{"nrhp_refnum":"79000561","name":"Railroad Square District (Additional Documentation)","other_names":["See Also:Hotel La Rose","Railroad Square","Railroad Historic District"],"category":"district","location":{"address":"Bounded by Third, Davis, Wilson, Fifth and Sixth Streets and the Santa Rosa Creek","address_restricted":false,"city":"Santa Rosa","county":"Sonoma County","state":"CA","lat":38.43719849900006,"lon":-122.72146730628205,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1979-04-20","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Commerce","Transportation","Architecture","Ethnic Heritage-European"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A 23-acre historic commercial and railroad district in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California, bounded by Third, Davis, Fifth, Wilson and Sixth Streets and Santa Rosa Creek. It contains buildings, rail yards and a park dating from about 1888 to the 1920s.","why_significant":"The district preserves Santa Rosa's railroad-era commercial and industrial core, which survived the 1906 earthquake rebuilding, later urban renewal and freeway construction. Its four locally quarried stone buildings, built by Italian immigrant stonemasons, form the most concentrated grouping of early stone buildings in Sonoma County. Its simple brick commercial storefronts and warehouses are rare in a city that lost most such buildings.","narrative":"Railroad Square is a 23-acre district in Santa Rosa, California, centered on the 1904 railroad depot and a small park at the foot of Fourth Street. It holds about 38 numbered parcels, including brick warehouses built from 1888 to 1914, one-story brick and stucco storefronts along Fourth Street, two hotels, a water tower and the rail yards. The most important buildings are four stone structures around the park: the depot, the Western Hotel, the La Rose Hotel and the Railway Express Agency building. Italian stonemasons who immigrated around 1900 cut and set the local stone. The railroad reached Santa Rosa in 1871 and made this area the center of the city's industry, with a tannery, brewery, flour and woolen mills and wine cellars. Most buildings date from the rebuilding after the 1906 earthquake. Freeway construction in the 1960s cut the area off from downtown, which left its early character largely unchanged. Few comparable commercial brick buildings survive elsewhere in the city.","period_of_significance":"1888-1923","architect_builder":"Various; stone buildings by Italian stonemasons including Peter Maroni, Natale Forni, Massimo Galeazzi and Angelo Sodini","architectural_style":"Mission Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival and simple early 20th-century brick commercial false-front buildings","criteria":[],"status_note":"Largely intact and relatively unaltered, with remodeling and restoration only recently begun; some buildings were undergoing rehabilitation, and the Northwestern Pacific still ran freight service from the stone depot.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:55:32.295712-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_CA/79000561.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/79000561/64190d1a78-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/79000561/64190d1a78-1600.webp","licence":"Public domain","author":"Anlace","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rrsqrazorback.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Anlace</a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rrsqrazorback.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/123862116","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Square_District","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q50824922"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/california/sonoma-county/railroad-square-district-additional-documentation-79000561/"}