San Francisco Church May Be Added To National Register of Historic Places

BAY AREA — Five places in the San Francisco Bay Area and one from the Monterey Bay Area may be added to the National Register of Historic Places, state parks officials said Friday.

Perhaps the most prominent place is San Francisco's Sacred Heart Parish Complex where between 1968 and 1972 Rev. Eugene Boyle was pastor and the public face of the Catholic church's involvement in the Black civil
rights movement.

The other five places that could make the register are the Southern Pacific Passenger Depot in Benicia, Brooklyn Presbyterian Church in Oakland, a Marin City development, the Sperry Flour Company Vallejo Mills
Historic District and Wee Kirk, a church in unincorporated Santa Cruz County.

Brooklyn Presbyterian Church, an East Oakland church, is a two-story redwood building in the Late Victorian Romanesque style. The height of the building's two towers combined with its location on a knoll allows residents and visitors to see the tips of the tower spires from miles away. The church has some of the largest stained glass windows in Oakland and the interior woodwork in the auditorium is made of redwood and black walnut.

In Marin City, 29 buildings on about 30 acres was built by Marin County as the first phase of the city's redevelopment, taking it from a temporary wartime labor town to a permanent place for low- and middle-income residents to live. The style of the buildings was strongly influenced by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

The Sperry Flour Company Vallejo Mills Historic District includes a mill, warehouse and grain elevators built on Vallejo's waterfront between 1917 and 1965. The district reflects the development of California's flour
industry in the early 20th century.

Wee Kirk, an 1891 Colonial Revival style church in the unincorporated Santa Cruz County community of Ben Lomond is a roughly two-story tall rectangular building that has a steeply pitched gable roof, bell tower and entrance portico.

The Southern Pacific Passenger Depot was built in 1897 in Banta, California and based on a standard Southern Pacific plan. It was taken apart and moved to Benicia in 1902, served as the city's passenger and freight station and train-ferry staging center until 1930 and the station agent's home until 1958.

— Bay City News; Image via Wikimedia