The 1899 Town Clock, removed from the Odd Fellows Building in 1964, had advocates offering scenarios to return it to the downtown. Yet declaring it an official project for our nation’s bicentennial in 1976, seems to have been the one motivating deadline that made sure the Town Clock was rebuilt at all, to ring-out liberty from the clock’s historic fire bell. And the 1776 milestone of American democracy, seemed to destine Town Clock Plaza to be a stage for democratic activities, such as protests, demonstrations, celebrations, humanitarianism, activism and advocacy.
Clock Tower Plaza had the unifying effect of tying together the Lower Plaza’s landmarks: the 1911 Main Post Office, the 1932 Veteran’s Memorial Building, the 1859 Flatiron Building (former court house), The World War I Monument, the 1866 Lulu Carpenter’s Building, the 1899 Bookshop Santa Cruz Building (former library), and the 1886 National Register landmark: McHugh & Bianchi Grocers (demolished by Golden West Savings). A 1976 commemorative plate showed the Clock Tower in context with the historic district.
The image of the clock tower became iconic, used to identify our National Downtown Historic District, and appeared on signs, circulars, the Santa Cruz Adult School catalog and even inspired directional kiosks on Pacific Avenue. A commemorative pewter plate showed the new clock tower in a setting of historic landmarks. The Clock Tower was also used for the 1982 Downtown Area Plan, where merchants, organizations and a high degree of public input were brought together to identify the needs and guidelines of the downtown.
The Pacific Garden Mall was successful because its historic landmarks made downtown a tourist attraction, a popular gathering place for locals and a point of community pride. In September 1989 a number of events were planned for the Garden Mall’s 20th anniversary. I noted it was a double anniversary, because it was also the centennial year of when electricity came to Santa Cruz in 1889, debuting downtown. Someone got the bright idea to outline the clock tower in electric lights as the mall’s anniversary project, just as the Odd Fellows Building and clock tower had once been outlined in lights for the opening of Swanton’s 1896 hydro-electric plant. I produced a music and history show called “The Electric Centennial, and Bi-Decennial of the Pacific Garden Mall,” as an entertainment for the anniversary.
Yet before the celebration, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck on Oct. 17, 1989, reducing the downtown to rubble. The tower’s clocks were frozen at 5:04 p.m., the moment of the earthquake. The Flatiron building and Bookshop Santa Cruz building were demolished. But the Town Clock had been the capstone to the mall improvements, and was its most prominent survivor. The Pacific Garden Mall celebrated its 20th birthday with a parade through the ruins of our beloved downtown, which was more a funeral procession than a celebration, drawing more tears than cheers. At sunset, the clock tower was lighted, which now stood for a beacon in the darkness, bearing a banner “Together We Are Working To Keep The Downtown Alive!”
Protests
Saddam Hussein was a major destabilizing figure in the Middle East. An assassin for the Baathist Party with a violent past, Hussein seized Iraqi leadership in 1979, followed by a bloody purge of rivals, invaded Iran in 1980, in a failed eight-year war bankrupting Iraq, then in 1988 he used chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds. In debt, Hussein invaded Kuwait, the country that gave him his loans, to seize their oil wealth, claiming they were stealing from him. When Hussein ignored U.N. Security Council calls to return Kuwaiti sovereignty, Saudi Arabia feared it was next, and asked the Security Council for help. So the U.N. put together a coalition of 42 countries led by the U.S., to fight the Gulf War.
Santa Cruzans were divided over whether we were stopping a tyrant, or securing our oil reserves at the cost of American military lives. In 1991 a Peace Vigil was held at Town Clock Plaza, lasting a few months until the war ended with the liberation of Kuwait. When the demonstrators left, a segment remained behind, saying they were going to camp on Clock Tower Plaza indefinitely until there was world peace.
But peace was not on the agenda, as the Mercury News reported the idea was to get around the city’s camping ban. The condition of the plaza degenerated, with the fountain full of litter, and the plaza strewn with soggy blankets and clothes, discarded signs, and human waste. The city cleaning crew, which included special-needs workers, felt disrespected at having to clean up this unhealthy mess.
City Parks and Recreation director Jim Lang, regarded this as merely a maintenance issue, but the Parks Commission didn’t approve his idea to have open hours from “dawn to dusk.” The issue went to the City Council, where one councilman suggested the park should be fenced. When shocked outbursts followed, the councilman replied “I don’t mean a [concrete] freeway fence,” but a simple “chain-link fence.” This drew an angry response from both protesters and the general public, one person calling it “A Berlin Wall for Santa Cruz!”
Councilmembers Katherine Beiers and Scott Kennedy immediately opposed it. Beiers had recently returned from Washington, D.C., and was impressed by the public use of the monuments. “Lincoln … would be the most offended at the idea of erecting a fence around a monument,” she said. The issue went back to the Parks Commission, one quoting Robert Frost, who had spent a summer in his youth at a Santa Cruz Mountains farm. His sentiment: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” characterizing how the commissioners felt about walls, and instead they approved closing the plaza from 1 a.m. to 8 a.m.
On New Year’s Day 1993, an orgy of late-night vandalism hit the downtown, still barely recovered from the earthquake. The creative solution was not a curfew, but a First Night gathering to bring the right kind of family-friendly activities and show off the various talents of Santa Cruz. The Town Clock was the focal point, counting down the minutes to 1995. Yet that almost was the last First Night at the Clock Tower, for on the night of Aug. 6, fire flickered in the tower windows as smoke poured out the top, recalling how the Odd Fellows Clock Tower burned in 1899. Firefighters chain-sawed their way into the landmark. The stubborn blaze was hard to reach, caused by recently installed electrical work. But the fire was brought under control, and any evidence of the blaze was unnoticeable at the 1996 First Night.
‘Collateral Damage’
The “Collateral Damage” monument by sculptor E.A. Chase, was designed to be the “Guernica” of Santa Cruz, recalling Picasso’s famous 1937 anti-war painting, showing the fascist and Nazi bombing of an unarmed Spanish village, through images distorted in distress. But “Collateral Damage” was designed to memorialize unarmed deaths in all wars. In 1996-97 the monument was seeking a location. Proponents suggested putting it on the World War I Memorial pillar in place of the eagle’s nest statue, or in the middle of the new Sister Cities compass plaza.
As a Historic Preservation Commissioner, I told the artist I liked the sculpture, but it needed to stand on its own. Inserting it into other monuments would change their meaning. On the World War I monument to soldiers who sacrificed their lives for our freedom, it would seem to imply the soldiers were victimizers. And the Sister Cities program is to extend the hand of friendship to peoples around the world, but placing a tragic statue in the middle of the compass plaza would seem to be accusing them of something. When I said, “It’s better to make your own statement, than to alter the works of others,” the sculptor said his problem was finding a place people could see it, and feared Town Clock Plaza was too remote. Yet in the end it became the perfect site, displayed on a low pedestal, which made the sculpture more intimate, and easier to view.
In 1999 came a plan to build a concrete wall embedded with debris from every American battlefield including 9/11, in a plea for peace. They were proud to claim it would literally be the Berlin Wall of Santa Cruz, as they were certain they could get a section of Berlin’s wall for Santa Cruz. At an Arts Commission hearing, Clark Schultes and I represented the Historic Preservation Commission. I said the concept was quite intriguing, but didn’t fit this park, which had created a greenspace in the middle of a five-street traffic intersection. Building this concrete wall up to 6 feet tall on a traffic island would look like crash barriers and disrupt the free access to the site from all sides.
Compatibility
Since Clock Tower Plaza opened, adjacent structures chose compatible brickwork styles. The bank used an Old West style with basket-handle arches, while east of the “Rush Inn” bar, architect Bill Bagnell designed the brick Insurance Building with a colonial look, next to a low brick flatiron.
Yet because Senate Bill 330 invalidated local guidelines and building standards for apartments, a modern building has been proposed in the historic Lower Plaza, to serve as a backdrop for the clock tower. The project by Workbench is to cut down two redwood trees that frame the Town Clock and replace them with either a 16-story building, or an eight-story building. At their webinar, it appeared most of the 200 viewers surveyed felt either choice was too tall.
It’s likely opening this new skyscraper will repeat what happened when the Palomar Hotel opened, then called for the silencing of the Town Clock’s bell. This time the complaint might also include the clock’s lighting. Residents looking down on the park may regard it as their “private” front yard, being less tolerant of activities or individuals. Workbench has proposed that Knight Street might be eliminated, to merge Town Clock Plaza with its own open space.
The shocked faces of the Collateral Damage sculpture looking up, may reflect the fear of many locals, who tremble at the thought of the excessive height of a monster building, achieved because community architectural guidelines we’ve developed no longer matter.
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” especially a tall one.