Arcata Plaza nomination for National Register heads to council vote

Arcata City Council was set to weigh whether to advance a National Register nomination for the Arcata Plaza, a decision that could ripple through the city’s busiest public square by affecting preservation reviews, redevelopment plans and the way the downtown core is managed.

City preservation documents already describe the Plaza area as having “special character and unique historical, aesthetic and cultural interest and significance” to residents and businesses. The same materials identify it as the Arcata Plaza Historic District and say the Plaza remains the city’s commercial hub, making the vote more than a symbolic recognition of history.

The Plaza’s story runs through Arcata’s own development. City historic-preservation materials say the town was settled in spring 1850 as a supply center for interior mining districts, then gained a public water system and fire department in 1884. Railroad connections with San Francisco began in 1914, the same year Humboldt State Normal School, now Cal Poly Humboldt, was established. The Redwood Highway opened in 1925, and by 1930 Arcata’s population had reached 1,700.

At the center of the Plaza stands the McKinley statue, donated by Arcata resident George Zehndner in 1906. Around it sit early commercial buildings such as the restored Jacoby Building, which help define the square’s historic character and its day-to-day role as a gathering place, shopping district and civic focal point.

The proposal has been on the city’s preservation radar for years. The Historic Landmarks Committee, a volunteer advisory body that helps the City Council on sites with historic, architectural, cultural or aesthetic value, included revisiting the Plaza’s National Register application in a 2020 annual report. City records also show the Plaza Historic District map has been on file since 2003. Under Arcata’s preservation rules, a district nomination can be initiated by the owner, the Historic Sites Society of Arcata, the Council, the Planning Commission or the Historic Design Review Commission.

If the council moved the nomination forward, it would still have to pass through the city’s review process before going on to state and federal consideration by the California Office of Historic Preservation and the U.S. National Park Service. The National Register is the federal list of places significant in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering and culture.

That review matters because the city has already acknowledged the stakes. A 2018 historical resource report on the McKinley statue removal project said removing the statue could substantially affect both the Arcata Plaza Historic Landmark and the Arcata Plaza Historic District. As of 2022, Arcata already had eight National Register sites, including the Arcata Hotel on the Plaza, the Whaley House, the Chapman House and the Jacoby Building, underscoring how much of the city’s identity is already bound up with preservation decisions downtown.