The Cooper House in Santa Cruz

In my book A Very Typical Family, which is set in Santa Cruz, CA, Natalie takes her nephew Kit to Santa Cruz’s downtown area. People who remember the downtown before the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake obliterated many of the historic buildings there will remember the central jewel: the mustard-yellow Cooper House.

The Cooper House was my favorite building when I was a kid. Remember Ginger the Rainbow Lady?

As a Good Times article correctly notes, “For anyone living in town during the 1970s and 1980s, the Cooper House was the place to congregate. Located in the heart of downtown, the impressive building, with its decadent windows and ornate staircases, quickly became a hub for people to gather, chat and celebrate life—from national figures like Timothy Leary to local celebrities like Ginger the Rainbow Lady.”

Built in 1885 by the Cooper brothers, its original intended use was as a county courthouse. According to Good Times, the local press called it then “one of the neatest, most convenient, best proportioned and at the same time, perhaps the cheapest public building in the state.”

The Cooper House had to be knocked down after sustaining catastrophic damage from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, but that earthquake wasn’t the building’s first brush with destruction. A huge fire in 1894 destroyed many buildings downtown, and the Cooper House had to be rebuilt (by 1896). Then, the 1906 earthquake nearly leveled it.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel said: “The interior was open, with a grand marble staircase and magnificent stained glass, including pieces by renowned Boony Doon artist John Forbes. It became a de facto cultural hub, home to shops and restaurants and music. It was the maypole around which downtown danced.”

The Cooper House as I remember it as a kid, which, as you can see, has been improved upon the version above:

Below is a photo that I took after the 1989 earthquake, where the Cooper House stood. You can see the Octagon house behind the pit. I know that the local Santa Cruzans who had to watch it get knocked down were upset. “It didn’t go down easy,” according to one account.

This empty pit stopped me in my tracks at the time and I remember feeling devastated.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel said:

“When the pawn-shaped wrecking ball first struck the Cooper House, some say, not a brick moved. It took several days to knock the whole thing to the earth. A crowd assembled to watch it go: some cheered, some swore and many cried. Someone played taps on a horn.” 

“The old mall became a myth. And at the center was the Cooper House, a beloved building torn down less that two weeks after the earthquake and carried off, piece by piece, to the Dimeo Lane landfill. Constructed of materials made in the county, the buff-brick building once was a courthouse, and regarded through decades as the county” finest architectural specimen.”

The present-day Cooper House is not an ugly building, but it lacks the charm and whimsy of the previous version:

More good Santa Cruz stuff: