Where to Start?

of Broken Dream is a sadder, more desperate place today.

Broadway has always known bums. In 1980, the Volunteers of America Public Inebriate Center was a metal building at the foot of Miller Park. Cops hauled winos there. When they dried out, derelicts wandered down the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

Decades before 1980, Broadway was called Y Street. It was the city limits. In 1910, Ed Kripp built a gambling hall and baseball stadium at 11th and Y—Riverside and Broadway. Buffalo Park, eventually named Edmonds Field, rose atop the city’s first garbage dump.

The Boulevard of Broken Dreams was never Easy Street. Nobody can tell me it’s aged well.

R.E. Graswich can be reached at regraswich@icloud.com. Previous columns can be found and shared at InsideSacramento.com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram: @insidesacramento. n

Over the years, I spent lots of time in two buildings that have generated countless colorful stories— the state Capitol and county courthouse. Both spawned captivating tales of intrigue and chicanery, but it was no contest when it came to which was the more inspiring structure. The original neoclassical Capitol is 149 years old and one of the most graceful statehouses in the nation.

The Gordon D. Schaber courthouse, named after the late, longtime dean of Sacramento’s McGeorge School of Law, is as far from graceful as you can get.

Opened in 1965, the boxy building and its cold, uninviting plaza personify bleak. Its architectural style is known