New San Rafael strolling tour brings historical past to life – Marin Impartial Journal

A jewellery retailer inside a former automotive dealership. Offices the place a grand courthouse as soon as stood. Bartenders inside the identical partitions the place bankers financed the Golden Gate Bridge.

If you’ve ever walked round downtown San Rafael and puzzled concerning the historical past of the place you’re buying or standing at, a brand new self-guided strolling tour could quickly have the reply within the palm of your hand.

A collaboration between the City of San Rafael and the Marin History Museum is bringing the town’s historical past to life with a digital strolling tour that includes historic pictures, tales and details about buildings and locations downtown.

“We often learn history through a wider lens — the Bay Area, the state or the country — but local history is just as important,” mentioned Walter Gonzalez Valdez, administration analyst within the metropolis supervisor’s workplace and the undertaking lead for the town. “Our past shapes our present and our future, and we want to make sure those stories are being told so we can continue to learn from them.”

The tour grew out of an expertise greater than a 12 months in the past, when members of the historical past museum visited Petaluma and took a strolling tour led by native historical past fanatics wearing interval clothes.

During the tour, the group encountered a QR code close to a historic constructing. Scanning it introduced up historic data, pictures and an audio part telling the story of the location.

“It was an eye-opener for me,” mentioned Lori Deibel, analysis librarian on the Marin History Museum and one of many undertaking’s creators. “I thought to myself, we could do this!”

At the time, nevertheless, the know-how was too costly to make the concept sensible. That modified when the City of San Rafael approached the museum about working collectively on instructional tasks, together with displays and a strolling tour.

The metropolis gained entry to the STQRY app, which powers the tour. The app permits guests to entry a historic profile and photographs of a website by scanning a QR code or just standing close by. The tour at present contains details about greater than 20 areas in each English and Spanish, with plans so as to add extra. Get the tour at cityofsanrafael.stqry.app/en.

“We would eventually like to include locations all over the city,” Deibel mentioned. “Obviously Fourth Street is the place where most pedestrians are going to be walking, so we started there.”

The undertaking staff walked the principle elements of downtown and recognized locations the place it was doable to create historic tales and match them to photographs within the Marin History Museum archives.

“I discovered so many buildings that still look exactly the same,” Deibel mentioned.

“Our customers appreciate our art deco facade,” mentioned Rick Lewis, proprietor of Gold Rush Jewelers at 831 Fourth St. in San Rafael, which was initially a Packard dealership. “Once inside, the period details make it more cozy and welcoming.”

Some websites have performed a number of roles within the metropolis’s historical past. San Rafael’s first home, Don Timoteo Murphy’s adobe, stood at 1300 Fourth St. in 1844. It was later changed by the ornate Bank of Italy constructing in 1930, which can quickly reopen as The Twelfth, a girls’s sports activities bar.

“The Bank of Italy helped finance the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, which speaks to San Rafael’s contribution to the region,” Gonzalez mentioned. “I love that the building has served so many different uses over the years; it reflects how adaptable we are as a city to our community’s changing needs.”

Some of probably the most compelling stops are locations that now not exist.

One is the location of the outdated courthouse, a stately constructing constructed in 1872 that stood for a couple of century. Historic pictures enable at this time’s guests to see the constructing that after occupied the location.

That skill to attach at this time’s streetscape with the previous is on the coronary heart of the undertaking.

“People want to know what they’re walking by,” mentioned Marcie Miller, training coordinator at Marin History Museum and one of many tour’s co-creators.

She has performed strolling excursions for practically 15 years and continues to draw teams of practically 20 individuals for every one.

“We’re history nerds. We love this stuff,” she mentioned.

The digital tour additionally presents an up to date answer to a few of the issues with conventional historic plaques. Existing steel plaques put in in sidewalks may be troublesome to note, have weathered poorly or have been lined with paint. Installing new markers in sidewalks will also be costly and sophisticated.

Instead, the town plans to put in extremely seen indicators with QR codes on applicable poles. Where that isn’t doable, window stickers will probably be positioned in entrance of taking part companies.

The creators hope the tour will probably be one thing guests can expertise in an hour slightly than an all-day enterprise, with the compact downtown making it doable to discover a considerable portion on foot.

Once the signage is in place, discovering the town’s previous could grow to be as simple as taking a stroll, pulling out a cellphone and looking out on the acquainted streets in a very completely different method.

“The kind of information that Marin History Museum provides has a tremendous amount of value,” Lewis mentioned. “The walking tour app now puts all the information on a certain building in one place so you can more easily get access to our city’s history and get a new appreciation of it.”

Learn extra concerning the new San Rafael strolling tour at a Marin History Museum presentation by Lori Deibel at 6:30 p.m. Thursday on the San Rafael Public Library.