The Santa Barbara County Courthouse is a well-known example of

Spanish Colonial Revival architecture The Spanish Colonial Revival architecture (), often known simply as Spanish Revival, is a term used to encompass a number of revivalist architectural styles based in both Spanish colonial architecture and Spanish architecture in general. Thes ...

and is located in Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara County, California. Started in 1926 and completed in 1929, the Courthouse originally served as Santa Barbara County’s superior courthouse, jail, and administrative office. The Courthouse was included on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1981, was made a City of Santa Barbara Historic Landmark in 1982, a

California Historical Landmark A California Historical Landmark (CHL) is a building, structure, site, or place in the U.S. state of California that has been determined to have statewide historical landmark significance. Criteria Historical significance is determined by meetin ...

in 2004, and a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a National Register of Historic Places property types, building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the Federal government of the United States, United States government f ...

in 2005. Over the years, most County administrative offices were relocated to other County buildings. The current Courthouse houses six County Superior Court rooms, the Mural Room (formerly the Supervisors Assembly Room), the County Hall of Records, the County Public Defender's Office, offices of the County General Services Department, and the McMahon Law Library. The Courthouse is open to the public and is a popular site for community gatherings and weddings. Architect Charles Willard Moore called it the "grandest Spanish Colonial Revival structure ever built," and the prime example of Santa Barbara's adoption of Spanish Colonial as its civic style.

Early courthouse history

Santa Barbara County was one of the 27 original counties of California and was formed in 1850 when California became the 31st state. The County in 1855 purchased the original Courthouse site on which stood a mercantile store called Kays Adobe. Kays Adobe served the County as a courthouse and administrative building until it was replaced around the perimeter of the same block in 1872 with a

Greek Revival Greek Revival architecture is a architectural style, style that began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe, the United States, and Canada, ...

style building. The County continued to grow, and in 1900 County officials began consideration of a new courthouse. During this period, Spanish Colonial Revival architecture was gaining popularity in California, and in 1919, the County held an architectural competition to replace the Greek Revival courthouse. Santa Barbara was struck by an earthquake in 1925 that caused loss of life and property damage. The 1872 Greek Revival courthouse and attendant buildings were damaged. In 1926, the County commenced construction of the new Courthouse on the location of the 1872 courthouse. The new Courthouse (including approximately 148,000 square feet of work space) was completed in March 1929 and dedicated on August 14, 1929. The Courthouse included two courtrooms, the County Board of Supervisors Assembly Room, jury assembly rooms, offices for the County Auditor, the Office of the County Treasury/Tax Collector, the Superintendent of Schools, a Sheriff's Department Office, the County jail, the County Hall of Records and other administrative offices.

Courthouse Building

Courtrooms

When built in 1929, the courthouse contained two courtrooms and various county administrative offices. Over the years, as the county’s administration needs grew, county offices relocated to other nearby county buildings. In 1960, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors Assembly Room was relocated and the courthouse was remodeled to add additional courtrooms. The courthouse now holds six courtrooms.

Jail

The 1929 jail was originally built to house 140 prisoners. The top floor contains two solitary confinement cells. The fourth floor housed male prisoners. The third floor housed female prisoners. The second floor served as an apartment for the County’s jailers and their families. The first floor housed offices of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff. The jail cells include tool proof bars and are constructed similar to the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in

San Francisco, California San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. The County built new jail facilities in Santa Barbara in 1971 and the County’s prisoners were relocated. The Courthouse jail is unrestored and houses a few County administrative offices.

Hall of Records

The County Hall of Records houses the County Clerk-Recorder’s office and sits at the north-west corner of the Courthouse building. It is the repository for County real estate, marriage and related records. Its architectural features include a 13’ double door featuring repousse copper plates depicting allegorical scenes of California history. The Hall of Records also includes an atrium and a 45’ skylight.

Geothermal Field

Beneath the lawn on the North-Western corner of the Courthouse lies a geothermal field. Constructed in 2003, the geothermal field provides a sustainable source of energy, powering the building's heating and cooling systems. The lawn was drilled with 32 holes, 5 and 1/4 inches in diameter, 18 feet apart bored to a depth of 400 feet where the earth has a constant temperature of 69 to 70 degrees. Circulating water in pipes is heated or cooled to that constant temperature. While unseen, this geothermal field is vital to the Courthouse's operation, showcasing innovation and environmental responsibility within a historical landmark.

Santa Barbara County Public Defender

The courthouse is the home to the County

Public Defender A public defender is a lawyer appointed to represent people who otherwise cannot reasonably afford to hire a lawyer to defend themselves in a trial. Several countries provide people with public defenders, including the UK, Belgium, Hungary and Si ...

’s Office. The County Public Defender's Office is a government agency that provides legal representation to adults and juveniles who are accused of crimes in the County and cannot afford an attorney.

Restoration

The Santa Barbara County Courthouse has undergone several restoration projects including the 2022 restoration effort on the buildings roof and exterior.

Architecture

The

Panama–California Exposition The Panama–California Exposition was a World's fair, world exposition held in San Diego, California, between January 1, 1915, and January 1, 1917. The exposition celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal, and was meant to tout San Diego as t ...

of 1915 in

San Diego San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...

introduced Spanish Colonial Revival architecture to the United States. In 1925, the County’s Board of Supervisors hired the William Mooser Company of San Francisco to design and build the Courthouse in a Spanish-Andalusian castle style. With its red tiled roofs, white stucco walls and various balconies, the Courthouse could be a castle in

Andalusia Andalusia ( , ; , ) is the southernmost autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Peninsular Spain, located in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, in southwestern Europe. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomou ...

. Examples of the Courthouse’s Andalusian castle motif are found in the main staircase. The first example is the presence of a small balcony called a “Hoard”, which would have been used for defensive purposes. Castle defenders would have stood on the Hoard and used the attendant “Lancet” windows to direct weapons fire down upon potential enemies. A third example of Andelusian castle architecture is found in the Courthouse’s rotunda staircase. The staircase is designed as a defensive element, providing for the ascension and descension of the stairs by castle defenders in a manner that facilitates a defensive resistance to ascending enemies.

Interior

The courthouse’s interior features numerous Spanish Colonial Revival architectural elements. The floors feature

TerraCotta Terracotta, also known as terra cotta or terra-cotta (; ; ), is a clay-based non-vitreous ceramic OED, "Terracotta""Terracotta" MFA Boston, "Cameo" database fired at relatively low temperatures. It is therefore a term used for earthenware obj ...

tiles manufactured in

Lincoln, California Lincoln is a city in Placer County, California, United States, part of the Sacramento, California, Sacramento metropolitan area. Located north of Roseville, California, Roseville in an area of rapid suburban development, it grew 282 percent b ...

by Gladding, McBean and Company and the wall tiles were created by renowned Tunisian ceramic artist Jacob Chemla. The Courthouse includes a number of lamps varying in size and chandeliers custom made in the United States. Prominent Courthouse art includes “Landing of Cabrillo” by Dan Sayer Groesbeck and a series of paintings by Theodore Van Cina including “The Burial of Governor Jose Figueroa” and “The Fandango”.

Mural Room

The courthouse’s most prominent feature is the former Supervisor’s Assembly Room, now referred to as the Mural Room. The Mural Room walls were painted by book illustrator and Hollywood set and costume designer Dan Sayer Groesbeck. At over 4,200 square feet in size, the Mural Room took Groesbeck and his team months to complete. The mural features prominent scenes from Santa Barbara’s history including the landing of Portuguese explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542 and the construction of the

Mission Santa Barbara Mission Santa Barbara () is a Spanish missions in California, Spanish mission in Santa Barbara, California, United States. Often referred to as the 'Queen of the Missions', it was founded by Padre Fermín Lasuén for the Franciscan order on Decem ...

. The Mural Room’s ceiling, as well as a majority of the Courthouse’s ceilings, were painted by Italian artist Giovanni Smeraldi.

Relief Map

The courthouse’s first floor features a 10 x 12 foot relief map of Santa Barbara County. Created as a

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...

project in 1934, it depicts the

Los Padres National Forest Los Padres National Forest is a United States national forest in Southern California, southern and central California. Administered by the United States Forest Service, Los Padres includes most of the mountainous land along the California coast ...

lands within six counties, and was based on

US Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands covering of land. The major divisions of the agency are the Chief's ...

and

US Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on March ...

maps of the area and was intended to be used in support of fighting forest fires. Modeling was done by the

Civilian Conservation Corps The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government unemployment, work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was ...

and it was built by U.S. Forest Service engineers. First displayed at the California Pacific International Exhibition in San Diego in 1935, the map was installed in the Santa Barbara County Courthouse in 1936.

Exterior

The exterior features red tile roofs and white

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and ...

walls consistent with the Spanish Colonial Revival style. The building’s main entrance areas, as well as side entrances and the entrance to the County Hall of Records, feature dramatic stone facades with sandstone quarried from Santa Barbara County’s Refugio Canyon. Giovanni Antolini was the master stonecutter and mason who oversaw the stonework. The exterior also demonstrates the

lancet window A lancet window is a tall, narrow window with a sharp pointed arch at its top. This arch may or may not be a steep lancet arch (in which the compass centres for drawing the arch fall outside the opening). It acquired the "lancet" name from its rese ...

s, barred windows and balconies so familiar in Spanish Colonial Revival architecture. The rear exit of the Courthouse on the old jail side includes a dramatic 21 foot tall castle iron lattice gate (or yett). The gate is decorative and not used for Courthouse security and includes a “

wicket In the sport of cricket, the term wicket has several meanings: * It is either of the two sets of three Stump (cricket), stumps and two Bail (cricket), bails at each end of the Cricket pitch, pitch. The Fielding (cricket), fielding team's playe ...

” door. The jail also features a

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Optical microscope#Objective turret (revolver or revolving nose piece), Objective turre ...

located high on the Courthouse’s North-East side. The turret is inaccessible and an entirely decorative architectural element.

Great Arch and the Spirit of the Ocean

The courthouse great arch is a triumphal arch and is the Courthouse main entrance. The arch is 39 feet tall. It is topped by a pediment that features relief sculptures including the Scales of Justice. The arch is flanked by two towers, each of which is topped by a copper

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, usually dome-like structure on top of a building often crowning a larger roof or dome. Cupolas often serve as a roof lantern to admit light and air or as a lookout. The word derives, via Ital ...

. The arch is made of

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

and is decorated with sculptures of

cherub A cherub (; : cherubim; ''kərūḇ'', pl. ''kərūḇīm'') is one type of supernatural being in the Abrahamic religions. The numerous depictions of cherubim assign to them many different roles, such as protecting the entrance of the Garden of ...

s and other figures. The Spirit of the Ocean is a fountain located in front of the Courthouse to the left of the arch and is a 12-foot-tall depiction of a woman and man emerging from the ocean. The fountain is surrounded by a decorative pool of water. The Great Arch and sculpture was created by Italian artist Ettore Cadorin. The Spirit of the Ocean was restored in 2010 and the Great Arch was restored in 2023.

Courthouse Grounds/Sunken Gardens

The courthouse grounds feature the Sunken Garden, a prominent Santa Barbara park used year round for special events, Old Spanish Days performances and weddings. The garden is approximately 1.5 acres in size and is home to over 200 species of plants, including palm trees, citrus trees, and succulents. It features stone elements that roughly approximate the foundation of the Greek Revival courthouse that stood in this location up until 1925. The courthouse is a popular location for weddings of all sizes. California Attorney General, Senator and United States Vice President

Kamala Harris Kamala Devi Harris ( ; born October 20, 1964) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 49th vice president of the United States from 2021 to 2025 under President Joe Biden. She is the first female, first African American, and ...

married Doug Emhoff at the Courthouse in 2014. Khloe Kardasian and

Blink-182 Blink-182 is an American Rock music, rock band formed in Poway, California, in 1992. Its current and best-known line-up consists of bassist and vocalist Mark Hoppus, guitarist and vocalist Tom DeLonge, and drummer Travis Barker. Though its so ...

drummer

Travis Barker Travis Landon Barker (born November 14, 1975) is an American musician, songwriter, and music producer who is the drummer for the rock band Blink-182. He has collaborated with hip hop artists, is a member of the rap rock group Transplants ...

were married at the Courthouse in 2022.

Clock Tower and Bisno Schall Clock Gallery

The courthouse prominently features a four-story clock tower next to the Great Arch which includes a rare, fully-operational four sided Seth Thomas clock. The clock tower's top floor includes an observation deck affording guests a 360-degree view of downtown Santa Barbara, the surrounding mountains, and the Pacific Ocean. The third floor features the Seth Thomas clock. The interior of the tower houses the Bisno Schall Clock Gallery. The Clock Gallery includes the clock mechanism, a mural depicting highlights from the history of timekeeping, and modern electronics used to monitor the clock. The restoration of the clock and the clock tower gallery was completed in 2012. Visitors may take elevators to the summit of the "El Mirador" clock tower, which has labeled photographs that show what the viewer is looking at in all directions.

Santa Barbara County Courthouse Docent Council

The Santa Barbara County Courthouse Docent Council is a volunteer organization that offers daily tours and hosts an information booth located on the Courthouse’s first floor. Courthouse Docents receive extensive training in the Courthouse history and lore. In addition to offering tours, the Courthouse Docents also offer private tours to community groups, businesses, schools and other groups such as cruise ship patrons. The Courthouse Docents began offering Courthouse tours on May 1, 1974. In 1981, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors designated the Docent Council as the official building host. On May 1, 2024, the Courthouse Docents celebrated their 50th anniversary with a public ceremony held in the Courthouse's Mural Room.

Courthouse Legacy Foundation

The Santa Barbara County Courthouse Legacy Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 1989 to preserve and restore the Courthouse. The foundation raises funds to support Courthouse maintenance and restoration, and it also offers educational programs about the Courthouse and its history. In recent years, the foundation has completed several projects to restore the Courthouse, including the conservation and restoration of the Great Arch.

Gallery

File:Santa Barbara Courthouse Facade Door Detail.JPG, "Reason is the Life of the Law" File:Entrance slogan Santa Barbara County Courthouse.jpg, Inscription above the main entrance: ''"Dios nos dio los campos. El arte humana edificó ciudades."'' This translates to ''"God gave us the fields. Human art built cities."'' File:Santa Barbara County Courthouse2.jpg, Sunken Garden and clock tower File:Santa Barbara County Courthouse Mural room.jpg, Interior view of the Mural Room File:USA-Santa Barbara-County Courthouse-6.jpg, Main entrance and clock tower File:Santa Barbara County Courthouse CA.jpg, Front view of the courthouse

References

External links

Santa Barbara County Courthouse Official Website
Santa Barbara County Courthouse Docent Council Website
View of the Anacapa Arch at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse, Santa Barbara, California, 1929.

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

Photographic Archive (Collection 1429). UCLA Library Special Collections,

Charles E. Young Research Library The Charles E. Young Research Library is one of the largest libraries on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles in Westwood, Los Angeles, California. It initially opened in 1964, and a second phase of construction was completed ...

, University of California, Los Angeles.
Image of the Santa Barbara County Courthouse under construction, Santa Barbara, California.