Description
The courthouse is composed of four buildings, totaling 150,000 square feet (14,000 m2). It includes a Jail Wing, which is no longer used to hold prisoners. Visitors may take elevators to the summit of the 85 ft (26 m) "El Mirador" clock tower, which has labeled photographs that show what the viewer is looking at in all directions.
Currently, the Santa Barbara County Courthouse is undergoing several restoration projects in the various wings, and just finished restoring the disintegrating fountain in the front.
Occupying an entire city block, the grounds contain a collection of palms and specimen trees from more than 25 countries. The courthouse hosts many events, particularly at the Sunken Garden, site of the 1872 courthouse.
Read more about this topic: Santa Barbara County Courthouse
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“It is possible—indeed possible even according to the old conception of logic—to give in advance a description of all ‘true’ logical propositions. Hence there can never be surprises in logic.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He hath achieved a maid
That paragons description and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)