Old Santa Ana City Hall was constructed in 1935 at a cost of $126,000, funded by city bonds and a Works Progress Administration (WPA) grant. It was designed by architect W. Horace Austin of Long Beach, who had designed the rather similar Masonic Temple at Sycamore and Fifth Streets a few years earlier. The City offices were located in this building until the 1980s with the exception of the City’s Public Works Agency, which vacated the building in 1999. In approximately 1982 it was converted into private offices and in 2001 it won an American Institute of Architects/Orange County design award for its interior adaptive reuse by Nestor/Gaffney Architects.
Adapted from the Pacific Coast Architecture Database:
Sculptures of two bearded Assyrian guards can be seen at the top pilasters flanking the front entrance to city hall. The three-story building was done in the Art Deco Style, with a strongly vertical appearance and quasi-traditional, geometric ornamentation. A four-story tower marked the location of the main entry when seen from a distance. Less visible are the two adjacent towers that are actually used to screen cellphone stations on the roof of the building.
