The exterior of Santa Rosa city hall is an embarrassment to anyone with any aesthetic sensibility. The interiors are fine and the city council chamber is quite nice, but the architecture makes me shudder.

Santa Rosa's current city hall, built in the 1960s, is one of the most striking and important examples of Brutalist architecture north of San Francisco. The whole stretch of coastal California north of San Fransciso, largely rural, has very few examples of this style of architecture and Santa Rosa's city hall is one of the most striking, significant, and varied. It is also very accessible, being right downtown, across the street from other major places to visit, such as the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens and the entrance to the Prince Memorial Greenway. Obviously, Brutalist architecture is not for everyone, but those who appreciate it or even just know its place in architectural theory and history should visit this building. Brutalism is an outgrowth of modernist architecture which flourished in the 1950s through 1970s and emphasised bare concrete (hence the term brutalist, from the French meaning raw or bare) with clean lines, repeating patterns, geometric patterns, lack of express ornamentation, and emphasis on the interaction of light and shadow. This city hall demonstrates all of these hallmark Brutalist qualities in a rather lovely setting. Although city hall is only open during normal business hours, it is easy to visit any time of any day because it is really a collection of individual buildings linked together around an open courtyard which is always open to the public at any time. Moreover, aside form the city council chamber, which is a strikingly brutalist auditorium, most of what would want to see, or be allowed to just visit, is outside, anyway. It includes recently-altered grounds outside with benches for sitting, the central courtyard, and several interesting works of public art, such as a skeletal metal horse and a sculpture of Daphne turning into a tree.