It's a wild creation of stainless steel, mirrored glass and concrete. To many, it’s often compared to an alien spaceship. But it’s been at the corner of Fresno and P Streets in downtown Fresno for over 30 years. Today on KVPR’s Central Valley Roots, the story of Fresno’s city hall.
Back in the mid-1980s, Fresno’s city government was outgrowing the old city hall building, which was built in 1939. In need of space, and seeking a bold new home, the city council turned to one of the most talked-about architects on the planet, Canadian Arthur Erickson. He had designed landmarks like One California Plaza high-rise in downtown LA and the futuristic San Diego Convention Center. In Fresno he teamed up with local architect William Patnaude to design a bold new home for Fresno’s city leaders. They settled on a site at the end of the Mariposa Mall in the city’s civic center.
Erickson’s original idea was for a 7-story rectangular tower facing “P” Street with a giant open-air passageway through the center of the structure, aligned with Mariposa Street. Think of a mashup of the Arc de Triomphe and a 1980s office building. But when they crunched the numbers, they realized that plan was far outside the city’s budget.
The council balked, and even considered using some of the vacant historic hi-rises downtown on Fulton Mall to serve as a new city hall. Instead Erickson and Patnaude came back with a new, cheaper design, a low-slung steel and glass building with an unusual shape. Curves on the front and back meet sharp angles that define the side walls and roofline, meant to evoke the jagged peaks of the Sierra Nevada.
It was controversial at the time it opened in 1991, with people likening it to an alien spacecraft. But despite the controversy, Hollywood took notice. The building had a cameo in the 1994 sci-fi film The Puppetmasters, which starred Donald Sutherland.
