By Barry Eberling | DAILY REPUBLIC | March 13, 2009
The Rockville Stone Chapel on Suisun Valley Road was refurbished as part of a New Deal public works program during the Great Depression. Photo by Brad Zweerink
FAIRFIELD - Solano County could benefit for the second time in 80 years from a massive federal stimulus effort designed to jolt an ailing economy to life.
This latest package is backed by the Obama Administration. The first effort came under the Roosevelt Administration during the Depression.
Solano County received no grand public works project in the 1930s, certainly nothing like such New Deal-era titans as the Golden Gate Bridge or Grand Coulee Dam. But it did get a historic church restoration, an impressive post office and sidewalks. Even as the country is poised for a Newer Deal, the original New Deal's impacts are still present.
The then-small county was hurt by the Depression but perhaps fared better than big cities elsewhere in the nation.
'It was largely agricultural, so they had food,' local historian Jerry Bowen said.
Residents also wanted more jobs, however. President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed for a range of programs to get Americans back to work. Among them was the Work Progress Administration, which completed a number of local projects.
One was the restoration of the Rockville Stone Chapel, now a state historic monument. Two stone masons built it in 1856 out of rock quarried near what is now called Rockville Corner. The building eventually fell into disrepair, and the Methodist Episcopal Church South deeded it to the Rockville Cemetery District in 1929.
By 1939, the church had broken stained-glass windows, a rotted floor, a leaky roof and bats. A local Sunday school class of 40 children had to instead meet in a fruit shed. The Depression was a factor in church restoration plans being stymied.
'Would we not point with pride to that little stone church in the valley if it were restored and showed signs of friendly occupancy and worship?' Rosa Lee Baldwin, a descendant of a pioneer-era family, wrote to the Solano Republican newspaper.
The New Deal and its WPA program came to the rescue. Restoration work began in March 1940, and a Memorial Day celebration two months later marked the church's rebirth.
'Since that time, the cemetery district has kept it up,' district board member Jim Campi said recently. 'It's in good shape now. It's perfect. There's not a thing wrong with it. I think we've had to put on a new roof one time, a composition roof, just general upkeep.'
Today, the merged Suisun-Fairfield Rockville Cemetery District rents out the church for such events as weddings. One of Solano County's oldest buildings has been preserved.
In Vallejo, the WPA built the Moderne-style Vallejo post office at the corner of Marin and Carolina streets, complete with such touches as black marble pilasters and a mezzanine. A mural inside depicted the completion of Mare Island Naval Shipyard's first massive dry dock.
This grand building ceased being a post office in the 1960s in favor of other federal uses. By 2003, it was obsolete and on the auction block. The Vallejo Music Theater bought the building for $532,000 in 2003.
'It's in good shape,' Don Kelly said of the theater. 'There's nothing wrong with it. Structurally, it's sound. It's a running joke (that) this building is a bomb shelter.'
Now the old building is being reborn. Vallejo Music Theater holds small shows there, such as a recent production of 'The Fantasticks.' Space in the building can be rented. A room once used for bankruptcy court is now a church.
Ultimately, the group wants to remodel the building to hold a 299-seat theater for larger productions. The high ceiling will allow for a system that moves sets by lifting them, instead of wheeling them off.
'We have to raise a lot of money to make that happen,' Kelly said.
The New Deal also led to smaller local projects.
In the English Hills near Vacaville, the New Deal program called the Civilian Conservation Corps established Camp Chester. Youth there seeded gully channels and transplanted more than 100,000 trees for erosion control, Frank Keegan wrote in his book 'Solano: The Crossroads County.'
The New Deal also helped Fairfield and Suisun City get sidewalks in 1940. The Fairfield City Council that year required property owners to add sidewalks. WPA laborers did the work at a cost of $35 per 50 feet.
Despite such local benefits, the Solano Republican questioned the program's overall worth.
'For years, WPA billions have gone largely to useless leaf-raking and shovel-leaning types of projects,' it said.
For Solano County, the really big economic stimulus came a few years later because of World War II. That's when Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo saw a huge expansion and the Fairfield-Suisun Army Air Base was built. The base later became Travis Air Force Base.
Reach Barry Eberling at 425-4646, ext. 232, or beberling@dailyrepublic.net.
That was then, this is now
Some of Solano County's New Deal projects
- Restoration of Rockville Stone Chapel
- Building of Vallejo post office
- Building sidewalks
- Erosion control
- Vaca Valley Grammar School addition
Some of the county's 2009 federal stimulus plan requests
- McGary Road renovation-
- Capitol Corridor track improvements
- North Connector and Jepson Parkway regional roads
- Vacaville-Dixon bike route
- Vallejo ferry maintenance facility
- Renovating interchange of interstates 80 and 680
