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Bakersfield City Hall

city hall in Bakersfield, California, United States

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ804387
Source-derived summary

Bakersfield City Hall (which is also referred to as City Hall South) is the center of government for the City of Bakersfield, California. It houses the Mayor's office and the City Council chambers. It is located in the Civic Center, Downtown. A statue of Colonel Thomas Baker, the city's founder, is in front of the building and is marked as California Historical Landmark #382. Many of the city's departments and officials are located in City Hall North, which is one block west of City Hall South.

History

During the California agricultural strikes of 1933, in which mostly Mexican and Filipino agricultural strikers organized with the Cannery and Agricultural Workers' Industrial Union (CAWIU) for an increase in pay and an end to contract labor, Pedro Subia, a Mexican striker, was murdered. His funeral was held at the old Bakersfield City Hall building. As described by Chicano historian Rodolfo Acuña, "workers came from all the camps around Bakersfield to gather in his honor in front of the Bakersfield City Hall. They included 'Whites, Mexicans, and Negroes, some of them once farmers in their own right, tall fair men from the mountains of the South and their wives leading little children, some desperate, many hopeless.'"

The current City Hall was completed in 1954, after the old structure was destroyed in the 1952 Kern County earthquake. The old City Hall was too small and the city had started planning a new structure one year earlier.

Editorial summary

“Bakersfield City Hall” enters the record as city hall in Bakersfield, California, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bakersfield, City and Hall can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA valuable geographic starting point for tracing changing names, boundaries, uses and administrative responsibility. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1933, 1954, 1952—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Bakersfield, City and Hall.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Bakersfield City Hall” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Bakersfield, City and Hall provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q804387. Authority coordinates are 35.373, -119.019. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1933, 1954 and 1952.

Critical limits

A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Bakersfield City Hall”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Bakersfield City Hall primary sources, Bakersfield City Hall archive and Bakersfield research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Bakersfield City Hall”?
  2. Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
  3. Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Bakersfield City Hall” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.