79-484: Dinosaur Hill Park (also known as Dino Hill ) is a park in Pleasant Hill, California . Located off Taylor Blvd, the park includes 13 acres (5.3 hectares) of open space, hiking, and scenic views. The elevation is 308 feet. There is a small parking area accessible only by northbound traffic. From here a staircase and railroad tie steps lead to the top of the hill. The park is one of several parks owned and managed by
158-495: A center for shopping and entertainment. Downtowns typically contain a small percentage of a city's employment but are concentrated in services, including high-end services (office or white-collar jobs). Sometimes, smaller downtowns include lower population densities and nearby lower incomes than suburbs . It is often distinguished as a hub of public transit and culture. The Oxford English Dictionary ' s first citation for "down town" or "downtown" dates to 1770, in reference to
237-530: A city's central business district, although the word was virtually unknown in Britain and Western Europe, where expressions such as "city centre" (British English), "el centro" (Spanish), "das Zentrum" (German), etc are used. Even as late as the early part of the 20th century, English travel writers felt it necessary to explain to their readers what "downtown" meant. Although American downtowns lacked legally-defined boundaries, and were often parts of several of
316-412: A city. Zoning rules would regulate not only height, but also a building's volume, the percentage of the lot used, and the amount of light the building blocked. Zoning regulations sometimes encouraged setbacks (step-like recessions in the outer wall, making higher-up segments of the building progressively narrower than the base) to reduce a building's bulk by allowing additional height per foot of setback –
395-402: A fervent debate over whether their height should be restricted by law, with proponents and opponents of height limits bringing out numerous arguments in favor of their position. The question of height limits also had a profound implication for the nature of downtown itself: would it continue to be a concentrated core, or as it grew, would height limits force it to spread out into a larger area. In
474-537: A local news website covering community news and events. Patch Media is owned by AOL Inc. Pleasant Hill, California has one sister cities , as designated by Sister Cities International : , Downtown Downtown is a term primarily used in North America to refer to a city's sometimes commercial , cultural and often the historical, political , and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district (CBD). It may also be
553-542: A majority of the city council; Mayor Michael G. Harris and councilmember Ken Carlson voted in favor of the appeal. SyWest had the Dome demolished on May 8, 2013, precluding any further court action. On October 14, 2019, a magnitude 4.5 earthquake shook the city. According to the United States Census Bureau , the city has a total area of 7.1 square miles (18 square kilometers). Pleasant Hill has
632-473: A population of 33,152. The population density was 4,688.1 inhabitants per square mile (1,810.1/km ). The racial makeup of Pleasant Hill was 24,846 (74.9%) White , 686 (2.1%) African American , 127 (0.4%) Native American , 4,516 (13.6%) Asian , 66 (0.2%) Pacific Islander , 1,079 (3.3%) from other races , and 1,832 (5.5%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 4,009 persons (12.1%). The Census reported that 32,689 people (98.6 percent of
711-422: A system of environmental planning at a relatively early stage of its modern growth. Notably the city authorized a study in the 1980s of hillside development, which included detailed mapping of biota , geotechnical hazards, sound levels and other environmental constraints. These studies were used to establish appropriate zoning and development densities for all the principal undeveloped hillside areas within
790-587: A varied landscape with some valleys and rolling hills. In undisturbed wilderness, oak woodlands and mixed woods can be found. It is located in the central East San Francisco Bay . This region has warm and dry summers, with no average monthly temperatures above 71 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius). According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Pleasant Hill has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate , abbreviated "Csb" on climate maps. Winter daytime temperatures tend to be in
869-509: Is uptown . In the common New York City phrase "We're going to take the subway downtown", downtown refers to traveling in the geographic direction of south. A person standing on 121st Street and walking ten blocks south could also be said to have walked ten blocks downtown. The term uptown is used to refer to the cardinal direction north. Such concepts derive from Manhattan's elongated shape, running roughly north–south and nowhere more than 2 mi (3.2 km) wide. As such, transportation on
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#1732791833353948-684: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Pleasant Hill, California Pleasant Hill is a city in Contra Costa County , California , United States, in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area . The population was 34,613 at the 2020 census . It was incorporated in 1961. Pleasant Hill is the home of College Park High School , Diablo Valley College , the Pleasant Hill Library of
1027-407: Is located. Most major North American cities are located on major bodies of water, like oceans, lakes, and rivers. As cities expanded, people built further away from the water and their historical cores, often uphill. Thus the central business district of a North American city, or the historical core of the city, is often located "down", in altitude, relative to the remainder of the city. Many cities use
1106-716: Is part of the Contra Costa County Library system. The library system was headquartered in Pleasant Hill before relocating to Martinez in preparation for the construction of a new Pleasant Hill Library. Parks in Pleasant Hill are maintained and managed by the Pleasant Hill Recreation & Park District . The district is a separate entity from the City of Pleasant Hill. The 2010 United States Census reported that Pleasant Hill had
1185-497: The Chicago River to Michigan Avenue . In fact, the instability of downtown was a cause for concern for business and real estate interests, as the business district refused to stay where it had been, and shifted its location in response to numerous factors, although it generally stayed fairly compact – in the early 1930s even the largest took up less than 2% of the city's space, and most were significantly smaller – and remained
1264-721: The Contra Costa County Library system, and the Pleasant Hill Recreation & Park District. Before colonization the area was inhabited by members of the Bay Miwok people. The San Ramon Valley Branch Line of the Southern Pacific entered service in 1891 with two flag stops in the area that would become the City of Pleasant Hill: Hookston, located today where the Iron Horse Regional Trail crosses Hookston Road, and Sparkle, where
1343-617: The Detroit Public Library and the Detroit Institute of Art , and most of the cultural institutions in Pittsburgh . Public reaction to these moves was mixed, with some bemoaning the loss of a counterbalance to the overall materialism of downtown, while others, particularly those involved in real estate, looked positively on the availability of the land which the cultural institutions left behind. The loss of
1422-788: The Great Depression had a major effect on the country's downtown area. Downtown was just coming off a major building boom, in which significant amounts of new commercial and office space, hotels, and department stores had been built. By 1931 there were 89 buildings of 30 stories or more in Manhattan, and between 1925 and 1931, office space nearly doubled; in Chicago, it increased by almost 75%, in Philadelphia by almost two-thirds, and by more than 50% in New Orleans and Denver. In
1501-495: The Interstate Highway System , and white flight from urban cores to rapidly expanding suburbs . Due to well-intended but ineptly executed urban revitalization projects, downtowns eventually came to be dominated by high-rise office buildings in which commuters from the suburbs filled white-collar jobs, while the remaining residential populations sank further into unemployment, poverty, and homelessness. By
1580-1092: The Metropolitan Museum of Art , the New-York Historical Society , the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of the City of New York , all in Manhattan, moved out of downtown, as did the Museum of Fine Arts , the Boston Public Library , the Boston Symphony Orchestra , and the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, the Cleveland Museum of Art , the Baltimore Museum of Art ,
1659-597: The United States to refer to the historical core of the city, which was most often the same as the commercial heart of the city. "Uptown" also spread, but to a much lesser extent. In both cases, though, the directionality of both words was lost, so that a Bostonian might refer to going "downtown", even though it was north of where they were. Downtown lay to the south in Detroit, but to the north in Cleveland, to
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#17327918333531738-402: The "Sun" that the outlying business districts revolved around. Others doubted whether decentralization had as strong an impact as it was credited with. Positions were taken that downtown was a natural part of the evolution of a city, or the unnatural result of a de facto conspiracy by merchants and property owners, so the question of what decentralization would do to downtown became bound up with
1817-550: The 1920s, 500,000 additional hotel rooms were built in New York, and from 1927 to 1931 there were 84 large hotels built there, an increase of hotel space by two-thirds. When the boom was over, and the Depression had begun to have its effect, much of this new space became unneeded excess. Owners of smaller buildings who could not keep a sufficient number of tenants to pay their overhead, tore down their buildings, but whereas in
1896-589: The 1990s, many office-oriented businesses began to abandon the tired old downtowns for the suburbs, resulting in what are now known as " edge cities ". One textbook, in explaining why edge cities are so popular, stated: The big central city comes with dirt, crime, subways, stress, congestion, high taxes, and poor public schools. Edge cities are not immune to all of these problems (especially congestion) but for now they largely avoid most of them. Since then, between 2000 and 2010, downtown areas grew rapidly in population. In U.S. metro areas with at least five million people,
1975-653: The Chicago Loop – although values in other parts of the city, including the outlying business districts, fared even worse. Department stores were hit hard; most managed to keep their doors open, but few made money. Hotels which needed to have large staffs, and required high occupancy rates to make a profit were also deeply affected; in Manhattan the hotel occupancy rate fell from 1929's 70% to around 50% in 1933. Room rates were slashed, revenue dropped, and many hotels closed or defaulted. By 1934, 80% of hotels in Manhattan were owned by their creditors. The slow recovery from
2054-554: The Dome. The city hall of Pleasant Hill was designed by architect Charles Moore. Completed in the late 20th century, it has won several awards for architectural design. For most of its history, Pleasant Hill did not have a true downtown or Main Street . In 1991, the city began planning the redevelopment of the area around the intersection of Monument and Contra Costa boulevards. In July 2000, Downtown Pleasant Hill finally opened. The privately owned and operated outdoor shopping center
2133-485: The Manhattan model and continue to use downtown , midtown , and uptown both as informal relative geographical terms and as formal names for distinct districts. However, the city of Philadelphia uses the designation Center City , not downtown, due to the business district's central location, as well as Philadelphia's age and circumstances; "Center City" corresponds to the City of Philadelphia prior to its amalgamation with Philadelphia County in 1854 , leaving it without
2212-573: The Pleasant Hill Recreation and Park District. The park offers good views of Mount Diablo and is popular on the 4th of July as several simultaneous (although distant) fireworks displays can be seen. The park offers a panoramic view of Pleasant Hill , Concord , and Walnut Creek and the northern reach of the Diablo Range . 37°56′10″N 122°05′19″W / 37.93611°N 122.08861°W / 37.93611; -122.08861 This Contra Costa County, California –related article
2291-662: The Southern Pacific and Sacramento Northern Railway intersected and today stands the Pleasant Hill BART station. The area began to be suburbanized in the 1920s following prohibition , as the many local vineyards were removed and the formerly agricultural land was subdivided for housing. Monument Boulevard was named after the Soldiers Memorial Monument to commemorate veterans and war dead of World War I from Contra Costa County. It
2370-569: The approval of the Pleasant Hill City Council for its proposal to tear down the theater and redevelop the property as a two-story, 73,000+ square-foot building to house a Dick's Sporting Goods. Supporters of the theater submitted two separate appeals to overturn the approval of demolition: one by a resident of Pleasant Hill, and one by Save the Pleasant Hill Dome (SPHD) organization. Both appeals were voted down by
2449-500: The center of Boston . Some have posited that the term "downtown" was coined in New York City , where it was in use by the 1830s to refer to the original settlement, or town , at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan . As the town of New York grew into a city, the only direction it could grow on the island was toward the north , proceeding upriver from the original settlement, the "up" and "down" terminology coming from
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2528-655: The cities themselves. Cities in the US grew much more slowly than during any other period in the history of the country, and some even lost population. Metropolitan regions grew faster than the cities inside them, indicating the start of the decades of urban sprawl , but they too grew at a slower pace than usual. Downtowns also had less daytime population because people now went to the outlying business districts, which were closer to their homes by car, for their shopping and entertainment, to do business, and to work. The increased use of automobiles over mass transit also damaged downtown, since
2607-463: The city, but allocated to downtown the primacy of being "central", not only geographically, in many cities, but also in importance. And in many cases, the downtown area or central business district, itself began to grow, such as in Manhattan where the business district lower Manhattan and the newer one in midtown began to grow towards each other, or in Chicago, where downtown expanded from the Loop across
2686-452: The city, had 20% of the city's land value. The same relationship was true in St. Louis in the mid-20s (20%) and Los Angeles in the early 1930s (17%). So when a downtown area started to shift its location, some property owners were bound to lose a great deal of money, while others would stand to gain. One way in which downtown changed from the late 19th century to the early part of the 20th century
2765-591: The city. The city of Pleasant Hill is served by the East Bay Times daily newspaper , published by Bay Area News Group-East Bay (part of the Media News Group of Denver, Colorado). It is also served by the Community Focus newspaper. Community Focus is an independent, monthly newspaper that concentrates on local events and information. The city is also served by Pleasant Hill Patch,
2844-422: The construction of State Route 21 . Developed largely in the years following World War II , the area did not have a post office until 1948. The city incorporated in 1961. On February 21, 1967, Century 21 Theaters opened an 895-seat dome theater between Monument Boulevard and Hookston Road, just off I-680. The futuristic dome-topped cinema became an iconic landmark for the newly incorporated city. The theater
2923-425: The customary map design in which up was north and down was south . Thus, anything north of the original town became known as " uptown " ( Upper Manhattan ), and was generally a residential area, while the original town – which was also New York's only major center of business at the time – became known as "downtown" ( Lower Manhattan ). During the late 19th century, the term was gradually adopted by cities across
3002-418: The daytime population of the country's downtowns did not rebound. For instance, in Chicago between 1929 and 1949, the population of the city grew 7%, and that of the entire metropolitan area by about 14%, but the daytime population of The Loop only rose 1/3 of 1%. With a few exceptions, such as New York City, this pattern was typical across American cities, and was tied to the slowing down of the rate of growth of
3081-543: The decentralization of commerce which affected the importance and influence of downtown and the central business district. Theaters , vaudeville houses, dance halls and night clubs had been primarily located in downtown, with nickelodeons spread throughout the city. When film became the dominant medium, and exhibitors started to build movie theaters to show them in, they at first built those venues downtown as well, but, as in retail shopping, chain exhibitors such as Loews began to construct them in locations convenient to
3160-506: The downtown area becoming a maze of dark streets that never saw the sun. Worse yet, at least from a real estate perspective, this new building created 1.2 million square feet (111,000 m ) of office space, flooding into what was already a sluggish market. To many in the real estate industry, the zoning law was an example of a "reasonable restriction." Once New York had passed its law, other cities followed, although proposed zoning measures did meet stiff resistance in some places, often because of
3239-499: The downtown area was the business district of the American city, but beginning around the 1920s and 1930s, as cities continued to grow in size and population, rival business districts began to appear outside of downtown in outlying districts. This was the time when the term " central business district " began to appear as more-or-less synonymous with the downtown area. The phrase acknowledged the existence of other business districts in
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3318-450: The downtown mix of businesses. Another sector which began to move away from downtown even before the turn of the 20th century were the great cultural institutions: museums, symphony halls, main libraries and so on. Not only was the high cost of land downtown a factor, but these institutions wanted larger plots of land than were available there, so that their buildings could themselves be easily perceived as works of art. Organizations such as
3397-602: The east in St. Louis, and to the west in Pittsburgh. In Boston, a resident pointed out in 1880, downtown was in the center of the city. Uptown was north of downtown in Cincinnati, but south of downtown in New Orleans and San Francisco. Notably, "downtown" was not included in dictionaries as late as the 1880s. But by the early 1900s, "downtown" was clearly established as the proper term in American English for
3476-476: The effects of the Great Depression began in the mid-1930s, decelerated at the end of the 1930s, and picked up speed with the start of World War II , so that by the early 1940s the country was for the most part out of the Depression. Excess commercial space began to be used, vacancy rates dropped, department store sales rose, hotel occupancy rates went up, and revenues increased. Despite this recovery,
3555-401: The entire area would take place. There were hubs of business in other places around the city and its environs, but the downtown area was the chief one, truly the central business district. And as more and more business was done downtown, those who had their homes there were gradually pushed out, selling their property and moving to quieter residential areas uptown. The skyscraper would become
3634-492: The exact amount depending on what zone the building was in. The ultimate effect of setbacks is to increase the sunlight and visible sky at street level. New York City was the first to do this, with the 1916 Zoning Resolution , which was prompted in large part by the construction of the Equitable Building in 1915. The Equitable Building was a 40-story building with straight sides and no setbacks, which raised fears of
3713-422: The fifties to low sixties, and summers range in the seventies to upper eighties, occasionally reaching the low nineties. On very rare occasions, the temperatures can reach the one hundred degree range during extreme heat waves . Freezing in winter is rare, but it does happen. Summer fog is occasional but winter fog is very common. Elementary schools Middle schools High schools The Pleasant Hill Library
3792-474: The growth of the chain stores, to the detriment of the big downtown department stores. Furthermore, the "taxpayers", which many people had expected to disappear once the economy improved, remained in place, and even increased in number. In the Loop in Chicago, by the early 1940s, 18% of the land was vacant or was used for parking; in Los Angeles at the same time, the figure was 25%. Demand for commercial space
3871-404: The hallmark of the downtown area. Prior to the invention of the elevator – and later the high-speed elevator – buildings were limited in height to about six stories, which was a de facto limit set by the amount of stairs it was assumed that people would climb, but with the elevator, that limit was shattered, and buildings began to be constructed up to about sixteen stories. What limited them then
3950-500: The inclusion of overly restrictive height limits, and sometimes because the entire concept of zoning was seen as undemocratic and bordering on socialism . Eventually, a model law, the Standard State Zoning Enabling Act of 1922 was drawn up for the guidance of cities wishing to enact zoning regulations, which are now part of virtually every American city. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
4029-479: The island travels in the uptown/downtown directions. The other boroughs are wider, and "downtown" there refers to Lower Manhattan, Downtown Brooklyn , or some more local business district. Mercantile efforts to promote the South Bronx as "Downtown Bronx" have met with little success. In some North American cities, downtown is the formal name of the neighborhood in which the city's central business district
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#17327918333534108-446: The major cultural institutions left downtown as a place primarily dedicated to business, but the loss of another sector, retail shopping, defined the type of business that was done there. The great retail outlets like the department stores had always had the tendency to move closer to the residential districts, to make it easier for their customers to get to them, but after 1920 they started to congregate in secondary business districts on
4187-515: The major cultural institutions, much of the retail shopping in the city, and its loss of status as the entertainment center, the nature of downtown had changed considerably. It was still the location of banks, stocks and commodity exchanges, law and accounting firms, the headquarters of the major industrial concerns and public utilities, insurance companies, and advertising agencies, and in its confines continued to be built new and taller skyscrapers housing offices, hotels and even department stores, but it
4266-409: The mass audience they were seeking; again, it was a matter of bringing their product to where the people were. By the late 1920s, movie houses outside of downtown far outnumbered those in the central district. Not all the movie theaters in the periphery were palaces , but some were, and the net effect was that downtown was no longer the entertainment center of the city. With the loss of manufacturing,
4345-503: The periphery of the city. The growth of chain stores such as J. C. Penney , F. W. Woolworth , Kresge and W. T. Grant , contributed to the increased importance of the outlying shopping districts, which began outselling those retail stores which had remained in the central business district, and provoked those stores to open branches in the secondary districts in attempt to go to where there customers were instead of having them come downtown to them. Entertainment venues also contributed to
4424-399: The population within two miles of the city hall grew twice as fast as the overall population in the metro area. The terms downtown and uptown can refer to cardinal directions , for example, in Manhattan, where downtown is also a relative geographical term. Anything south of where the speaker is currently standing, in most places, is said to be downtown . Anything north of the speaker
4503-648: The population) lived in households, 151 (0.5%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 312 (0.9%) were institutionalized. There were 13,708 households, out of which 3,892 (28.4%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 6,329 (46.2%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 1,359 (9.9%) had a female householder with no husband present, 597 (4.4%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 789 (5.8%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships , and 152 (1.1%) same-sex married couples or partnerships . 3,929 households (28.7%) were made up of individuals, and 1,431 (10.4%) had someone living alone who
4582-524: The primary business district of the city. Real estate interests were particularly concerned about the tendency of downtown to move because the downtown area had by far the highest land values in each city. One commentator said that if Chicago's land values were shown as height on a relief map, the Loop would be equivalent to the peaks of the Himalayas compared to the rest of the city. In 1926, Chicago's central business district, which took up less than 1% of
4661-591: The question about the area's legitimacy. Decentralization also increased the incidences of rivalry between downtown and burgeoning business districts. In Los Angeles, for instance, downtown and Wilshire Boulevard battled for dominance, and in Cincinnati the rivalry was between the old downtown centered around Fountain Square and the one on Canal Street. The diminishment of downtown by decentralization caused these battles to be between areas that were now more relatively equal. Like almost every other aspect of American life,
4740-520: The recent past they would have been replaced with taller buildings, now they became one- and two-story parking garages or ground-level parking lots. These were widely known as "taxpayers", as they generated enough revenue for the owner of the lot to pay the taxes on it. Rents fell, sometimes as much as 30%, and non-payment of rent increased. Even with the "taxpayers" taking away commercial space, vacancy rates rose precipitously. Owners went into default, and downtown real estate lost considerable value: 25–30% in
4819-430: The rise of the private automobile, which allowed shoppers to go to peripheral business districts more easily; a strong increase in streetcar fares; and the continuing problem of congestion in the narrow streets of the downtown area. As much as people disagreed about what caused decentralization, they were even less in agreement about how decentralization would affect the central business district, with opinions varying all
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#17327918333534898-448: The short run, the proponents of height limits were successful in their efforts. By the 1910s, most of the large and medium-sized cities had height limits in effect, although New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis were notable exceptions. Ultimately, it was not simple height limits that restricted skyscrapers, but they were limited by comprehensive zoning laws which set up separate requirements for different parts of
4977-422: The streetcar lines converged on downtown, while the roads went everywhere. All of these factors contributed to the lesser recovery of downtown relative to the city as a whole and the metropolitan area. Another sign that downtowns were no longer as central to city life as they once were include the decreased portion of retail trade that took place there as compared to the peripheral business areas, which profited by
5056-445: The wards that most cities used as their basic functional district, locating the downtown area was not difficult, as it was the place where all the street railways and elevated railways converged, and – at least in most places – where the railroad terminals were. It was the location of the great department stores and hotels, as well as that of theaters, clubs, cabarets, and dance halls, and where skyscrapers were built once that technology
5135-436: The way from the belief that it would diminish downtown sufficiently that it would eventually consist of only offices and the headquarters of corporate giants, to the belief that decentralization would lead to the (perhaps deserved) death of downtown entirely as unnecessary, a victim of its untameable traffic congestion. In between were those who saw a diminishment of the area's influence, but not enough to prevent it from remaining
5214-406: Was 40.7 years. For every 100 females, there were 94.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.0 males. There were 14,321 housing units at an average density of 2,025.2 per square mile (781.9/km ), of which 13,708 were occupied, of which 8,470 (61.8%) were owner-occupied, and 5,238 (38.2%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.3 percent; the rental vacancy rate
5293-508: Was 5.1 percent. 21,253 people (64.1 percent of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 11,436 people (34.5%) lived in rental housing units. The Gregory Gardens subdivision developed in 1950 required purchasers of new homes to accept a Covenant that restricted ownership to Caucasians (such provisions have since been ruled as unconstitutional). The Covenant also limited the structures that could be built, animals allowed on premises, and commercial activities. Pleasant Hill used
5372-424: Was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.38. There were 8,285 families (60.4 percent of all households); the average family size was 2.96. The population was spread out, with 6,563 people (19.8%) under the age of 18, 3,180 people (9.6%) aged 18 to 24, 8,901 people (26.8%) aged 25 to 44, 9,902 people (29.9%) aged 45 to 64, and 4,606 people (13.9%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age
5451-463: Was carried by an internal metal frame skeleton, from which the masonry – and later glass – simply hung, without carrying any weight. Although first used in Chicago, the steel-framed skyscraper caught on most quickly in New York City in the 1880s, and from there spread to most other American cities in the 1890s and 1900s. The apparent lack of a height limitation of this type of building set off
5530-420: Was considerably cheaper than downtown, property taxes were lower, transportation of supplies and finished products was much easier without the constant congestion emblematic of downtown, and with the improvement of the telephone system, the industrial firms could still keep in touch with the companies they did business with elsewhere. As a result of this migration, manufacturing was no longer a significant part of
5609-522: Was designed by prolific Bay Area architect Vincent G. Raney. It had a distinctive 50-foot-high domed ceiling and oversized curved screen. The theater was initially built to showcase the Cinerama widescreen process developed in the 1950s. The screen was later updated to standard flat-screen. In 1973, four additional single-screen auditoriums were added to the front of the building. Renamed as Century 5 Theatres, it continued to be known familiarly as
5688-485: Was designed to resemble a typical small Main Street. Starting in 2003, CinéArts operated the former Century 5 Theatres, screening primarily independent and foreign films. Due to changes in viewing habits, as many people screened movies at home, business continued to decline. The theater's property owner, SyWest Development, closed the Dome on April 21, 2013. On its last night of operation, CinéArts screened Stanley Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey . Sywest gained
5767-474: Was erected on December 11, 1927, at the intersection of Monument Boulevard and the Contra Costa Highway, now Contra Costa Boulevard. The monument depicts one black and three white soldiers. It is 45 feet (14 meters) tall, constructed of formed concrete, and weighs 150 tons. In 1954 the monument was moved to its current site at the intersection of Boyd Road and Contra Costa Boulevard to make way for
5846-424: Was no longer as dominant as it once was. The causes of decentralization, which decreased the importance of downtown in the life of American cities, have been ascribed to many factors, including each city's normal growth patterns; advances in technology like the telephone, which made it easier for business-to-business intercourse to take place over a distance, thus lessening the need for a centralized commercial core;
5925-440: Was perfected. It was also frequently, at first, the only part of a city that was electrified. It was also the place where street congestion was the worst, a problem for which a solution was never really found. But most of all, downtown was the place where the city did its business. Inside its small precincts, sometimes as small as several hundred acres, the majority of the trading, selling, and purchasing – retail and wholesale – in
6004-461: Was so light that it did not make financial sense to construct expensive new buildings, and banks began to refuse to make loans for that purpose, redlining whole neighborhoods in the central business district. The typical American downtown has certain unique characteristics. During the postwar economic boom in the 1950s , the residential population of most downtowns crashed. This has been attributed to reasons such as slum clearance , construction of
6083-406: Was still steadily losing ground as decentralization took its toll. Its daytime population was not keeping pace with the population growth of the city around it, and property values, while continuing to rise, were not rising as fast as those in the secondary business districts. Downtown was still the central business district, and was still the most important area for doing business and commerce, but it
6162-424: Was that industrial concerns began to leave downtown and move to the periphery of the city, which meant that downtown's businesses were chiefly part of the burgeoning service sector . Brand new firms followed the older ones, and never came to downtown, settling at the edges of the city or the urban area. Industrial districts developed in these areas, which were sometimes specifically zoned for manufacturing. There, land
6241-401: Was the thickness of the masonry needed at the base to hold the weight of the building above it. As the buildings got taller, the thickness of the masonry and the space needed for elevators did not allow for sufficient rentable space to make the building profitable. What shattered that restriction was the invention of first the iron- and then the steel frame building, in which the building's load
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