San Jose Downtown Historic District

Two blocks of downtown San Jose make up this commercial district, bounded roughly by East Santa Clara Street, East San Fernando Street, and South First and Third Streets. Its buildings range from the 1870s to the early 1940s and show how the city's business core changed over time. The Italianate Oddfellows Building of 1883 is the best surviving example from the 1870s and 1880s. Romanesque buildings along South First Street, including the Knox-Goodrich, Letitia and Security buildings, reflect the orchard-era prosperity of the 1890s and were designed by local architects such as Levi Goodrich and Jacob Lenzen. After the 1906 earthquake, Edwardian, Mission Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival buildings appeared, followed by Moderne designs in the 1930s and 1940s. The 1926 Bank of America Building, San Jose's first skyscraper, anchors the district. Parking lots and altered buildings are counted as non-contributing, but the historic buildings remain the dominant presence. The district was recognized as the county's best concentration of varied commercial architecture.