Petaluma’s Lower Main Street

A history snapshot of Petaluma Boulevard North from B Street to Western Avenue

Lower Main Street looking north from B Street, 1903 (photo Sonoma County Library)

Lower Main Street (extending from Western Avenue to B Street) was largely comprised in the mid-1800s of grain warehouses, a hitching post, a workingman’s hotel, and Petaluma’s Chinatown, filled with laundries, groceries, and living quarters.

In the 1880s, the new Masonic Lodge at the corner of Main and Western Avenue, along with the banishment of the Chinese from town, lead to an expansion of Main Street’s commercial area to B Street, anchored by the first McNear Building in 1886.

Lower Main Street looking north from B Street, circa 1930 (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)

In 1922, the popularity of the automobile lead to the replacement of the hitching post with Center Park, as Lower Main filled up with shops, hardware stores, and groceries.

The decline of the poultry and dairy industries in the 1960s, along with the new shopping malls in East Petaluma, left downtown Petaluma pockmarked with empty shops, shuttered grain mills, and dilapidated old buildings.

Lower Main Street looking north from B Street, 1953 (photo Sonoma County Library)

In the mid-1970s, Mayor Helen Putnam championed historic restoration as a means of revitalizing the downtown, beginning with conversion of the Lan Mart and the Great Petaluma Mill into boutique malls of shops and restaurants.

Thanks to her efforts, Petaluma’s downtown evolved into the trendy nightlife and shopping district it is today. A set of architectural design guidelines were adopted by the city in 1999 to preserve the downtown’s historical legacy.

Lower Main Street looking north from B Street, 2022 (photo courtesy of Scott Hess)

Author: John Patrick Sheehy

John is a history detective who digs beneath the legends, folklore, and myths to learn what’s either been hidden from the common narrative or else lost to time, in hopes of enlarging the collective understanding of our culture and communities.