New book chronicles Sonoma Community Center's colorful history

Maureen Harrah Hawkins left Sonoma Valley in the 1980s, but not without a lifetime love she discovered at the Sonoma Community Center.

She was one of countless people who took weaving lessons from Lois Purdom in an upstairs studio at the historic red-brick building, now celebrating its centennial year as a local landmark.

“Six weeks of lessons and I bought a beautiful floor loom,” recalls Hawkins, who now resides in Arizona. That introductory class left Hawkins with “a lifetime love of weaving, spinning and dying. Eventually we had our own sheep.”

Nancy Osburn Muir grew up in Sonoma in the 1960s and ’70s just a few blocks from the community center, where she attended Miss Rosemary’s Musical Kindergarten, took dance lessons, got spooked at the annual haunted house and raced her hands across the ivories during piano recitals in Andrews Hall, the building’s gem.

“So many memories from my childhood,” said Muir, who now lives in the Sacramento suburb of Roseville. “Just thinking about them makes me smile.”

When Toni Castrone climbs along the creaky wooden stairs of the 100-year-old building, she often wonders about the generations that stepped before her.

“I look down and think about all the little feet,” said Castrone, the center’s executive director. “I constantly hear from people who list off what they used to do here. I’m blown away every day by the significance of the building and, of course, by the programs that have gone on here.”

There have been countless footsteps since the venerable two-story building first opened for 160 students in 1915 as the Sonoma Grammar School. With its towering grand pillars and arched entrance, the stately building is the cornerstone of memories for generations of Sonoma Valley residents.

The undisputed cultural center of Sonoma Valley, the building has been providing classes, programs, social services, entertainment and special events since 1952, when a local physician and his wife purchased the building just east of the Sonoma Plaza at auction for $28,500.

Once the sale closed, Dr. Carroll Andrews and his wife, Katherine, immediately turned it over to a nonprofit board of directors to establish a cultural and educational center for those residing within the Valley of the Moon.

Today its mission remains as a gathering place to enrich lives and foster a sense of community.

Retired Sonoma City Manager Pamela Hallan-Gibson and former longtime Sonoma Community Center Executive Director Kathy Swett chronicle the building’s history in a new book from Arcadia Publishing, “Images of America: Sonoma Community Center.”

Rich with vintage photographs and a timeline of local history, the 187-page soft cover book details the valley’s dedication to education that dates back to the mission era.

It tells of a rather abrupt mid-year closing of the grammar school after a devastating Southern California earthquake in the 1930s that led to stringent seismic standards for schools throughout the state. The building sat unoccupied for several years, its future uncertain after state building codes declared it unsafe as a school.

The authors note that winemaker August Sebastiani had his sights on the building but was swayed by his wife, Sylvia, to allow the Andrews to pursue their vision of a community center.

Hallan-Gibson and Swett researched extensively through mimeographed and handwritten board minutes and microfilmed copies of the Sonoma Index-Tribune, as well as the photo collection of the Sonoma Valley Historical Society at Depot Park Museum. The book is dedicated to Sandi Hansen, who oversees the museum and was a tireless resource for the project. The Sonoma League for Historic Preservation also assisted the authors.

Community members also shared their memories, photographs and artifacts.

One photo shows Diane Johnson Mayo with a broad smile in her eighth-grade portrait, a member of the grammar school’s last graduating class. Another photo displays pressed flowers from a school field trip, collected by student Rose Scarafoni Millerick.

Dan Ruggles, whose Sonoma Plaza music store was a local institution, poses in another photo as an early advocate of bringing music education and programming to the new center. Today hundreds of pieces of his sheet music are housed there.

Kathleen Hill is smiling in a 1980 photo as then-president of the community center board that successfully gained National Historic Landmark status and assured protection of the treasured building.

“The day the book came out of its wrapper, I knew Kathy and I had achieved our original purpose to honor this venerable old pile of bricks and to give it context within Sonoma’s history,” wrote Hallan-Gibson, who is in the middle of a 5,000-mile sailing expedition with her husband.

For residents and former residents like Hawkins and Muir, the community center is woven into memories, friendships, passions and lifetime pursuits.

Beth-Marie Deenihan’s Sonoma Ballet Conservatory kept countless ballerinas on their toes; grown men like David Hellman, Tim Severson and David Bryant still recount the antics of their youth at the Valley of the Moon Boys Club, which got its start at the community center and allowed girls to visit only on Friday nights.

Garrett Pryzgoda earned some bragging rights by attending a Green Day concert in the 1990s, well before the Bay Area band made it big. Linda Ball Iodence Weihofen still carries the pride of being part of the Sonoma Action Youth Group that provided community service and sent cards and care packages to American soldiers in Vietnam.

For Swett, who worked at the center for more than a decade, the book is a tribute to the building, the people who have long rallied for its maintenance and renovations as well as those whose lives were changed by their associations there.

The spacious rooms and high ceilings of the community center continue to resonate with opportunities and memories.

“It is a safe haven to try new things, to take risks, to create,” Swett said. “It is such a gift to Sonoma.”

“Images of America: Sonoma Community Center” is available for $21.99 at 276 E. Napa St. The authors signed over all royalties to the Sonoma Community Center.