- City:
- Baldwin Park, CA
- Site Type:
- Schools, Education and Health, Civic Facilities, Auditoriums and Arenas
- New Deal Agencies:
- Work Relief Programs, Works Progress Administration (WPA)
- Completed:
- 1936
- Quality of Information:
- Good
- Marked:
- Unknown
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
In 1936, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) constructed an auditorium for Central School in Baldwin Park, CA. With over 600 seats, the auditorium was used for both school and civic activities.
The Moderne (Art Deco) structure is simple and unadorned, its concrete facade suggestive of early Brutalism.
The auditorium served as an auxiliary meeting space after Central School was converted into Baldwin Park’s first city hall in 1958, and as a storage facility after city hall was relocated in 1978.
Since 2007, the renovated auditorium structure has served as Baldwin Park’s Arts and Recreation Center (ARC). In addition to a dance studio, arts and crafts studio, exhibit gallery, small indoor amphitheater, and outdoor nature and picnic area, the ARC is home to the Baldwin Park Historical Society Museum.
The Center won the Arts and Recreation Center Facility Design award from the California Parks and Recreation Society in 2007.
Source notes
City of Baldwin Park, Arts and Recreation Center
Bob Benbow, Lorraine O'Brien, and the Baldwin Park Historical Society, Baldwin Park, Images of America (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing Co., 2011).
Linda Gold, “Baldwin Park’s Historical Society Needs Volunteers,” Los Angeles Daily News, December 14, 2008.
National Archives and Records Administration
Site originally submitted by Natalie McDonald on January 11, 2023.
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Jonathan Tillman
This building is now the “Arts and Recreation Center” and it is located at:
14403-B East Pacific Avenue
Baldwin Park , CA 91706
https://www.baldwinpark.com/facilities/arts-and-recreation-center