Top 10 Things Not to Miss: A Self-guided Frank Lloyd Wright Tour

The gold gates are located under the south arch of the building that welcomes visitors to the building. They were designed by Taliesin architect John Rattenbury. In the spirit of inside out/outside in, there is a welcoming sense of space, fresh air and flow with the interior and exterior, even when they are closed.

As Wright says, “The outside of any building may now come inside and the inside go outside, each seen as part of the other: Continuity, plasticity, and all the new simplicity they imply have at last come home.” 

The entry stairs, located under the south arch of the building, have low 4-inch risers intended to encourage guests to enter the building slowly and gracefully without huffing and puffing and appreciate the design. Wright thought people appeared more graceful ascending low-slope stairs, saying that they would seem to “float” or “glide” with less effort than would be the case with steeply pitched stairs.   

Riding up on the escalator allows you to experience moving from constricted to open space, which Wright referred to as “compression and release.”  The escalator goes up during the morning hours of the workday but reverses and moves down beginning at 4 p.m. to allow for the Civic Center staff to exit the building with ease. The escalator was also featured in the 1997 sci-fi thriller “Gattaca.” It’s extraordinary that the building, then 35 years old, would be chosen to portray a building set in the far-distant future.

The red tile at the Marin Civic Center can be found on a plaque by the front gates. A second red tile is on the building plaque in Lobby 2 of the Hall of Justice. 

Wright first used the red square as his personal symbol in 1894. Several decades later, the red signature tile evolved from a dinner conversation Wright had with Associate Architect Aaron Green and Green’s mother-in-law, ceramicist Jeanette Pauson Haber. Wright designed the tile and asked Haber to make them and Aaron Green to impress the FLW initials on them. About 50 to 75 tiles were made in total and Wright gave them to his favorite clients.

The first floor model was built in 1958 under Wright’s direction and modified at Taliesin after his death. It represents his vision of a civic center as an extension of the ancient Greek agora, “a gathering place.” The agora was the center for the athletic, artistic, spiritual, and political life of the city. 

Wright envisioned a “good time place” with government buildings placed in a park-like setting. As the model shows, the original plan included some buildings which were not built—a restaurant, outdoor amphitheater, auditorium, swimming pool, Children’s Island with playground equipment, children’s zoo, office buildings and an exhibition pavilion. 

The pool and garden area on the second floor of the building (Room 233) reflect Wright’s belief that work environments should be places of beauty that contribute to a high quality of life. Wright was ahead of his time in foreseeing the social implications of surroundings that enhance an employee’s morale and productivity.

In addition to office gatherings, many weddings and social events occur in the café garden. The circular pool on the terrace uses recirculated water. It can be seen as a waterfall from Civic Center Drive. 

Located on the second floor in Room 233, Eddie’s House was a doghouse designed by Wright for Robert and Gloria Berger’s dog Eddie. Wright designed Eddie’s House in keeping with the family’s Usonian-style home in San Anselmo which he designed in 1951. 

Wright completed the plans for the doghouse in 1957, and the four square-foot triangular house was built in 1963. In 1973, Eddie’s House was torn down and thrown away. In 2010 Jim and Eric Berger, sons of Robert Berger, rebuilt the doghouse from the original plans. This is shown in Romanza, a documentary film about Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural works in California.  

The doghouse is the smallest structure Frank Lloyd Wright ever designed. It now belongs to the County of Marin.  

 Learn more about the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed doghouse. 

The Library is located on the 4th floor. Wright’s concept for the Civic Center Library was inspired in part by the Roux Library he designed for Florida Southern College in the 1940s. Both feature round reading rooms and book stacks that radiate out from the center of the room. Wright’s original reading room layout features curved worktables in the central open space under the domed ceiling.

The dome is 80 feet in diameter and exemplifies the early use of concealed, indirect lighting to provide flat, non-glare light, free from shadows. To some, Wright’s indirect lighting was too dim. But Wright’s intent was to create a softly-lit, inviting space that was gentle on the eyes.  

In the early 1970s, the County of Marin retrofitted the recessed “downlights” in the ceiling by adding fixtures with inverted domed diffusers that more effectively dispersed the light.  

There are no skylights in the original 1958 Civic Center model. Wright had intended that the mall space be open to the sky, allowing for natural light and natural air-conditioning.

Within five months of Wright’s death in April of 1959, the design for skylights to shelter the public mall areas were: 

• Developed by architect William Wesley Peters 
• Incorporated into the design of the building 
• Approved by Marin County officials 
• The skylights open mechanically by automatic controls for energy conservation. In 1961, when the Administration Building skylights were installed, builders could not get the exact size of the acrylic sheets necessary for glazing. The skylight bays therefore could not be glazed without joints causing them to leak when it rained.  

By 1969, when the Hall of Justice skylights were installed, a new acrylic sheet production method made it possible to install the skylights in a single piece which has never leaked. In the late 1980s, the Administration Building skylight was re-glazed with similar single sheets. 

Originally, Wright wanted a gold roof to match the golden hills of Marin County. However, in the 1960s, there wasn’t any paint or material available that wouldn’t tarnish almost immediately. This is also why the Golden Gate Bridge is red, not gold.

In 1962, after his death, Wright’s widow Olgivanna selected a blue similar to the glazed tile that was installed on the domed roof of the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Wisconsin, a building Wright designed in 1956. 

The water conservation garden is located at the end of the 4th floor hallway. The ultimate in organic architecture, the garden’s open flow illustrates bringing the outside in.

Originally, one could walk through this opening into the water conservation garden. Glass doors were added in the 1980s to help retain and recirculate the building’s conditioned air for improved energy efficiency.

Wright didn’t want his buildings to be intimidating. Here you can both touch the roof in the patio and climb the path up the hill to get a spectacular view of the roof. This spot makes a 120 degree angle (the same angle as the corners of a hexagon) with the Hall of Justice, and the surrounding hills.   

This is also the hill where Wright stood when he first visited the site in August 1957. After 20 minutes he said, “I know exactly what I will do here: I will bridge these hills with a series of graceful arches and build the buildings upon those arches.”