Video: Nevada City Historical District Ordinance 338 with Beryl Robinson & Bill Wetherall (March 3, 2013) (27 minutes)

Full Transcript of the Video:

Good morning. I'd like to welcome you this third day of March, 2013, to another segment of the Nevada County Historical Society's oral history interviews. I'd like to start this morning by saying I'm filling in for the regular host of this series, Robert Moore, who is the Director of Oral Histories for the Historical Society. And this is a special privilege for me because of the two guests that we have today. I'm going to begin by reading a section of a document that I think is pertinent to today's discussion. After listing a number of places such as the National Hotel, Firehouse number one, Firehouse number two, Outs Assay Office, the Searles Building. The words that are as follows, the historic character and distinctive architecture of such places and buildings, and of the historic district as a whole, have attracted tourists and visitors to the city in great numbers, thereby augmenting the economy and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants. The preservation of such places and buildings, and of the architectural appearance of the surrounding properties within the district, is essential to the economic and cultural life of the city. To permit a departure from the established type of architecture in the construction of new buildings, or in the alteration of existing buildings within the district, and to permit the uncontrolled use of advertising signs therein, would be detrimental to the historical places and buildings, and would tend to depreciate the values of all properties within the district. This is the purpose section of ordinance number 338, better known as the historical district ordinance in the city of Nevada City. And with that, I'd like to introduce today my two very special guests, Bill Weatherall, former city attorney for the city of Nevada City, and Borough P. Robinson, Jr. , former city manager for the city of Nevada City. These two gentlemen, in my estimation, are probably the most influential in preserving Nevada City to retain the delightful character that it has today. Bill, I'd like to start by asking you a question. I know that you came to Nevada City in 1955. How did you manage to move up to Nevada City, or why? Well, I moved up because of Harold Burlatter. He was, more or less, looking for a partner in law, and he found out that I was starting out in San Francisco with a firm down there, and he contacted me, and asked if I was interested in joining up with him, and I said, I think I might well be, and I'll come home and see you. So I did. I came up to Nevada City two times, three times, and had consultations with Borough about the job and the prospects, and I decided to come up to Nevada City and practice law. That was a decision I made, and it was a good decision. Was a good decision for you and a good decision for us? It was. We're very happy that you came. It was really good both ways. Now, it's my understanding that you became the city attorney for Nevada City in 1959, and during that time, in 1968, we adopted, you crafted the historical district ordinance. At that time, there were no model ordinances for you to follow, so you wrote every word of that yourself. Is that correct? Yes, I think so. I think every word of it was written by me, and there was no format to go by. I don't think like that. Now it was proposed. You're going to have to correct me if I have my history wrong here, but I tried to do a little research. I understand that a couple of years before, Don Fairclaw had proposed it and nothing happened of it. Then finally, Will Howard, a citizen in town, came to the city council in May of 1968 asking for an ordinance that would cover the entire town, but you'd already talked about having just an historical area, so that was also part of your handiwork, just having the historical district rather than trying to do an ordinance that would cover the whole town. Who decided where the historical district, which buildings would be included, or which area? Well, Bob Paine and Rod Cooper got together, and they made a walking tour of the proposed city historical district, and that turned out to be what happened. So Lon Cooper and Bob Paine actually walked the area? Walked to what? Now, Burl, I'd like to ask you, just to get you in the conversation here, was this an easy process to go through? Bob and Lon walked the district, Bill took the idea and put it into an ordinance. You were fairly new as the city manager, it was a tough time for the city. How tough was it getting an ordinance like this? Well, how tough a time it was, once it was adopted, many people coined it not the historic district, but the historical district. So you had one group of people within the community that thought the city hall had lost its mind. Then you had another group that totally supported it, because the council had clearly threw a series of events that took place in the city of buildings going down that we felt were significant architecturally to Nevada City. And so because of those buildings going down and other things, as you've alluded to in asking Bill questions, it was finally getting a groundswell of enough support that such a concept at that time could gain the support of the city council. So Bill said something about there was a rollback in there originally in the ordinance. And he's talking about the signs? That's correct. The signs will come later that the signs actually had to, and a short time later, that the signs had to go down, but initially it only was adopted without that provision. Okay. Bill, now to me, you've always been a gentleman. You've always seemed like you're very assertive, but in a gentlemanly way. I know that during the last final hearing, in going back and looking at the records, there was a little bit of a contentiousness between Bob Payne and yourself that night. In a union article on talking about the day that it was adopted, it said that Bob Payne accused you of being negative and timid toward the ordinance. Do you think that was correct? You responded really vocally. Yeah. I don't think I was at all timid. I don't either. In your response that I read in the newspaper, it said you had already, previous to this even coming to the council, started to prepare an ordinance. So even though it was a while in the making, when it finally started to come together, you got the ordinance that you had originally thought about. Very good. Now, Burl, can you tell us a little bit what was happening in town? I said you came in at a difficult time as city manager. I know the buildings had been removed for the freeway. Can you tell us a little bit more of what was going on at that time? Well, I became city manager in June 1965. The freeway is under construction. The right-of-way has been cleared. The contractor, Norman Fodell, goes bankrupt. As a consequence, the freeway is set with a scar. Most of the right-of-way had been completed right-of-way down to a level that the alignment was clear, but the Broad Street overpass bridge, what hadn't been completed, it was a mess. The town was in a mess. As a consequence, it put the town in a mess. It took almost a year before the division of highways was able to get a new contractor to finish the freeway. The town was having economic problems in many ways. Business was slow. The business district, wow, some say it was boarded up, the business district was much smaller than what people see today as far as many houses have since been converted over time from residences to businesses of today, but the business district is extremely small. It just was a difficult time. In the ensuing time of the freeway right-of-way, and ultimately the ordinance itself that Bill prepared, we had three major buildings go down for various reasons. One that had nothing to do with the freeway, ultimately one was the hot mill, which was on the corner where ultimately the Shell station would be built. Today the Griggs building is there. The what was called the Reed building, which was adjacent to the Nevada theater. It was taken down by the owner at that time, who, well, I'd never heard it directly from her, and I knew the lady that owned it quite well, that the costs of maintaining it were just prohibitive, so she tore it down. It was an original building. And then what was called the Ice House facilities was also torn down. And those three buildings going, the question became in the minds of a lot of people, how much of this town is just going to be torn down of that original architecture that was a blessing for Nevada City? So as those buildings were added to the problem, it gave more credence to what Bill has alluded to in the development of the ordinance. And even with the ordinance, it was a matter that when Bob Payne had coined the term, Nevada City's future was in the preservation of its past, and that was on the wall of the city hall. And it became apparent that anyone that could really think this through, that Nevada City kept it up, there would be nothing to come to Nevada City to see. Well, it sounds like maybe the ordinance did its work. If we look at, we're almost 45 years in September, it'll be 45 years. It was adopted August 12th of 1968 and became effective September 12th, 1968. So we're coming up on the 45th anniversary and looking at town today and the restoration, the preservation that's taken place and the active tourist trade that we have and the businesses that are downtown, it seems like it worked. Would you say that there's one area that was harder to enforce than another? But within the district, it became apparent that something had to happen to the signs and that we had signs that were totally out of keeping and yes, neon signs. So once that was introduced, then bill in crafting that that ordinance put in the rollback. And signs, as new signs went up in conformance with the ordinance and to size that was in the ordinance, that was all fine. But the day was coming when a few signs did not get altered and the signs had to come down. And fortunately, and I think it's an attest to Bill's ability in crafting an ordinance, you've asked, you know, did we have any people challenge the ordinance, it or the sign ordinance, the original historic ordinance, never did anyone file any type of a petition, legal action against the city. We may have been threatened by people that said, my golly, if I don't get my sign, you know, I'm going to sue. Well, I've often told people, well, then get in line. I hear that almost every day on some issue in the town. But at any rate, the ordinance was well drafted by Bill, both the historic and then the sign. And when fortunately through a series of events, the main one was on the building of the bank club. And when the bank club sign went down, there was about three or four others that went down immediately thereafter. And thankfully, the city was never put in a position of having to go to anyone and say, you know, you violate in violation of the ordinance as set out by the the moratorium time that you have. And therefore you got to do something because everybody comply. And thankfully, we never had to test the ordinance on the other side by the city taking action against anybody. Well, here we are 45 years later. And one of the comments that Bill has been that has been attributed to Bill through the years, as he said, the adoption of the ordinance not only was it good for the preservation of the town, but also that it would benefit the properties and property owners, both inside the district and outside the district. And is that seems to be the case now? And do you think that that this ordinance was a success looking back 45 years on it? Well, I think and I indicated what Bob Payne and we had that little note on our little plaque that said, you know, the Madison future was in preservationist past. I think that unquestionably, that as the word hysterical and hysterical ordinance seemed to me to drift away at city council meetings and other meetings shortly after the signs were taken down, because there was a lot of people that were fixing their buildings up to be in conformance with the ordinance, including signs. And so I think that what Bob had had in his words and what other people were saying about what Nevada City had that needed to protect, I think that unquestionably, and we did have early on people very supportive with their buildings and investing money. And fortunately, along with this period of time, the city put gets the money to do the downtown betterment project, which was an amazing project. If you consider how broke the city was at the time and yet was able to get an economic development administration grant of in those days. And today doesn't sound like a lot of money, but it was a two hundred and forty thousand dollar project, which did the undergrounding of the utilities and the gas lights were put in and people, I think I could use the term were almost shocked by worded that how did the city, you know, betting on itself that it could fix itself up, the rebuilding of Broad Street and what have you, and the parking lots behind the National Hotel and on Nevada Street, restoration of the South Yuba Canal building, that all added to the ordinance that that was in keeping and made Nevada City, the rich community that it is, stay rich by its heritage. And I believe that the property values unquestionably based on certainly what properties were going for before the meltdown here, very recent years in real estate that property values were people did very well by those that were in keeping. In fact, in many of the ads, even in today's world, if you know, the same building on the same corner in Nevada City is worth X percent more than the same building on the same corner in our adjacent community of grassfalling. That's not saying anything negative about grassfalling in any way, shape, or form. It's just a matter that I've seen real estate ads that literally say that, you know, it is on my property or whatever. So I think yes, it's most most advantageous that the city chose that route rather than try to become modernistic. Now, I'm going to kind of go in a little bit different direction here. I know that when Will Howard first brought the ordinance or the idea of an ordinance up to the city council, his idea was to protect Victorian, Gold Rush and Frontier Western. Those were the three terms that he is. And when you look at the ordinance today and a part of our everyday vocabulary in Nevada City now is mother-load style architecture. Bill, you invented that word. How did you do you remember how you came up with that particular term? Well, yes, I remember that pretty well. The idea of a colliant mother-load style architecture was basically one of the facts that that was the type of architecture that was that was the term used by people generally who had in mind the creation of an ordinance of that kind. It was something that they thought of and it was more commonly used and understood in that sense than any other expression that could be used. So mother-load sort of incorporated all the ideas of Victorian and Gold Rush mother-load, we were called the mother-load, rather than singling out so someone could say, well, this isn't Victorian, so I don't need to comply with the ordinance. Is that how you came up with the idea of mother-load to incorporate all of those styles of architecture? Well, that may be one interpretation. You would say that if you wanted to. We're lucky that mother-load stuff because it is a common term now and I think it's being used in other areas just as your ordinance became a model for other historic districts. So you were on the cutting edge there before your time. Well, I'd like, speaking of time, I guess, would you, do you have any other thoughts or comments you'd like to share today on this topic? Yes, I want to know if we're getting to indicate as the city manager and what Bill has alluded here to, I want to make it real clear that Bill did a masterpiece at the time with a governmental ordinance. It was never challenged legally. He had, as has been pointed out, he had, there's the League of California cities that you could go to, attorneys can go to to get drafts from other communities. Bill didn't have that resource available because no one had ever written such an ordinance before. So he was on the cutting edge, yes, and I want him to know and know what this take of show, what, what he had accomplished literally on his own. And when you come to and it's unquestionable that what is said about those who provide him with information, be it Long, Cooper and Bob Payne, walking the district, etc. and this is true. Bill was giving little scraps of paper. I say little scraps of paper. There were lots of pieces of paper that Bill was given, including the proposed historic district. And from that, he was to draft something that would stand up. And I think that all of those people that were involved, we mentioned two, there were other people who were involved in it, lesser amount or greater amount. But the ones who were concerned about it at this time had come forward with little ideas. Bill was able to take those ideas and draft them into the ordinance that is stood to test the time and which I've already alluded to. It was never challenged by anyone. I've also stated, and Bill's heard me state this for the record hero stated again, I always said as city manager, if Bill wrote it, we can take it to the United States Supreme Court and no one will dare lose because Bill always drafted with the integrity, the knowledge and the skill of a true craftsman. Bill was beyond reproach, in my opinion, on his ability to prepare a legal document. And Nevada City, Bill was with the city at its most trying time also. We've already discussed the freeway and what brought this about and etc. Bill was with the city at a very difficult legal time also because of his ability to craft the sign ordinance that would follow the historic ordinance. A freeway controls sign ordinance and other ordinances. There were a lot of other factors that brought this about, but his skill, in my humble opinion, is remarkable in his legal ability for the city of Nevada City. Well, on behalf of the Historical Society, I'd like to thank you both for joining me today for this interview, but on behalf of the many citizens of Nevada City and all the tourists that come, I'd like to thank Bill Weatherall, who was the legal end of this thing, and Burrell Robinson, who was the administrative end of the historical district ordinance for a job well done because we can enjoy our beautiful town today because of it. And I thank you very much. And before we close, I would like to say that Bill is going to be on March 25th, 102 years young, and we'd like to wish you a happy birthday, many years of very good successful attorney work that you've had, and we just appreciate you so much. So thank you. And Robert Moore, we'll be back to see you next time. Thank you.