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Sonoma Grammar School Architect, Adolph C. Lutgens

 

Adolph Charles Lutgens was born in San Francisco in 1857 to German immigrants. He started his working life as a carpenter, became a draftsman for architects Kenitzer & Raun, and then went into business for himself as an architect in 1883. In 1885, he was hired by the South End Boat Club to design a new boathouse and this led to a commission ten years later to build the Dolphin Club’s boathouse, which is still in use today at Aquatic Park (502 Jefferson, at Hyde).

A great deal of Lutgens’ work in San Francisco influenced how Pacific Heights looks today even though some homes were lost in the 1906 earthquake and fire.

In 1891 on the corner of First Street East and Napa Street in Sonoma, Frederick Duhring built a brick building and operated it as a general store. It was designed by Lutgens, most likely his first work in Sonoma, and featured a short tower at the corner with a cupola of pressed metal to resemble shingles with a flag pole on top. In October 1990 a fire completely destroyed the original building. Through the efforts of the Sonoma League for Historic Preservation and donations from the citizens of Sonoma, the façade, using the original bricks, was completely restored to its former appearance.

Lutgens is best known for the Sonoma City Hall, which he designed in 1904, but because of financing delays and the 1906 earthquake, was not completed until 1908. It became the centerpiece of the eight-acre Sonoma Plaza, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Mission Revival-style designed to be constructed from basalt stone from nearby quarries and featuring two stories, a tower, a tiled roof, and distinctively having the same facade on all four sides each with an arched doorway with tall windows. This was done apparently to avoid controversy among the merchants, each of whom thought the building should face in his direction.

He was architect for a Classic Craftsman home at 558 Second Street East in 1911, one of many residences he designed in Sonoma. It has been meticulously restored and happily inhabited.

Lutgens was also commissioned to design the Andrew Carnegie-financed Library on the east side of the Plaza, which was completed in 1913 and is now the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau. The building is an example of Classical Revival-style and with the Mission Revival City Hall are the only buildings on the Plaza and are part of the Sonoma Plaza National Register Landmark area which also includes Mission San Francisco Solano.

One of the last projects he completed as a San Francisco architect was Sonoma Grammar School in 1915. The two-story Classical Revival-style building is the largest brick building in Sonoma. It is divided into five sections: The central section features a portico with a pediment, cornice, and four freestanding columns, one of the few remaining examples of early 1900s elementary school architecture. The front windows are arranged in six bays, each with five windows. The east and west wings were added in 1927. Inside, the building includes concrete stairways with oak handrails, 12-foot high ceilings, and Douglas fir panel doors. The school's west wing houses a theater-auditorium with a seating capacity of 200 people.

 

Lutgens continued to be listed in San Francisco City Directories as an architect until 1917, when he moved across the Bay to Vallejo, probably in semi-retirement, but maintaining his architectural license from his home address there until the mid-1930's. He died in Los Angeles in 1939.

 

 

 

By Greghenderson2006 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=150375049