- City:
- Santa Cruz, CA
- Site Type:
- Civic Facilities, Auxiliary Civic Facilities
- New Deal Agencies:
- Public Works Funding, Public Works Administration (PWA)
- Designer:
- Mark Daniels
Description
"Debated for its location, its usefulness and its cost, the auditorium plan stalled and nearly died. But low interest rates and money available from the New Deal — 80 percent funding if it was built by legitimately unemployed workers and 45 percent funding if professional builders were used — allowed construction to begin. The Civic Auditorium was dedicated in 1939 to much fanfare (although the city had to ask for more federal funds after the builder, trying to shave costs, narrowed the stage from 29 to 20 feet — not even big enough for the Santa Cruz High Band to perform, the band director noted at the time)."
Source notes
https://www.santacruzwire.com/index.php/peggy-townsens/258-a-different-time-a-different-stimulus-package.htmlContribute to this Site
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Another wow for there is this group of people wanting to turned the front entrance’s top section, currently a storage area, I think, into an outdoor cafe besides tearing down the interior seatings with seats bolted down into cement and ryebar into the concret, into a collapseable blecher type of stands!!! And the Civic Auditorium was used as shelter area after the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake…also after the recent, Aug. 2020 wild fire which burnt down the Big Basin Headquarter which might be part of this project if not Standford University’s for outdoor sciences studies…for there was once a swimming pool right in the middle of the redwood forest! I think it was the only region that the wild fire did not touch although the headquarter building was just ‘across the street”…