Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California

Date added: August 22, 2023 Categories: California Retail Department Store
West and north elevations, looking southeast (1994)

The ancestor of Rosenberg's Department Store was founded by Max Rosenberg (1863-1944) in 1896. Called the Red Front Store, it was a small clothing establishment. Burned out in the 1906 earthquake and fire, it reopened ten days later in a temporary shack with stock from salesmen's sample trunks. The store was soon rebuilt at Fourth and B Streets, and renamed Rosenberg's Department Store. Max's son Fred S. Rosenberg (1886-1965) joined the firm, and together father and son invested in real estate all over the county, especially in Santa Rosa. In 1921-1922 they constructed Santa Rosa's only prewar skyscraper, the Rosenberg Building at Fourth and Mendocino. Max retired in 1925 but remained active; Fred managed the business from then on. Rosenberg's had already become "the town's largest store, selling groceries, fresh vegetables, liquor, and drugs, along with clothing."

In the mid-1930s planning began for a new and larger store, on gas station property the Rosenbergs owned at the southeast corner of Fourth and D Streets. Fred Rosenberg explained that, "The factor in favor of this location is the parking problem. We own property at the rear . . . which will provide a parking lot 140 feet square... This seems to be the coming thing in modern merchandising with the growth of the use of automobiles by shoppers." Preliminary planning was entrusted to local architect Charles "Cal" Caulkins. The project suddenly became urgent on Friday, 8 May 1936, when the 1907 Rosenberg Department Store burned to the ground.

The design was turned over to the Hertzka & Knowles firm in San Francisco, with W. W. Breite as a consulting engineer. Their plans include the one-story section of the building. The building contract with Moore & Roberts, dated 19 January 1937, called for construction of a "department store and store building," and a bond to guarantee payment to the workmen was filed to the amount of $104,500. Rosenberg's Department Store opened for business in the new building on 27 October 1937. In the same year the one-story section of the Purity had been located in a very small Fourth Street space next to the other Rosenberg Building. Purity's need for proto-supermarket space may have coincided with a management choice to take Rosenberg's Department Store out of the grocery business after the fire, but still to accommodate customers who were used to finding a market there.

Rosenberg's Department Store and the Purity market operated side-by-side until 1956. In 1951 Fred Rosenberg retired from active management of the department store and sold that business to the McNeany family, which operated the store until it closed down in 1988. Fred Rosenberg continued to own the property until his death in 1965. In 1963 the McNeanys secured from him the additional lease of the one-story section of the building. They performed a major remodeling designed by J. Clarence Felciano. The new Rosenberg's Men's Store opened on 5 August 1964.

In 1988 Rosenberg's Department Store closed down. The building stood vacant and deteriorating. In the early 1990s the owners went through all City processes and received a demolition permit. At the last moment, the building was rescued by the present owner, who rehabilitated it, undoing most of the 1964 alterations. The new tenant on the ground and mezzanine floors of the two-story section is to be Barnes & Noble Booksellers. Tenants for the remainder of the building are as yet unknown. The building is returning to its original position as a focus for retail activity in Santa Rosa.

The young architects of Rosenberg's Department Store, Hertzka & Knowles (Wayne S. Hertzka and William Howard Knowles) would go on to design some of the most interesting examples of 1950s and 1960s Modernism in San Francisco's downtown. It is too early to assess their career, but the building in Santa Rosa was the first to achieve renown for this firm, which had started only in the inauspicious year of 1933. The building received the recognition of being displayed in model form at the Golden Gate International Exposition at Treasure Island in 1939. David Gebhard illustrated it in the "Photo History" section of his Guide, along with Oakland's Paramount Theatre and San Francisco's 450 Sutter Street building, as one of northern California's three best representatives of Moderne commercial buildings.

Building Description

At the southeast corner of Fourth and D Streets in Downtown Santa Rosa, the Rosenberg Department Store property consists of a zero-setback, two-section, 1937 commercial building and a parking lot. The corner section, a 140 x 120-feet rectangle, has two stories and mezzanine, with a grand center marquee/sign tower and considerable Moderne detailing; originally this section housed the department store itself. The other section of the building, a 126 x 108-feet rectangle on Fourth Street west of the corner section, has one story of the same 22 feet height as the first story and mezzanine of the corner section; it carries echoes of the same Moderne detailing but was always of simpler design; originally it was leased to other businesses, but its use was annexed to the department store in 1964, when it was considerably remodeled and also enlarged to the rear. Both sections are a flat-roofed steel frame structure, with stucco-clad, monolithically cast reinforced concrete walls, and wraparound plate glass display windows on the two street elevations. On the two-story section's street elevations, Moderne detailing includes a curved corner, a mezzanine-level Streamline string course or speed lines punctuated with recessed glass block clerestory windows, and tall second-story windows with keystones elongated to the parapet top. The center of the Fourth Street (north) facade is an entry pavilion consisting of marquee, two-story window of fluted glass blocks, pilasters rising above the parapet, and above them a blade sign with a rear blade tower 50 feet above the roof. The interior is almost entirely clear space on all floors in both parts. Three rows of columns (five, counting those near exterior walls) march east to west, displaying the same capitals in both sections of the building. An open mezzanine extends 32 feet from the south wall of the two-story section; its steel and birch railings evoke shipping imagery. Although there were serious alterations in 1964, many of them were reversed in the 1994 rehabilitation, which included reconstruction of some original features and the creation of some new, sympathetic features.

The walls of the building are monolithically cast reinforced concrete, smoothly finished with cement stucco. The casting includes at mezzanine level a string course of eight speed lines, projecting "keystones" that rise from second-story windows to the top of the Parapet, and vertical creases at the curved northwest corner and at building seams such as the southwest and northeast corners. There is no cornice.

The two street elevations are similar except for the entry pavilion in the center of the two-story section's north (Fourth Street) side. The facade composition is seven bays on the west (D Street) side, and four bays on each side of the entry pavilion on Fourth Street. Each bay is defined by a second-story window of 12-Pane steel sash fixed on the side panels and awning in the center panel. This window has a plain recessed panel below the sill and a "keystone" elongated from lintel to parapet top. The windows take up much less than half the wall surface. At mezzanine level each bay has a tripartite clerestory window of glass blocks recessed into the string course.

The entry pavilion begins at its base with a deeply projecting half-hexagonal Canopy that is flat, stuccoed, and painted with a horizontal band that dips in the center. Above it rise a pair of pilasters that project shallowly, have rounded corners, carry the string course as their bases, and extend about ten feet above the parapet. Their capitals are a pair of deeply recessed speed lines and a round-cornered top. Between the pilasters and from canopy to above the second-story windows a glass block window functions like the rose window of a medieval Cathedral. Only this window is rectangular, and its surface undulates with its glass blocks alternating among flat, convex, and concave, each form aligned vertically. Above this window there begins a blade sign, most of which backs onto the roof rather than projecting over the canopy. With a curved north edge, it rises about ten feet above the pilaster capitals, or 20 feet above the roof. Its capital is three shallow groves, horizontal, topped by a recessed panel about four feet high in which are inserted sheet metal letters spelling the name of the store and originally lit with neon. At the back of this blade sign a translucent glass tower/blade sign rises some 50 feet above the roof. It was originally lit from within by green neon.

Storefronts wrap around the entire street elevations. Their stem walls, covered with tan tile occasionally fluted, are about one foot high. The six-foot plate glass display windows dominate. Current sash is black anodized aluminum. Above the windows is a short, horizontally grooved metal strip painted to match the walls, and above that are fixed awnings of a fairly shallow pitch (the original awnings were retractable). The two street entries retain their original cone-shaped recess plan. The one on D Street retains a Moderne-patterned, colored terrazzo flooring. The entry doors, patterned after the original plans, have transoms and sidelights.

The mid-block (south and east) elevations are simpler. For the two-story section of the building only the second story of the east elevation is exterior. It matches the second story of the west elevation on D Street. The south elevation, on the parking lot side, has at its western end two second-story windows like those on the other elevations. The center is blank wall with a painted sign.

Five much smaller windows light its eastern portion. The mezzanine also has small windows, and a short carry-over of the string course. The ground floor has a delivery bay but is otherwise blank.

The one-story section on the east was constructed as part of the original building. It is described in the original plans and the original contract and bond. It was designed simpler than the two-story section in order to distinguish the tenant spaces here from the owners' own business, Rosenberg's Department Store, in the two-story section.

The height, structure, and wall finish of the one-story section match their equivalents of the other section. The only seam between sections is a matter of ornament alone, and not a consistent vertical line. The mezzanine string course carries over onto the one-story facade in the form of one-foot-wide vertical accents marking bays on the plain facia/parapet. Each bay also has a ventilation grill molded in the concrete. The historic canvas awnings were replaced in 1964 with a fixed stucco canopy. The canopy has a pair of low barrel vaults to mark the off-center entry, and it is flat for the rest of the one-story elevation. The store window nearest to the two-story section was enclosed in 1964 and is now faced with smooth stucco.

The other windows' storefront system and the entry doors are still the reduced-height aluminum ones of 1964. In the same year an asymmetrical T-plan addition, of matching height, was built onto the rear. The east and rear walls are plain and windowless. The roof has skylights, which have been covered.

The interiors of both sections and of the second floor are open, but the floor level of the one-story section is about six inches above that of the two-story section. Boxed steel columns support the roof and the mezzanine, dividing the two-story interior into four bays north to south and seven bays east to west; the one-story interior has three bays aligned north to south with the bays in the other section, and six bays east to west. In the two-story section the column boxes are plaster, square with canted corners. Their Capitals consist of a three-inch band of vertical fluting below a wide cavetto molding, perhaps a reference to Egyptian Revival. The second-floor columns have only the band of fluting, no spreading cavetto, and no differentiated base. The one-story section has simple square column boxes. Historically the main floor columns were incorporated into retail casework and therefore had no bases of their own; in 1994 the plaster column boxes of the two-story section were continued down to the floor and were given new bases derived from a design in the original Hertzka & Knowles plans.

An open mezzanine covers the southernmost bay of the two-story section, accessed by an elevator and stairs at the rear. The northern edge of the mezzanine curves out and in symmetrically at the center bays. The delicate railing for stairs and mezzanine is composed of horizontal metal bars, metal tube balusters wide apart, and birch handrails; it evokes passenger liner imagery.

In 1964 the one-story section of the building was incorporated into Rosenbergs' Department Store, and considerable alterations were made. The most serious retained to the present was the addition of a stuccoed canopy cantilevered all along the north elevation of the one-story section, flat but for a pair of shallow barrel arcs for the entry west of center. The display window bay nearest to the two-story section was enclosed to conceal the whole building's electrical service behind it, and this bay was faced with bronze ceramic tiles. A whole new aluminum storefront system, including doors, was installed, two feet lower than the original system, and the window tops were filled in. There were additions to the rear of the one-story section. In the interior, tenant partitions and about half the wall between the two building sections were removed. Part of the balcony was enclosed. There were miscellaneous repairs and changes, including the removal of most of the storefront stemwall tiles.

The store was closed in 1988 and remained vacant until 1994. In 1994 the storefronts were entirely rebuilt, including stemwalls that had rotted out. New display windows match the size of the original ones; new doors replicate photos and drawings of the lost originals, with glass, wood frame, and brass push bars. New tiles for the stem wall were modeled after the fluted originals because not enough of the originals had survived. The bronzed tiles of the infilled display bay were replaced with stucco to match the walls. The main entry canopy was restored. The "ROSENBERG'S" letters from the blade sign were carefully removed and stored, to be replaced with similar lettering for the new tenant, Barnes & Noble. The 1964 balcony enclosure was removed. Also removed were the partitions enclosing the rear of the display windows so that now, perhaps for the first time, light will enter the retail space directly from the display windows. All the store casework (1964 work) was removed; the interior had suffered great damage from water, graffiti, homeless occupancy, and pigeons during the 1988-1993 years of vacancy. The interior columns had never had regular bases, as their lower four and one half feet had been incorporated into the store casework. In 1994 the columns' plaster shaft coverings were continued down to the floor and given new bases pursuant to the original Hertzka & Knowles plans. The wall was rebuilt between the building sections. New lighting fixtures were modeled on historic photographs. The building was given a seismic upgrade, of which the only visible sign is a single leg of a V-brace behind the eastern display window of the two-story section. Mechanical systems were also replaced. New accessible bathrooms were constructed, and a low new security partition at the D Street entrance.

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California West and north elevations, looking southeast (1994)
West and north elevations, looking southeast (1994)

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California East and north elevations, looking southwest (1994)
East and north elevations, looking southwest (1994)

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California South elevation, looking north from Third Street across parking lot (1994)
South elevation, looking north from Third Street across parking lot (1994)

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California Rear addition, looking northwest (1994)
Rear addition, looking northwest (1994)

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California Entry pavilion, looking south across Fourth Street (1994)
Entry pavilion, looking south across Fourth Street (1994)

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California Entry pavilion window, from interior, second floor (1994)
Entry pavilion window, from interior, second floor (1994)

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California Sign tower, looking northeast across roof (1994)
Sign tower, looking northeast across roof (1994)

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California Typical bay (south bay on west [D Street] elevation) (1994)
Typical bay (south bay on west [D Street] elevation) (1994)

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California String course detail, two south bays on west elevation (1994)
String course detail, two south bays on west elevation (1994)

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California Seam between sections of building, looking south across Fourth Street (1994)
Seam between sections of building, looking south across Fourth Street (1994)

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California D Street entry, looking northeast (1994)
D Street entry, looking northeast (1994)

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California Details and main Fourth Street entry, looking southeast (1994)
Details and main Fourth Street entry, looking southeast (1994)

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California Entry to one-story section, looking southeast (1994)
Entry to one-story section, looking southeast (1994)

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California Main interior space, looking southeast from northwest corner (1994)
Main interior space, looking southeast from northwest corner (1994)

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California Balcony center, looking south from ground floor (1994)
Balcony center, looking south from ground floor (1994)

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California Balcony near center, looking northeast from balcony (1994)
Balcony near center, looking northeast from balcony (1994)

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California Second floor interior, looking northeast (1994)
Second floor interior, looking northeast (1994)

Rosenburg's Department Store, Santa Rosa California Portion of one-story section interior, looking west at row of columns continuous through both sections (1994)
Portion of one-story section interior, looking west at row of columns continuous through both sections (1994)