Railroad Square District (Additional Documentation)

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.