As Monterey County supervisors and other officials gathered on Tuesday, Aug. 21, hailing the gleaming renovation and restoration of the old Monterey County Courthouse in downtown Salinas, their audience included local dignitaries, county workers, architects and builders.
Also present, gazing stoically upon the ceremony, were the men and women who lived and worked in Monterey County in earlier eras—the “heroic head” sculptures that dot the exterior of the 1937 three-story Art Deco building, created by artist Joseph “Jo” Jacinto Mora.
In all there are 62 heads representing 23 people, ranging from indigenous people to a modern young man and woman of Mora's time period.
Mora was commissioned by architect Robert Stanton to embellish the building, as part of a Works Progress Administration project in 1936. Mora chose to depict four cultural periods from the county's past: Native American; Spanish; Mexican; and the United States.
The old building covered in Mora’s work inside and out—sculptures, bas relief, and bronze pieces—was in danger of being torn down. It was, despite the artwork, an old building with lots of issues that come with any aging structure.
Monterey County District Attorney Dean Flippo remembered the “totally gross” toilet shared by attorneys that always plugged up, and the judge that controlled the only thermostat in the building. Supervisor Mary Adams remembered how hot it would get, and that the steep steps were “creepy.”
On Tuesday those bad memories were clearly a thing of the past, as the supervisors marveled over the restoration of the concrete building, now on the National Register of Historic Places.
“I feel like I’m in the middle of a jewelry box,” Adams told the audience.
Supervisor John Phillips’ memories from his years as a young deputy district attorney and later as a judge were more dramatic.
He remembered watching as Cesar Chavez was escorted to the jail next door, and the time Ethel Kennedy came to visit.
He also regaled the audience with a story of two murderers who staged a breakout from the jail. Detectives poured out of the courthouse building and ran the pair down.
Phillips also fondly remembered Tony the elevator operator, and Art, a blind man who ran the snack shop.
Once housing all of the county government’s functions, today the restored building holds the District Attorney’s Office, the Civil Grand Jury, a law library and Jo’s Snack Bar, named for Mora. The building itself is now called the East West Wing.
It took 15 years for the District Attorney’s Office to get into the restored building. Flippo said he was told in 2003 his department would spend only 18 months in the portable modules at the corner of Church and West Gabilan streets.
Asbestos, lead paint and other issues made it a complex renovation, County Supervisor Luis Alejo said. The total cost of the renovation was $40 million.
As complex as the recent renovation was, Peter Hiller, the Jo Mora Trust Collection Curator since 2007, shared how the cement building in 1937 was constructed around the Queen Anne Victorian building that served as the original county courthouse. Tuesday’s audience in the courtyard was sitting on the original building’s footprint.
“The idea was to build around it so the work of justice could continue," he said.
Once the new building was complete, the contents of the original building were passed through open windows from the old to the new. Then the Queen Anne was pried apart board by board, and pieces were passed through the cement columns.
Hiller was honored during the dedication by the Alliance of Monterey Area Preservationists for his work to get the courthouse on the National Register of Historic Places, an effort he said he took on himself, without asking permission from anyone at the county.
While others thanked the politicians who voted to preserve the building, along with the administrators who oversaw it, the architects, contractors and others, Hiller took the time to thank the workers who carefully restored and rebuilt the courthouse—not unlike the people Mora memorialized in the hero heads.
The restored courthouse, Hiller said, “hasn’t looked this good since the day it was dedicated.”