Our firm has a long history of working with historic Sacramento sites. Recently, we provided services for a unique, underground project in Old Sacramento. Historic Old Sacramento Foundation, in conjunction with the California State Parks Capital District, sought to offer tours of Old Sacramento’s underground hollow side walks.  Our team was hired to prepare a historic space, blockaded for over a century, to allow public visits. Our work included design for accessible paths of travel and lighting upgrades to allow safe public visitation. This demonstration project is at the historic B.F. Hastings building, the western terminus of the Pony Express and the first home for the California Supreme Court.

In the mid-1860s, after years of devastating floods, the City undertook a project to raise all downtown street levels by about twelve feet. Existing buildings were either raised accordingly, or else the first floor doors and windows were closed off, effectively becoming basements as the streets were filled with earth and raised. Sidewalk areas were blocked and capped, reducing the volume of fill dirt and creating hollow caverns throughout the old city directly under the public walks. Tours will give participants a unique view of our City’s hidden history, the only city in California (one of a handful in the Nation) to raise its streets for flood protection.

Tours run July 10 - October 31, 2010. Click here for more information.