Santa Barbara, CA - Santa Barbara County Courthouse and Mission Santa Barbara

[sopas ej]

I didn't work yesterday (Tuesday 8.31.10), so I decided to get ice cream-- in Santa Barbara! It's about a 90 minute drive w/o traffic from where I live in South Pasadena. McConnell's ice cream in Santa Barbara is the best in California, if not the entire US.

Anyway, I brought the camera with me and decided to take pictures of the Santa Barbara County Courthouse and Mission Santa Barbara.


The Santa Barbara County Courthouse has got to be one of the most beautiful courthouses in all of California. It was built from 1926-1929 in a very over-the-top Spanish style. It has a lot of delicious architectural details.






















Look at all those tiles!


This room was undergoing restoration or something.







Views of Santa Barbara from the County Courthouse tower.



In the distance, the tower to the left belongs to the St. Anthony Seminary; the twin-domed building on the right is Mission Santa Barbara.











Grassy courtyard of the Courthouse.



















Mission Santa Barbara was founded on December 4, 1786, the feast day of Saint Barbara. It is the 10th mission in the California mission chain (there are 21 of them), founded by Spanish friars of the Franciscan Order, during the Spanish colonization of California. It is presently an active Catholic parish and also houses a museum and cemetery.










This is actually the Catalan language; very fitting, since Father Junipero Serra, one of the California Mission founders (he didn't found Santa Barbara, though), was Catalan. "Benvingut" means welcome; I don't know what "Siau" means.





I love these Spanish roof tiles. They're definitely not mass-produced, they look like they were individually created, as tradition or legend holds, by being shaped over the tile-maker's leg, hence the taper in them.





This child didn't live very long.



This nun didn't live very long either.













View from the Mission looking towards the Pacific Ocean.

[plinko]

McConnell's absolutely rules...good choice.

There's alot of renovation going on at the courthouse right now. Mostly plaster repair on the outside and some repair to the 3rd floor where there was a small fire about 3 months ago. The interior room with the scaffolding is the 'mural room'. Other than some small ADA changes around the base of the building, all 4 structures comprising the courthouse complex are as they were when completed in 1929.

I actually did a thread on the courthouse in 'Buildings and Architecture' a few months ago, but it got buried...
link

It's too bad that there is no longer any way to get into the tower at St. Anthony's. When it used to be owned by the parish, if you knew someone they could let you in. I did an ADA survey out there in 2005 and took lots of photos from the tower.

Oh well, glad you enjoyed the city. My guess is that your 90 minute ride up here was much much longer on the way back? Southbound traffic in the afternoon down to Seacliff is horrendous.

[sopas ej]

McConnell's makes the best ice cream. Even though you can buy a pint of it at Whole Foods or Bristol Farms, it's somehow not the same as getting it at the shop itself.

Your thread on the Courthouse is beautiful; great shots! I wasn't aware that it used to be possible to go up the tower at St. Anthony's.

Santa Barbara is great. Beautiful city-- though I do remember when it didn't look so pretty. For my freshman year in college, I went to UC Santa Barbara (1988-1989 school year). There was a huge drought going on at the time, so many lawns were brown; in fact, even the UCSB campus had dead lawns. The 101 through Santa Barbara was also very ugly, being that that was the time that construction started to widen the road from 2 lanes to 3 lanes in each direction. Plus, the traffic lights still existed on the 101 at State Street and another street; hmm, I don't remember if it was Anacapa or Chapala-- or was it even De La Vina? Oh well. But those stoplights took forever when you had the red light; there were even signs that suggested turning off your engine, being that the wait could be as long as 5 minutes. And I lived on campus at UCSB, which to me felt really isolated; for me being an 18 year-old from LA, I thought Santa Barbara was boring (which is why I transferred to Cal State Long Beach and finished my bachelors degree there), plus I didn't have a car when I lived there. I learned to appreciate Santa Barbara when I was in my 20s and after the town appeared to have spiffed itself up from the late 80s.

Hehe yeah, my drive back to South Pasadena took about 2 and a half hours. Not only was the drive to Seacliff bad, but the 101 going south/east through the San Fernando Valley was terrible too. I was driving with the evening rush-hour workday commute, so I was expecting it.

[stepper77]

Nice to see a little of Santa Barbara. Even though I drove though once, I've never "been" to Santa Barbara. Thanks for the mission shots too. My roommate and I keeping talking about flying down to San Diego, renting a car, and seeing each of the missions all the way up to the Bay Area. Still haven't done it yet.

[sopas ej]

That would be quite a drive, but a fun one. 10 years ago, it was my goal to see all 21 Missions of California. My partner and I did just that eventually, though we did it over several trips, not as one trip to see all of the 21. One time we saw 4 or 5 Missions in one long weekend. Our first year of living together I thought maybe we could do a trip where we saw all 21 Missions, but instead we took a road trip around California (and saw some Missions along the way), driving as far north as Eureka and then cutting across the state through Trinity County, which was a beautiful drive.

I like the Santa Barbara Mission (I like all of them, actually), but it's very "polished" or "Disneyfied." There are some California missions that are more ordinary and rustic-looking, which I really like, because it somehow makes it feel more authentic.

[LAsam]

I love visiting the California missions! The one is San Juan Capistrano may be my favorite so far... thanks for sharing these photos! It's been too long since I've visited the city of Santa Barbara since I keep bypassing it and going to the Santa Ynez Valley instead...

[stepper77]

I think because it would be such a long drive is why we keep talking about doing it, but, haven't yet. I've actually been to all the missions in the Bay Area down to Carmel, but I haven't seen any from Nuestra Senora south with the exception of the one in San Diego. I'm actually going to San Luis Obispo this weekend, so, I may stop by one or two.

The one is Santa Barbara definitely looks like it has been better kept up compared to some I've seen up here. Beautiful nonetheless.

[plinko]

^The Santa Barbara Mission was heavily damaged in the 1925 earthquake and was essentially re-built. It was re-furbished and polished up in 1957 as well. St. Anthony's is much more interesting to me (not alot of exterior changes since the last building was completed in 1934).

The 'public' was never allowed up in the seminary tower, you just had to know one of the parish priests and they could get you in. There's a sweet spiral staircase to reach to upper floors of the tower and then a really scary ladder to get to the bell tower. The seminary was sold to a private school in 2005 and the whole campus is now basically off limits to the public.

[Leo the Dog]

What a great set of photos! I absolutely love history/historic structures. CA has a very unique past with the natives, Spanish, Mexican and American periods.

I have heard that the Spanish stepped up their settlements because the Russians were starting to come down the coast...Any truth to this piece of history?

[sopas ej]

Yes that is indeed true. In northern California (Sonoma County), you can visit Fort Ross, which was an old Russian settlement established in 1812, and is now on the National Register of Historic Places. I was last there in 1998.

It was the southernmost Russian settlement on the North American continent. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe it was established as a fur trading post.

[peanut gallery]

Thanks for the awesome thread. I've been to the mission, but in half a dozen or so visits to Santa Barbara I've never checked out the courthouse. I'll have to do that next time.

You guys have me thinking about how many missions I've been to: 12, unless I'm forgetting one. And I love the idea of a road trip to all of them. Maybe someday when I retire. Anyone seen Huell Howser's series on the missions? Classic stuff!

[JDRCRASH]

This thread is awesome! Santa Barbara's so beautiful.