A landmark building in downtown Stockton will likely disappear in the next year or two.
San Joaquin County has allocated $10 million in its proposed 2026-27 budget to tear down the old county courthouse, a boxy 1964 relic that replaced one of the most beautiful buildings ever to grace Stockton’s civic center.
A new “law and justice” facility is intended to take its place. While plans for its use remain in development, space for the Public Defender’s Office and the San Joaquin County Law Library is likely, county spokesperson Stefanie Cruz told Stocktonia.
“The Board is always looking to improve services for all residents,” Supervisor Sonny Dhaliwal, who represents District 3 and is the new Board chair, said in the statement. “The demolition of the old courthouse will give the county a new site to build and expand the services provided.”
The old courthouse, at 222 E. Weber Ave., has been home to the District Attorney’s Office since a modern new 12-story courthouse opened next door in 2017. A soaring glass tower, the newer San Joaquin County Superior Court building is light and airy, with 30 courtrooms.
The district attorney is slated to relocate to a converted office building at 6 S. El Dorado St. in August, Cruz said. Purchased for $10.8 million in 2021, that building has turned into a renovation nightmare, with two cost overruns that have driven the price tag to $73.5 million, as reported by Stocktonia last year.
What’s called the old courthouse is actually the third in Stockton history. In “Competing Voices: A Critical History of Stockton, California,” a 602-page history of the Port City, author Ronald Eugene Isetti described the 1964 courthouse as “mimicking the boxy, minimalist Bauhaus style created in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.” The book adds: “Most observers disliked it, some intensely.”
While that “Corporate Modernism” architecture style would show up in public buildings in other cities, some of the animosity toward the building appears linked to the affection for the courthouse it replaced — one of the most grand in California.
That building, completed in 1890, was a Victorian-era marvel constructed of California granite and topped by a huge soaring dome. The complex was deteriorating, yet voters turned aside two bond issues to replace it before finally approving a third, according to “Stockton Memories: A Pictorial History of Stockton, California” by R. Coke Wood and Leonard Covello.
The grand structure was demolished in 1961, ahead of the opening of the “old courthouse.”