Atascadero Sunken Gardens and City Hall (# 0535)

For those of us who have been in California for a good while, saying “I’m going to Atascadero” used to mean you were going off to visit a friend or family member with serious mental problems. For years many assumed that the only thing of importance in Atascadero was the Atascadero State Hospital, a 1200 bed institution for mentally ill convicts. But the area has changed in the past 20 years.

I first got to know the Central Coast area when, in the mid-1980’s, I had a position that required my going down to San Luis Obispo (16 miles south of Atascadero) every 3-4 months. In those days the towns along the US 101, the main road, were fairly small and distinct and the country side was open range or large farms – but people in the area were concerned about the growth they were seeing with vineyards popping up, and the related wine tourists. So, the town that was once known for its mental hospital, is now in the middle of area known (pre-pandemic) for wine-tasting, luxurious getaways, and ‘one-of-a-kind’ restaurants.

As seems to happen fairly often, as new money, interests and increasing trendiness flow in, the history that had been hidden when the hospital dominated the town, also began to surface. It turns out the area was a focus for social movements back in the early 1900’s, when there was a plan to develop a utopian (albeit white) Atascadero Colony that was expected to be the home of 30,000. The center piece of the planned colony was the colony’s Administrative Building (the building pictured here) and a large park to the west of it called ‘Sunken Gardens,’ which was inspired by the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.

Unfortunately I could find nothing about what happened with the plans for the colony, though I did find that the building shown here went through multiple uses (including being a jail) over the years and did not become the city administration building (aka City Hall) until the 1980’s – it was seriously damaged by an earthquake in 2003 and was closed for retrofitting for 10 years after that.

The building is surprisingly large and elaborate for the city hall of a small city (population about 30,000), as is the size of the park.

Sources:
www.atascaderohistoricalsociety.org/city-hall-history.php
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atascadero%2C_California