About Marin Center and the Marin County Civic Center
By Gabriella Callichio
Marin Center performances have delighted Bay Area audiences for over 26 years. As the major performing arts, events center, and fairgrounds in Marin County, Marin Center serves the community by presenting and expanding a variety of multi-cultural theater presentations, affordable rental venues, and professional expertise. Bringing music, dance, and performance of all kinds to audiences around the Bay, attendees also enjoy visiting the beautiful Marin Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium inspired by renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
The Marin County Civic Center (1957) is one of the last major works of Frank Lloyd Wright’s career and his only realized project for a government entity. An innovative design that simultaneously houses in one structure all of the functions of county government and serves as a focal point for civic and cultural engagement, it dramatically illustrates the kinship of architecture to the surrounding landscape with long horizontal buildings that gracefully link the crowns of three separate hills. Wright boldly projected the main government building as a bridge joining one hill to the next with a series of graceful arches sheltered under barrel-vaulted roofs. Its forms and colors relate it to surrounding hills and to the mountains of the Coastal Range in the distance.
A group of 10 buildings-including the Marin County Civic Center, have become the first works of modern architecture nominated by the United States to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage List.
One-hour docent-led tours of the Marin County Civic Center are given every Wednesday starting at 10:30 am. Tours leave from the second floor Civic Center Café, Room 233.
