SAN RAFAEL, CALIF.- Among the rolling hills in this Bay Area city is what appears to be, at least at first glance, a spaceship.

A sprawling, multilevel structure sports a curved roof painted robin egg blue. At its center are a saucerlike dome and a gold spire rising into the sky.

This otherworldly spectacle is the Marin County Civic Center, the largest building ever designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. As was predicted during its 1962 dedication ceremony, it is “not a profile you will forget.”

Wright began his career in Chicago and is probably most famous for Fallingwater in Pennsylvania or the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. But he spent more than 50 years designing buildings in California.

There are 24 Frank Lloyd Wright creations up and down the state, including an oceanfront house in Carmel-by-the-Sea, a set of shops on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and a stunning church in Redding. When eight major Wright works were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List a few years ago, the Hollyhock House in Los Angeles’ Barnsdall Art Park was among them.

The Marin County Civic Center was one of the final works of Wright’s career. In 1957, when Wright was 90 years old, Marin County officials hired him to design a government building in San Rafael, the seat of this county just north of San Francisco.

Unlike some of Wright’s other creations that are privately owned or preserved like museum artifacts, the Marin County Civic Center remains open to the public and fully functional.




When I visited recently, a misdemeanor case was being tried in one of the distinctly Wrightian circular courtrooms. People walked down corridors, where the floors are red and the ceilings transparent, to reach human resources offices and printing services. County employees ate lunch on a patio shaded by a blue domed roof lined with gold spheres.

When, in 1957, Wright first drove to see where the civic center was to be built in the San Rafael hills, “he was delighted,” according to Aaron Green, Wright’s Bay Area associate. In his book, Green writes about visiting the site with Wright:

“At one point, we got out, climbed through strands of a barbed-wire fence, and then walked through knee-high grass. From the top of one hill, seeing the entire property, he said, ‘It’s as beautiful as California can have.’ He paused a few moments, then turned to me and without the slightest hesitation said, ‘I know exactly what I’m going to do here.”’

Wright’s vision was to work in harmony with the landscape, and build between the hills instead of leveling them. He drew up plans for county offices, a library, a post office, a jail and more, and presented them to the county supervisors. Construction on these buildings, however, wasn’t completed until after his death in 1959.

In the more than half-century since, the civic center has been named a National Historic Landmark. Tourists still come to take photos of its Art Deco entry gates, circular library and scalloped balconies. Multiple science fiction movies have been filmed here, and it even served as inspiration for the architecture on planet Naboo in the Star Wars movies — created by George Lucas, who started Lucasfilm in San Rafael.

Wright’s Bay Area works — of which there are 28, built and unbuilt — “demonstrate, perhaps more than his buildings in any other location, the amazing variety and innovation of his creations, and the fertility of his imagination,” architecture expert Paul V. Turner wrote in his book “Frank Lloyd Wright and San Francisco.” These designs include a skyscraper, a gift shop, a bridge across the San Francisco Bay and even a doghouse.

Among them, the Marin County Civic Center buildings, Turner wrote, “constitute one of his most powerful works.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.