Downtown Historic District

The Downtown Historic District of San Jose, California is a designated U.S. Historic District area of the city roughly the size of one square block. It is bounded by S. First Street to the west, E. San Fernando Street to the south, S. Third Street to the east, and E. Santa Clara Street to the north, but also includes the south side of E. Santa Clara Street between Third and Fourth Streets.IntroductionAs Santa Clara Valley's mercantile and financial center for the past 100 years, San Jose's downtown historic commercial district is significant both from a historic and an architectural perspective. The downtown commercial district retains the highest concentration of older buildings in the downtown, which reflects the best examples of architecture from almost every period in the growth of the city. It is the prime example in Santa Clara County in its broad representation of historic California commercial architecture.The district has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places and contains buildings of six different architectural styles: Italianate, Romanesque Revival, Victorian, Edwardian, Neoclassical, Mission Revival, and Spanish Colonial Revival.