Railroad Square District (Boundary Decrease)

Railroad Square is a compact commercial and industrial district at the western end of 4th Street in Santa Rosa, California. Its fifteen significant structures date from 1888 to 1923 and include brick warehouses along the tracks, one-story brick and stucco storefronts, two hotels and a 1904 depot. Four buildings around a central park, the Northwestern Pacific Depot, the Western Hotel, the La Rose Hotel and the Railway Express Agency building, were built of locally quarried stone by Italian immigrant stonemasons, forming the largest early stone cluster in Sonoma County. The area grew after the railroad arrived in 1871, serving travelers, workers and local industries such as mills, a tannery and wine cellars. Most buildings were rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake. The brick commercial buildings are especially valued because earthquakes and urban renewal destroyed most others in the city. Freeway construction in the 1960s cut the district off from downtown, which helped preserve its early twentieth-century appearance.