1952 Earthquake helps convince Redondo Beach leaders to build a new city hall

 

Redondo Beach became the first city in the South Bay to incorporate in 1882, but for the first 15 years of its existence, it had no central city hall.

The city housed its operations in office space rented in a private building. As the city grew, so did the grumblings from its employees about the difficulties of carrying on the city’s business due to the lack of space and the inadequate facilities.

The issue was carried to the voters in a special election held on Aug. 5, 1907. A total of 203 votes were cast, with 186 for and 17 against the construction of a new city hall on Emerald Street and Benita Avenue. (Benita Avenue became a casualty of redevelopment in Redondo in the early 1970s, and no longer exists.)

The two-story red brick structure was built at a cost of $25,797, including $3,100 for an adjacent fire station.

City Hall included the police department, the first-floor city library, a small jail in the basement and other city departments such as engineering and public works. (The library moved to Veterans Park in 1930.)

It served the city well for decades, though it began to become clear that there was inadequate space to contain the operations of the growing city. The police department could easily have taken up an entire floor instead of just half a floor.

The building’s construction, which occurred long before earthquake safety was a consideration, also was suspect, and much reinforcing and bracing work had to be done over the years to keep it standing. 

By the late 1940s, it was bursting at the seams with engineering maps, official reports, legal documents and records of all kinds that had been amassed during the building’s first four decades of operation.

In 1948, architect William Allen drew up a plan for a new city hall that would contain 28,000 square feet of floor space and cost in the neighborhood of $560,000 to build.

The plans gathered dust for four years, but city officials knew something must be done beyond the addition of reinforcing beams and other patchwork remedies applied to try to stabilize the building in 1950 and 1951.

A 7.3-magnitude earthquake centered in Kern County on July 2, 1952, that leveled the town of Tehachapi proved to be the galvanizing force to spur the city fathers into action.

The powerful quake also shook most of Southern California, and Redondo Beach was among the areas rattled.

City Hall seemed to be the only place in the city that suffered serious damage from the 4:52 a.m. quake. Let’s allow a Daily Breeze article to set the scene:

“Recently installed neon lights in City Clerk Fred Arnold’s office crashed within inches of the desk of Clerk Catherine Lathrop. Plaster in the ceiling came down and cracked in several places.

Credited with preventing the whole clerk’s office ceiling from falling was a steel beam installed about a year and a half ago. One end rests on the city hall safe and the other on a steel upright put in less than a year ago.”

• Daily Breeze, July 2, 1952

 

A week later, Mayor J. Russell Shea was instructing City Manager Franz Nybye to pursue financing options for building a new city hall during a council meeting being held on the second floor of the old structure.

“Another quake and we might end up on the first floor,” Shea quipped. Three hours later, a minor quake did shake the city, rattling nerves again, but causing little physical damage.

A $450,000 bond issue was brought before the city’s voters in 1953, but was defeated. The city tried again with a $600,000 measure in 1955, but narrowly missed getting the two-thirds majority required for passage.

Despite the defeats, the city continued to plan its new city hall. Debates were held over where to locate it; the 1955 bond measure had called for its construction on a hilltop on Beryl Street, while other proposed sites included an area near Redondo Union High School on Pacific Coast Highway and Diamond, Pacific Electric land bounded by Elena and Francisca avenues and some sites on Pacific Avenue near the South Bay Municipal Court. (Pacific Avenue also was lost to redevelopment in the early 1970s.)

On Jan. 1956, the City Council voted to pursue financing of a new city hall via a lease-purchase agreement rather than through a bond measure.

Wrangling over the details continued for the next year, and by then, conditions at the rickety old City Hall building had become intolerable.

On July 15, 1957, the Council agreed to purchase the old Bank of America building at 219 Pacific Avenue from Sam Levy of Torrance for $60,000 to house city operations.

The old City Hall gradually was vacated and the structure condemned later in 1957, as offices were moved to Pacific Street. In 1959, the city would lease additional space in the neighhboring building at 221 S. Pacific as well.

The council approved a lease-purchase plan for the new city hall at its meeting on Jan. 11, 1960, with financing handled by the Civic Building Authority.

Demolition of the old City Hall building began in March 1960, and was completed that May.

The city contracted with Samuelson Brothers Construction Co. to build the new $500,000 structure at 415 Diamond Street, next to the police department building at Broadway and Diamond. The architect was Ben H. Southland from the firm Victor Gruen Associates.

Groundbreaking for the new 25,000-square-foot City Hall was held on May 2, 1961.

City offices began moving into the new building early in January 1962, and the first City Council meeting was held there on Jan. 24, 1962.

The usual bevy of dignitaries, headed by Redondo Beach Mayor William Czuleger, were on hand for the building’s official dedication on Feb. 24, 1962. Daily Breeze Publisher Robert L. Curry served as the master of ceremonies at the event.

Four years later, on May 4, 1966, the city dedicated a new $150,000 addition to City Hall. The additional office space was built to house the city’s parks and recreation, planning and harbor departments, as well as the Urban Redevelopment Agency.

A Ten Commandments monument that had been donated to the city by the Fraternal Order of Eagles in 1962 stood prominently just off Diamond Street until 1993, when it was put in storage for protection during construction of the new public library across the street. It later was moved to a more protected location in an inner courtyard.

Roscoe the cat became a fixture at City Hall beginning in 1982, but he was banned from the premises by the city manager’s office in 1993 after allergy sufferers complained. City employee Wanda Marley then adopted him, and he died in 1997.

Redondo Beach’s second City Hall has served the city well over the past 54 years, showing much more stability than its unsteady predecessor did.

Sources:

Daily Breeze files.