Santa Rosa's old post office became a museum by moving

Santa Rosa has wine-country gateways, creek paths, older neighborhoods, and a downtown shaped by rebuilding after earthquakes and fires. The Museum of Sonoma County adds a story that is almost hard to picture: the old post office was saved by moving it.

The building opened as the Santa Rosa Post Office and Federal Building in 1910. It was designed after the 1906 earthquake, when Santa Rosa was rebuilding and needed a permanent federal building. The Roman Renaissance Revival building gave the city a proud public room, with limestone columns, tile roofing, postal work downstairs, and federal offices upstairs.

Later, the old post office was in the path of redevelopment. Preservation work helped save it, but saving it meant moving the whole building. In 1979, crews rolled the 1,700-ton structure from 5th Street to 7th Street, moving it about 800 feet over 75 days. After that, it was converted into the museum that opened in 1985.

That story gives downtown Santa Rosa a strong local image. People kept a beautiful building and a piece of public memory. They went through the trouble of moving it, slowly and carefully, so the city could keep its rebuilding story in public use.