Sacramento, CA

9 min readDec 23, 2021

Here I was, 5th capitol I have visited year to date. What better than to start with the California State Capitol which constructed between 1860 and 1874 and was modeled after the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C

Throughout the capitol you will notice the Great Seal of the State of California like the stained glass below. It consists of the following elements:

Roman goddess Minerva that according to mythology was born fully grown. Similarly, California became a state without having first been a territory.
a California grizzly bear — the official state animal
the word “Eureka” above them. “Eureka” is California’s state motto; the Greek word means, “I have found it.”
31 stars on the upper edge that represent the number of states that existed upon California’s admission to the United states in 1850

Behold the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament completed in 1889 and modeled after a Paris cathedral called L’Eglise de la Sainte-Trinite.

Proceeding along we have the Crest Theater which existed since 1912, started as vaudeville theater then became a movie house. Lately it has been host to comedy shows, film screenings and live music events

Then we have a building that used to be The Hotel Regis built in 1911–1912. What remains is the ghost sign and an ad stating “You’ll Never Buy Better Bread”. Apparently it was a slogan used by Kilpatrick’s Bread

Speaking of clever reuse you have below the National Gold Bank Of D O Mills & Co. Its founder D.O. Mills, a young New York bank employee who came to California to mine gold. Soon tiring of mining, he opened a mercantile establishment in Sacramento. Mills began storing gold for the miners, and later began buying gold and issuing notes that circulated as money. Today its been turned into an upscale food hall.

If you turn to the corner of the building you will notice a surprise banana on duct tape installed by artist Shane Grammer. This was inspired by the banana that sold for over $100K art Art Basel in 2019.

Below is Sacramento City Hall dating from 1911.

Another fascinating building is the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE) Lodge №6. 1895 indicates the year the group was chartered but first started settling into this building in 1926. It was not only a home for the Elks, but also included about 100 hotel rooms plus restaurants and retail. Due to a decrease in membership during the 1950s and 1960s, the Elks left the building and resettled to a smaller home. Today its an events space.

If you wanted to see a really fancy estate, look no further than the Leland Stanford Mansion, it was built between 1856 and 1857 but purchased by the man himself in 1861. Leland Stanford’s claim to fame is co-founder and President of the Central Pacific Railroad and then serving as California’s eighth governor. In 1900, the mansion was gifted to the Catholic Diocese of Sacramento along with an endowment to be used for the nurture, care and maintenance of homeless children. Many decades later the mansion along with its gardens was sold off to the State Parks department.

I’d be amiss if I did not mention Sutter’s Fort. It was the first settlement by a Swiss immigrant granted to him from the Mexican government that he named New Helvetia. The fort was the site of the beginning of the gold rush, where James Marshall showed Sutter the gold found during the building of Sutter’s sawmill along the American River. As word quickly spread, some 80,000 miners flooded the area, extending up and down the length of the Sacramento Valley and overrunning Sutter’s domain

Next up on Sacramento’s iconic landmarks is the Tower Bridge. Since 1935, it has connected Sacramento to West Sacramento over the Sacramento River. Its two towers stand 160 feet tall and permit the bridge deck to be raised, vertically 100 feet above the water’s surface to allow for the passage of river traffic below.

From there we enter Old Sacramento, its an area replete with cobblestone roads, historic western buildings and lantern light-posts.

What better than to start off with mini donuts from Danny’s Mini Donuts? they are famous for being made hot on the spot as you order them.

On the same building you see the letters AMBI, it was a brazen attempt by the Ambiance Social Lounge to erase a ghost sign advertisement of a Gold Rush era business that made clothes for miners with its own name and only made it as far as 4 letters 😡

Prior to the establishment of the Central Pacific Railroad, 2 of the Big Four CP Huntington and Mark Hopkins joined forces to form the Huntington & Hopkins Company, importers and dealers in hardware. Even though the store was demolished in 1970, below is a reconstruction what it looked like in the 1860s with vintage tools and lanterns hanging from the ceiling.

Erected in 1851, this structure was occupied by the Sacramento Union in 1852. It was the oldest daily newspaper west of the Mississippi and ran for 143 years until it closed its doors in 1994.

Below is a 1970 reconstruction of the first building erected in California as a theater. It’s believed it was made from timbers and canvas taken from ships abandoned in San Francisco. The original was constructed in 1849 and destroyed by flooding in 1850.

Samuel Brannan was a Mormon settler who profiled from the gold rush selling supplies to miners. The Brannan House was the site of Sacramento’s first post office on land owned by Brannan. It took on several ownerships before getting re-acquired by Brannan in 1865 to turn into a hotel. Sacramento being located along the confluence of the Sacramento River and American River is prone to the flooding. Due to that fact, building had to be raised approximately nine feet.

Booth & Co was a wholesale grocery business and its founder Newton Booth was a lawyer, writer, lecturer, and politician.

Ebner Hotel built in 1856 renowned for its luxurious accommodations and stylish design. Was demolished in 2003 and a replica built in its place serving as retail shops and offices on the upper floors.

The thing to checkout in Old Sacramento is the California State Railroad Museum. It was Central Pacific Railroad Company that would start building in Sacramento and continue east across the Sierra Nevada towards Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake UT.

Below is a couple exhibits you might see like restored locomotives and life-size dioramas and displays that tell the story of the Golden State’s railroads.

If you exit the Old Sacramento district you will enter a shopping area named DOCO that stands for Downtown Commons. In the center of it is Golden 1 Center a $558M stadium where the Sacramento Kings NBA team plays. The most impressive thing about it is that is the world’s first arena to be 100-percent solar powered 365 days a year 🤯

Don’t worry the area is not just retail and restaurants, there is public art to enjoy like this piece The Clock Tower by R.M. Fischer. This towering art piece is a mixed media high-voltage tower adorned with floating planets, a clock forever frozen in time and other elements that seem futuristic

Here is another one by Gerald Wallburg. Indo Arch is a forty foot structure inspired by the form of Islamic arches. It was built using controlled-erosion corten steel, designed to age and oxidize over time

With so much ground covered I leave you last with 2 more neighborhoods worth checking out.

Historic R Street District: Once a thriving warehouse district, it was the link between the main freight lines and Sacramento’s water front. The loss of rail traffic, building of new highways, ageing buildings, the flight to the suburbs and the lack of space for expansion — all led to a general decline in occupancy along R Street. However, in the last twenty years as the central business district has experienced a revitalization, so has the R Street Corridor.

Oak Park: known as Sacramento’s first suburb. It was connected to downtown by a street car line and was a haven for working class families. Before World War II, most people in Oak Park were of European ethnicity. Things changed after many African Americans were displaced from the “West End” neighborhood of downtown Sacramento (the area now occupied by Capitol Mall, Interstate 5, Old Sacramento and the O Street pedestrian mall). Oak Park was one of the few areas that area lacked racially restrictive covenants. After World War II the neighborhood suffered decay and there was racial tensions and issues of police-community relations. From 1968 to 1971 Oak Park had a chapter of the Black Panther Party. The 1969 Oak Park Riot saw the Black Panther Party and the Sacramento Police Department battle it in front of McClatchy Park. In 1970, the shooting of a police officer resulted in the arrest of four Sacramento Black Panther Party members known as the Oak Park Four, they were acquitted after an eight month trial.

These days, the neighborhood is inarguably on the upswing. This all owes to former Mayor Kevin Johnson who grew up in Oak Park and returned to his native Sacramento after retiring from the NBA. He started the non-profit St Hope Development that did much to address blight in the area by bringing in new upscale housing in the form of lofts, new businesses and public art.