Marin Readies To Celebrate Civic Center’s 60th Anniversary

SAN RAFAEL, CA — An iconic Northern California administrative building is about to hit a milestone, and Marin is readying to celebrate.

The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Marin County Civic Center’s 60th anniversary celebration is scheduled for Oct. 13, which marks the date of the administrative building complex’s 1962 opening.

The all-day event is presented by the Marin County Department of Cultural Services.

The Civic Center Library’s Anne T. Kent California Room will include free docent-led tours of the building, a cake-cutting, live music in the cafeteria garden, and a panel discussion about what it’s like to work in a Wright-designed building.

There will be architectural photography demonstrations, a building scavenger hunt, a screening of the 1997 feature film Gattaca that was partially shot on location at the Civic Center, and much more.

An architectural rendering of the Marin County Civic Center from the late 1950s.The Marin County Civic Center was commissioned in 1957 and opened in 1962.

Guests are invited to enter the building past a parking lot full of vintage cars from the time period when the Civic Center was built.

In addition, guests can see 26 new wooden doorstops handmade by a woodworker and Frank Lloyd Wright fan who donated them for the anniversary.

Commissioned in 1957, the Marin County Civic Center was Wright’s last and largest public project.

When Wright visited Marin for the first time, he said, “You have one of the most beautiful landscapes I have seen, and I am proud to make the buildings of this county characteristic of the beauty of the county. … Here is a crucial opportunity to open the eyes not of Marin County alone, but of the entire country, to what officials gathering together might themselves do to broaden and beautify human lives.”

In addition, the building’s iconic spire will be lit up each night for 60 nights in honor of the 60th anniversary.

Also, the Frank Lloyd Wright Civic Center Tour mobile app has been enhanced and is downloadable in the App Store and Play Store. A special playlist titled CivicCenter60 has been created on Spotify to commemorate the occasion.

Marin County residents who were born on October 13, 1962, are welcome to stop by between noon and 2 p.m. in the cafeteria garden for a gift bag full of birthday goodies in honor of the celebration. Gift bags will also be available all day in the Civic Center Library.

At the building’s groundbreaking ceremony in February 1960, distinguished architect Edward Durrell Stone said of the Civic Center, “Great periods of history are great only because of the arts they produced. The Marin County Civic Center is a great work of art, the best our times can produce. This will be a place of pilgrimage in years to come. They will come here as they go to see Michelangelo today.”

The Civic Center 60th anniversary is supported by the Friends of the Civic Center Library, Frank Lloyd Wright Civic Center Conservancy, the Marin Photography Club, Jeff Craemer, and Gustaf Rooth.

For more information, visit here.