The SP Sumner Depot is Old Town Kern’s anchor

The Southern Pacific Railroad Depot on Sumner at Baker is about to disappear from our community. With no plans for new development, the Union Pacific is proposing to make yet another vacant lot in an area that doesn’t need more vacant lots. There is no single building in our community that has drawn as much attention and love as the Sumner Depot.

To allow this unique building to disappear, as have so many others, would indeed be a painful blow to a community that has already lost so much of its built heritage.

After losing the AT&SF depot in 1972, the Sumner Depot remains, giving us a second chance.

Built in 1889, this survivor is an outstanding example of the Richardsonian Romanesque school of architectural design. Despite a poorly considered attempt in 1941 to try to make it look more Mission Revival, a style that was trendy at the time, the quality and distinction of its design still shows.

Here in Kern County, no other buildings of the Richardsonian Romanesque school of design exist.

For this reason alone, its loss would be a serious blow to our local cultural heritage, a loss exacerbated by the continuous loss of many other historic assets over past decades. Saving it would help to preserve the architectural aesthetic character and historic heritage of our community and help to provide a sense of place and context.

As urban sprawl and roadside development make more and more places look the same, it becomes important for communities to keep their identities intact.

A sense of history contributes to community pride and a better understanding of our community’s present.

In preserving our past, Bakersfield has always had a little steeper hill to climb than other communities.

In 1952, we had a series of destructive illtimed earthquakes shortly after the end of World War II.

As we fought fascism around the world, we sacrificed much: rationed basic items, limited travel, and stopped civilian construction and manufacturing.

Locally, following the quakes, we suffered much collateral damage as we demolished a number of architecturally exceptional buildings.

The Kern County Jail, designed in the neoclassic style by local architect engineer Orval Clark, did take damage. In that case, like numerous others, the damage wasn’t sufficient to necessitate its demolition but the county decided to take federal money and demolish it and other buildings simply because they preferred something new.

Numerous outstanding works of neoclassical architecture by noted architects were lost, and the desire to have something new to replace them frequently led to needless demolitions of sound distinctive buildings replaced by ones of bland contemporary design.

Others buildings with distinctive period designs were given an “updating” that simply changed interesting high-quality period design to then present day cliché and mediocre expressions.

Preserving our local historic buildings shows pride of ownership in and of our community.

Historic buildings in their historic locations help to remind us of our heritage, our history and engender pride of place. Isn’t that something we could use more of?

Let’s not make the same mistakes we’ve made in the past. Let’s not let this one slip away. Let’s grab this work of serious historic design while we still can. Let’s find new uses for this old but valuable building. Time is short, and what should be Old Town Kern’s anchor could well become just another empty lot among many with nothing to say and nothing to contribute; a voice of the past silenced.