was a rising architect when he got the job of designing a new City Hall for San Bernardino.
Unveiled on Oct. 6, 1972, the tall, narrow building is entirely clad in glass. The building’s front portion extends forward, held up by thick columns. Reflective glass even covers the underside of that entry projection.
Architecture critics hailed San Bernardino City Hall as a masterpiece of style and forward thinking. The American Institute of Architects has named it one of the 49 most outstanding city halls in the United States. (The AIA was, of course, commenting on design, not governance.)
After 45 years of use, City Hall was vacated in 2017 due to concerns about its ability to withstand a major earthquake. Employees were relocated to leased space nearby. Meetings of the City Council shifted to the Feldheym Library.
But finally, a push is on to renovate City Hall and restore it to use.
The lead architect: , son of César Pelli. The younger Pelli is a partner in New York-based , the firm his father founded in 1977.
Pelli is ready to team with L.A.-based Gruen Associates, for whom his father worked on the San Bernardino project, to bring City Hall back to life.
On Wednesday, Pelli was in San Bernardino for a firsthand look at the handiwork of his father, who died in 2019 at age 92.
The younger Pelli was there with Debra Gerod, a Gruen partner. She’d visited the building a few times over the years because, she said, it’s still considered one of Gruen’s most important projects.
Pelli and Gerod got a private tour of the six-story City Hall, top to bottom. Afterward there was a short ceremony in the lobby attended by two dozen city leaders and potential partners in the project. Plus one newspaper columnist.
“It was very meaningful to him, a great honor and responsibility, to design a city hall for San Bernardino,” Pelli, who wore a suit and open-necked shirt, told the assemblage. “It was part of a vision to revitalize the downtown.”
The acclaim for San Bernardino City Hall led to other high-profile projects for his father, with L.A.’s Pacific Design Center — a trio of buildings fronted by reflective glass of red, blue and green, respectively — following in 1975 and remaining a colorful landmark.
“He always had a special part of his heart for San Bernardino. I remember him talking about it a lot,” Pelli said. After relocating to the East Coast, the elder Pelli would sometimes drive out to San Bernardino when visiting L.A.
The majority of the City Council was elected after 2017 and never worked in the building. I’d never been inside. But I was aware of the high regard in which it’s held.
San Bernardino City Hall is praised in two essential guidebooks to architecture that are in my personal library.
“Like other buildings by Pelli, this one is elegant and refined; a beautifully packaged art object,” wrote David Gebhard and Robert Winter in “A Guide to Architecture in Los Angeles and Southern California” in 1977. “It is the most successful High Art public building constructed in Southern California over the past dozen or so years.”
Meanwhile, in his “The City Observed: Los Angeles,” Charles Moore wrote in 1984 that the building has “a sophistication, verve and wit” that “cause it to linger in the memory, as real art will.”
Heady stuff for San Bernardino.
1972’s City Hall was a linchpin in an urban renewal effort of the 1970s that included the opening that same year of the nearby Central City Mall, later Carousel Mall. A second César Pelli building, a Security Pacific National Bank that stands one block north of City Hall, also opened in 1972.
Downtown’s burst of energy soon dissipated. As in other cities big and small, people gravitated to new centers with easy parking and fewer urban headaches, leaving downtowns as places to work, not shop or live.
There’s been interest in returning to City Hall if a means could be found to fund the renovation, which may top $60 million. New City Manager Charles Montoya has proposed a way to do so.
Montoya’s idea is to create a financing authority, issue bonds, begin design and construction, and reoccupy the building before the leases on office space come up for renewal.
Debt payments, Montoya told the City Council during a Jan. 31 study session, would be roughly equal to current rent payments.
“We don’t want to sign another lease. That’s just throwing money out the window,” Montoya said that night.
Consideration and more details could come before the council later in May.
Lynn Merrill, the city’s interim public works director, told me: “We’re looking at being back in the building in October 2026. That’s the target.”
Pelli told me that besides seismic work, mechanical systems need to be updated and the interior space rethought based on how offices function today.
Also, the signature glass skin will be replaced. The single-pane glass trapped heat, making City Hall uncomfortably hot during the summer, which in turn made the building “an energy hog,” Pelli said. He’s looking at dual panes with insulation.
“The idea is to preserve what’s great about it and make it better,” Pelli said of the building. “The bones of it are very good. We just need to bring it forward.”
Merrill said when he’d reached out to Gruen Associates, he was unsure if the storied firm would even remember San Bernardino City Hall. To his amazement, they display a photo of it in their office and expressed a desire to be part of its rehab.
It would be Gruen’s first renovation of one of its own buildings, said Gerod, who has the original drawings and plans. She’s eager to help realize the younger Pelli’s vision, much as project architect did for César Pelli.
Rafael Pelli was equally enthused at the chance to bring back a building of his father’s.
“He felt a great pride in it. It helped launch his career,” Pelli said. “I feel it’s full circle now.”
David Allen squares the circle Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.
