Old Courthouse in Santa Ana May Get Its Crown Back

Lecil Slaback’s earliest memory is of standing tiptoe in the ornate castle-like cupola of the Old County Courthouse in Santa Ana, peering out at the aftermath of 11 inches of rain that swamped the Santa Ana River and hurled a wall of mud over farmland and streets.

Slaback’s parents, who were court reporters, carried the 3-year-old up the attic stairs that February day in 1916 to view the devastation from what was then, at 135 feet, the tallest building in Orange County.

“The first memory in my life is looking out from the cupola in all directions, like we were on a ship,” recalled Slaback, 92, a retired court reporter who lives in Costa Mesa. “You were above everything else in the county.”

It’s a remembrance lost to generations since 1933, when the cupola was removed for fear it had been too badly damaged in that year’s Long Beach earthquake. Several attempts over the years to rebuild the Gothic structure were dropped because of cost.

Now, county Clerk-Recorder Tom Daly is trying again.

“Any time we can recapture history, that’s significant,” said Daly, who in recent years hired an Orange County archivist and set him up in the ground floor of the restored 1901 courthouse. “I think, with modern technology and some creative fundraising, there may be a way to bring the tower back.”

Daly met recently with the county’s facilities department to discuss the idea. One way to help defray the cost, he said, is to ask telecommunications companies if they’d be interested in putting cellphone antennas inside a rebuilt tower.

The restoration also could qualify for private foundation grants.

“This is an idea that the historical community has loved for many, many years,” Daly said. “It’s just a question of how to pay for it.”

Supervisor Bill Campbell also endorses the idea -- as long as a restored tower isn’t built with scarce county funds. He said he’d help look for private donors.

“In general, I like the idea of getting the building back to its historic [look],” said Campbell, whose office has a clear view of the courthouse.

At 63 feet high, the cupola was modeled by architect C.L. Strange after the Trinity Church in Boston. Its surface was molded from galvanized sheet metal and laid over a steel frame covered with wood. It was originally designed with clocks facing each direction, but county supervisors balked at the extra $1,200 and built it without them.

The structure was clearly the most striking feature of the Romanesque courthouse, which cost $117,000 to build, including $8,000 for the land.

The stately building, with its two-toned skin of Arizona sandstone and Temecula granite, housed all county offices at the time -- the Board of Supervisors, sheriff, district attorney, assessor, recorder and a county judge.

The original cupola featured an 85-foot flagpole on top. But workers tired of climbing the attic staircase twice a day to hoist and lower the flag, so the pole was removed in 1920 and placed in front of the courthouse.

Photographs show the cupola intact after the 1933 earthquake as workers repaired fallen sandstone along the roofline. When supervisors announced that they were dismantling it anyway, skeptics accused them of using the quake as an excuse to avoid maintenance costs and criticism that the cupola was now too “old world” for the county.

“It really does give the building a whole different feel,” said county archivist Phil Brigandi, who chronicled its history in a book published for the courthouse’s centennial in 2001. “When you look at the old photos, it’s immediately obvious.”

The tower was a magnet for photographers and sightseers, Brigandi said, as well as for newlyweds who’d been married at the courthouse below. Marriage ceremonies are still performed there.

The building, a state historic landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places, is the oldest operating courthouse in Southern California. In 1952, it was the site of the state’s first murder trial in which portions were televised. (The first trial ended in a deadlock over whether Henry Ford McCracken murdered 10-year-old Patty Jean Hull of Buena Park; he was found guilty in a second trial and executed.)

Orange County continued to hold trials there until 1968, when a courthouse opened just down the street. Worries about the building’s seismic safety led county engineers to order the building closed in 1979.

After the state dropped an idea of using the building as an appellate court, it was designated a county park in the 1980s.

In 1984, county officials began a four-year effort to restore the courthouse, including rebuilding the cupola. County engineers and consultants from Disney Studios recommended using fiberglass-reinforced plaster over a steel frame, the same construction of many of Disneyland’s attractions.

The effort faltered with cost estimates of nearly $700,000 for re-creating the molded sheet metal, about $500,000 for fiberglass, and $360,000 for plaster and stucco.

The courthouse reopened in 1988, without its signature tower, after $4.4 million was spent, much of it for reinforcement to withstand a major earthquake.

In 2001, the courthouse got another face lift for its centennial, including new roof tiles and outdoor lighting. The California Supreme Court held a rare session there to mark the occasion.

But still no cupola.

“It would be wonderful to have it again,” said James J. Friis of Orange, chairman of the Old Courthouse Museum Society. “They did such a good job restoring the building, I’m all for restoring it to all of its glory.”