By Sharon Marovich for the Union Democrat.
When the Sonora Grammar School was completed in the fall of 1909, the elegant, white building graced with eight tall Tuscan columns and a silvery dome was an instant landmark.
Ensconced on a hill three steep blocks above the heart of the Queen of the Southern Mines, it is still revered as architectural royalty. Visible from throughout central Sonora, it is often mistaken for the town’s courthouse or city hall.
This majestic building represented a community’s continuing commitment to the promise of younger generations, the considerable talent of a San Francisco architect with important works still ahead and a populace solidly behind both, financially and in spirit.
That particular knoll on South Barretta Street is the site of the town’s first permanent public school, a red brick edifice that opened in September 1858.
The earliest school board brought public education to Sonora’s growing school-age population as early as 1855 in a rented facility. Previously, private schools and home instruction had taken root in the tumult of the Gold Rush, when there were few children to educate, and they continued for some time.
As early as March 1853, textbooks on such subjects as arithmetic, geography, and spelling were available at Sonora’s Miners’ Book Store, an oasis of enlightenment amid the vice and violence of mining camp days.
The number of school-age children continued to grow as families settled here, and trustees added a wooden classroom building in 1875. Two years later, they were filled with 264 students. Although they numbered less than a dozen and a half, that tally included children of Asian, African American, and Native American ancestry, some of whom had been denied an education with their peers until a California Supreme Court ruling in 1874 opened the state’s public schools to all children.
It was about this time that Margaret A. (Maggie) Fahey joined the faculty as a primary grade teacher. She advanced to principal 13 years later in 1888 and is generally credited with bringing order and discipline to an administration and student body somewhat lacking in both.
Fahey was considered the school’s heart and soul until her death in August 1921. She was a graduate of the old brick schoolhouse and spent her career on the hill, as did a remarkable number of other pre- and post-Dome alumni.
In the 1890s, the Mother Lode’s mines were in bonanza again as a second Gold Rush swept through the region. Fueled by investors from around the world and also made possible by new technology designed to get the gold the 49ers left behind, Tuolumne County’s economy was booming again.
Two new industrial-sized lumber companies tapping the rich timber resources of primeval forests and expanded livestock raising added significantly to the mining excitement, which saw the arrival of the Sierra Railway at major depots in Jamestown, Sonora, Standard, and Tuolumne beginning in 1897.
This economic re-awakening brought Sonora the first-class Hotel Victoria (Sonora Inn) (1896); courthouse (1899); Bradford Building (Vault Candy Store) (1903); first high school (1906); a private hospital (1909) and neighborhoods overflowing with showy late Victorian-era homes.
This golden opportunity to replace an aging campus and provide for a growing student population was not lost on district trustees, prominent citizens at the time: Dr. R. Innis Bromley, Frank Ralph, and Ed Rehm.
Bromley was a popular physician/surgeon who arrived in Sonora in 1887 from the East Bay. His practice was located in the Bradford Building before he moved it to a hospital/sanitarium designed by the Dome’s architect while he supervised the school’s construction. Bromley was an old fashioned country doctor and spent many hours in his buggy en route to patients unable to visit his office.
Ralph was a native son who grew up on a farm along Sanguinetti Road established by his father, Jonathan Florentine Ralph, in the Gold Rush. He was a successful wheelwright and orchardist who was a member of the town trustees (city council) while serving on the school board. His career in elected office culminated in election to the county Board of Supervisors from District 1 in 1920.
As a county supervisor, Ralph designed Courthouse Square and oversaw its installation in 1936. He also worked with Gilbert Ashley, architect of the Sonora Veterans Memorial Hall (1932). For both projects, Ralph successfully incorporated Columbia marble into their designs. Following his death in 1941, the park was dedicated to his memory with a monument along West Yaney Avenue made of stones gathered throughout the county.
Rehm, a Columbia native, was the owner of a successful clothing store catering to men, women and children located on South Washington Street (today’s Thirsty Prospector). As a well-known early “Kodaker”, he was a cofounder of the Sierra Amateur Camera Club in 1900. He was also a director of the Tuolumne County Bank.
In early 1907, the three men began discussing the idea of calling a bond election for funds to replace the school facilities that The Union Democrat described as “a group of old rookeries…that have outlived their usefulness… and are a disgrace to the school department.” The newspaper also called them “dangerous, unsanitary and inadequate.”
Voters apparently felt similarly, and voted 227-44 at a June 8, 1907, election to support a $50,000 ($1.64 million/2023) bond issue for a new campus for students then numbering about 350.
A Los Angeles firm, N.W. Harris and Co., agreed to buy the bonds, but later withdrew its offer as its attorney advised the ballot measure’s wording was confusing and could be misinterpreted, though Sonora’s voters seemed to understand its intent. After a year’s delay, trustees — working with the county Board of Supervisors — announced that a bond sale deal had been worked out with the First National Bank of Sonora.
With funding in place, they advertised for an architect to put together plans and specifications for a single new building. Nine California architects vied for the Sonora job in a design competition finally decided by the board at 2 a.m. on a hot August night in 1908.
Benjamin Geer McDougall’s rendering, echoing the grace and beauty of Greek and Roman architecture, won the day for his San Francisco firm.
Drawing heavily from design traditions 2,000 years old, McDougall’s curving array of gently tapered columns, two flaring wings, a smooth white finish and a silver dome above are architectural elements that continue to lend the building distinction and timelessness. It remains a local legend that his inspiration was the United States Treasury building in Washington, D.C.
McDougall’s interest in bidding on the Sonora school project may have been piqued by his firm’s unsuccessful foray in Tuolumne County 10 years earlier. It was among 10 bidders vying for the contract to design, furnish and supervise construction of the Tuolumne County Courthouse. In January 1898, the county Board of Supervisors awarded the job to a competing San Francisco firm, Wm. Mooser and Son.
The board’s decision was apparently as contentious as the school board’s debate that lasted into the early morning hours. It wasn’t until 3 a.m. that the supervisors, in a 3-2 vote, could come to a decision. And, like the Dome commission, it resulted in a second project for the architect: design of a new home for Supervisor Thomas Hender, an 1899 Colonial revival mansion that still stands on North Stewart Street just south of Elkin Street.
McDougall’s additional Sonora job was a sanitarium-hospital for Bromley (1857-1930). Located in downtown Sonora (northwest corner of South Washington and Church streets), it was built of reinforced concrete like the school and had two stories and a basement, also like the school. It stood until the 1950s, when it fell to make way for a used car lot, part of an adjacent automobile dealership in a building now occupied by Yosemite Title Co.
McDougall’s plot plan shows nine classrooms, offices and a second floor auditorium or assembly room directly beneath the dome. In a design flourish, he added a dome to the ceiling of the 450-seat space. It is interesting to note that the superstructures of the rooftop and auditorium dome are two separate installations.
When McDougall joined his father’s pioneer architectural firm in San Francisco, his two brothers, Charles and George, were already partners, though they did not have the formal education their brother acquired at the San Francisco School of Design.
At some point, the firm opened an office in Bakersfield where oil fields were booming, and Benjamin McDougall ran it until it was relocated to Fresno. The firm’s work in the Central Valley included the Kings County jail in Hanford (1898); Carnegie libraries in Visalia (1904) and Hanford (1906) and banks in Merced (1905) and Visalia (1905).
Seeing opportunity in San Francisco following the earthquake and fire in April 1906, Benjamin McDougall opened his own office there and another in Berkeley. When tapped for the Sonora job, the architect was in the midst of a near half-century career applying his considerable design and construction skills to a wide variety of jobs: office buildings, churches, homes and even an iron works in Berkeley.
Although his St. James Episcopal Church in Los Angeles (1922) with its soaring gothic arches and medieval nave is impressive; it is his French-Renaissance-inspired federal building in Oakland that is considered his finest work. Located on a wedge-shaped parcel at 16th and Broadway, this creamy, terracotta-clad flat iron followed by only four years of construction of the Dome. At 13 stories, it still stands 110 years later as one of the West Coast’s first high rises.
Benjamin McDougall was a resident of Berkeley, living near the Claremont Hotel, when he died on June 11, 1937, at 72.
In Benjamin McDougall, the Sonora school board found a man who could easily carry out its vision for a building that symbolized its dedication to quality education, permanence, and the commanding presence the hillside location demanded.
An excellent account of the Dome’s progress from rendering to reality is part of a chapter on local education in “Historic Sonora” by the late Carlo M. De Ferrari, Tuolumne County’s longtime official historian, who wrote that it only took Benjamin McDougall four months to complete blueprints and construction specifications.
In January 1909, the Fresno firm of Baley and Simpson was awarded a contract to build the school on a low bid of $32,698. A separate contract for a steam heating system went to Morgan and Co. of San Francisco at $2,600.
Existing school buildings housed students for the duration of construction. While excavation was underway for the basement and foundation, the board purchased an adjoining acre for an expanded playground and added more land in the years to come.
An important sign of progress was the laying of the cornerstone in April 1909. Festivities involved a parade of students and organizations through downtown to the school, a 21-gun salute, and speeches.
The granite block encasing a small wooden box was moved to the school’s new campus on Greenley Road in March 1973, but for 64 years it held memorabilia that included four newspapers of the day, photographs, a scroll listing the names and ages of all students in 1909, coins, and a program of the day’s events.
A month later, the walls were completed to the second story and the building’s character-defining colonnade had nearly soared to its proper height, giving “a good idea of the impressive architectural beauty of the structure when completed,” wrote the Tuolumne Independent Newspaper.
Inside plastering was finished by late October, and the smooth outside finish — coated with white paint — would be completed in another three weeks.
New desks and other furniture were in classrooms and offices by mid-November. By then, sixth- and seventh-graders had worked together to purchase a picture of Yosemite for the assembly room. Students also helped raise funds for new playground equipment by putting on drama productions.
The school, which had become the talk of the town, opened to 335 excited students, faculty and staff just after Thanksgiving 1909.
With progress came demolition of the pioneer schoolhouse of 1858, but some of its bricks live on in buildings and gardens in Sonora. At least one blackboard became a tabletop for an Italian family, which found its wooden surface ideal for pasta-rolling. One of two wooden buildings was sold at auction for $205 to John Rother, who constructed it in 1890.
The class of 1910 was the first to graduate in the assembly room from a permanent stage and under the decorative ceiling directly below their new school’s spectacular feature.
The impressive concrete wall along the South Barretta Street frontage followed, and landscaping emphasizing lawns and many evergreen trees such as cedars and redwoods soon appeared. Though spelled differently, Barretta Street is named for Jacinto Barreto, a Gold Rush merchant.
The student body was treated to annual picnics at Principal Fahey’s Kentucky Flat ranch on Campo Seco Road, and dancing around a Maypole was a rite of Spring.
As enrollment increased over the years, the campus gained athletic fields and several buildings: a two-classroom kindergarten unit and two first-grade classrooms just north of the Dome; a multi-purpose room and upper grade complex of four classrooms; and a hall to the south.
By the mid-1960s, enrollment reached a bulging 738, and the school board’s thoughts turned to the recommendation of a citizens’ committee to build a larger campus.
Strict Field Act earthquake standards and inspections by the State Fire Marshal led to abandoning the Dome for classes in 1967. Portable buildings, augmenting some already in place, were brought in and covered most of the paved playground areas.
It took considerable assurances from the board to quell “Save the Dome” sentiments, as one proposal was to demolish the beloved building for new classrooms. After nine tries, voters passed a bond issue on May 13, 1969, assuring a brand new, state-of-the-art school on Greenley Road, on portions of two former dairy ranches.
Red brick veneer was used extensively throughout the new facility and is a cultural tie to Sonora’s first red brick schoolhouse of 1858.
The last students attended school in the educational icon 56 years ago, only two years less than the 58 years it was a hotbed of learning for several generations of learners.
The Sonora Union High School District, owner of the entire South Barretta Street Campus, is preparing to sell the Dome and the two classroom units to the north in a public sale pending the completion of an appraisal.
“The historic Sonora Dome is one of the best examples of early 20th century public schools in California,” according to a professionally-prepared feasibility study from 20 years ago.
At 114 years young, it needs some TLC, as the study noted, but with 21st-century imagination, know-how, and determination, this place can continue for years to come.