese mishmosh of vaulted ceilings, gold leaf, balconies, and peculiar chandeliers.
The Palomar's not a real hotel anymore. The upper floors host a rooming house for people on fixed incomes. But Cruzados still flock to the lower floors for the Mexican restaurant and sports bar, the coffee house, the taqueria, the shoe and hat stores, even the former hotel ballroom. It's a place to meet, a place to hang, a place to see and be seen. The Palomar was, and is, a piece of work.
Ah, but the Palomar was builtl 80 years ago when wild-eyed architects like Weeks could have some fun and make people like it. Here's what people are building on Pacific in 2008.
Isn't it sad? A plastic edifice. Fake stone, fake pillars, no decor. Rhumba says it looks like one of the buildings in a model railroad layout.
And we waited 20 years for this. The building site's been vacant since the '89 quake, and the owners waited until now to rebuild, long after everyone else. To make sure that the rebuilt downtown would take off again before they committed any cash.
So they waited to start until, oh, three years ago. And now there it is, all 50,000 square feet of it ready to go, in the face of a nasty recession. And they want five dollars a square foot. And not a square foot of it is rented. Bad timing...you think?
Plastic, dull, soulless thing made of industrial strength Legos. That's not a building.
This is a building!
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3 comments:
It's one of our favorite buildings. When folks visit from out of town it's one of the places we take them. Boston based F-I-L is an architect, loved showing him around Santa Cruz, eating tacos at Palomar was all he talks about.
Claire:
The Palomar and the Del Mar pretty much define downtown for me. And I guess for a lot of people, because a lot of effort was put into saving both of them after the quake.
The El Palomar is my favorite place to eat -- just for the dining room. And the Del Mar is still the best theater in town, as far as I'm concerned.
are you sure they are conquistadores? I always thought they were fishermen, like the gordon's new england type symbol...!
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