No one expects Class A buildings in a new
community, nor is the art feature ever highly developed in such a locality.
We must consider things relatively, and it is great progress that has been
made here, and the beginning is at hand for "cities beautiful" that may
easily be realized in the time to come.
From the formal opening of the Valley in
1900 until 1907 the development was from tent houses up to characteristic
cheap frontier structures. Building materials were very high priced, owing
to high freight rates, and very little money was available for buildings on
account of the extreme necessity for improving the land.
During the year 1907 quite an activity in
building began and rapid colonization made it desirable to provide suitable
schools and public buildings for a people intent on permanent residence.
The cost of building material made it
necessary to use local products as much as possible, and this necessarily
limited the art impulse. But in a short time there was an improvement in
this respect, and in 1908 the Valley launched out in a manner that produced
as good a class of buildings as could be expected in a new country, building
many creditable school buildings in county districts and grammar school
buildings in the towns.
In 1909 the Imperial Union High School
district erected at Imperial a good high school building which in design and
arrangement ranks with the best in the state for its size.
In 1910 the Holtville Union High School
district followed with a similar well-constructed high school building.
In 1911 El Centro Union High School
district built a high school unit which has been added to up to date at a
total cost of about a quarter of a million dollars.
Brawley and Calexico Union districts have
also built fine high school buildings, bringing the total investments in
high school buildings in the valley to about $700,000, all being strictly
modern structures.
The grammar school buildings in all of the
Valley cities are of the best designs and well laid out for the work
intended, while most of them are built of durable materials.
There are three Carnegie public libraries
in the Valley, at Imperial, El Centro, and Calexico, all of which are
well-designed structures, and each city is well provided with church
buildings for several denominations.
Each town has made ample provision with
fine hotels for the accommodation of the stranger. The famous Barbara Worth
Hotel in El Centro, begun in 1913, would be a credit to any city.
One and two-story store buildings in the
retail districts of the Valley cities have arcades over the sidewalks and
are wide spreading in design. Some of them have fronts of handsome design,
which the merchants so trim as to make effects and displays equal to large
city stores. Among the store buildings of importance are the Anderson
building in Calexico, which cost $75,000, and the Auditorium building in the
same city, which cost $50,000. They are both of reinforced concrete and of
good design.
The industrial district of El Centro
contains several handsome reinforced concrete buildings, notable among them
being a model creamery, the largest west of the Missouri river.
The residence districts in all of the
Valley cities are being built up with handsome bungalows and some good
residences costing from $10,000 to $15,000. Most of these are typical of
California cities, while others have extensive screened porches and screened
sleeping rooms, adapted to a warm climate.
Imperial County built a temporary court
house at El Centro, the county seat, in the central part of the city, in
1908, where county business still is being transacted, but the county has a
five-acre tract on West Main Street, on which now is being constructed a
jail building at a cost of $90,000. This is a modern, fire-proof, reinforced
concrete building. It will be a unit in the future permanent court house,
which is to be a structure of modern design, incorporating all the features
necessary to make it one of the best court houses in the state.
In general, the architectural designs are
above the standard, as compared with similar localities. The public
buildings follow the designs which are common throughout the states in the
best localities, while the stores and business buildings are distinct in
their arcade effects, which lend themselves to novel designs.