At 831 Fourth St., Gold Rush Jewelers sells rings behind an Art Deco facade built for a car dealer. The building was originally a Packard dealership. Owner Rick Lewis told the Marin Independent Journal that "our customers appreciate our art deco facade," and that "once inside, the period details make it more cozy and welcoming."
That storefront is one of the stops on the self-guided historic walking tour the City of San Rafael and the Marin History Museum launched in September. It also shows what the tour mostly reveals. Downtown San Rafael has reused its buildings far more often than it has replaced them. Many of the places with a history are the shops, banks and plazas residents already walk past on a Saturday errand. The holiday season brings more people to those blocks than any other time of year.
A tour that started in Petaluma
The idea came from a Petaluma walking tour. According to the Marin IJ's September 6, 2026 report, members of the history museum took a tour there more than a year earlier, led by local history enthusiasts dressed in period clothing. Along the way they found a QR code near a historic building that brought up photographs, history and audio about the site.
"It was an eye-opener for me," Lori Deibel, the museum's research librarian and one of the project's creators, told the IJ. "I thought to myself, we could do this!" At the time the technology cost too much. That changed when the City approached the museum about working together on educational projects.
The finished tour runs on the STQRY app at cityofsanrafael.stqry.app. You can open a site's historic photos and story by scanning a QR code or just by standing nearby. It covers more than 20 locations in English and Spanish, and more are planned. The Marin History Museum describes the route as 25 selected sites along Fourth Street. It runs from the Union Depot, where the SMART train now stops, to the corner of Fourth and D, where one of the early San Rafael newspapers was published. The creators designed it to take about an hour, not a whole day.
Walter Gonzalez Valdez, the management analyst in the City Manager's Office who led the project for the City, explained the purpose to the IJ: "Our past shapes our present and our future, and we want to make sure those stories are being told so we can continue to learn from them."
Same buildings, different jobs
While preparing the tour, Deibel and her colleagues walked the main parts of downtown and matched buildings to images in the museum's archives. "I discovered so many buildings that still look exactly the same," she told the Marin IJ.
The stops with the most documented history show the same pattern. The buildings stayed and their uses changed.
| Address | What stood there | What the record shows since |
|---|---|---|
| 831 Fourth St. | Packard dealership | Gold Rush Jewelers, behind the original Art Deco facade |
| 1300 Fourth St. | Don Timoteo Murphy's adobe, San Rafael's first house, in 1844 | Replaced in 1930 by the Bank of Italy building, since leased for The Twelfth, a women's sports bar |
| 930 Tamalpais Ave. | A depot built in 1884 | Rebuilt as the Northwestern Pacific Railroad Depot in 1929 |
| Fourth and A streets | Marin County Courthouse, begun in 1872 | Destroyed by fire on May 25, 1971 |
The 1300 Fourth St. site has had the most lives. Gonzalez Valdez told the IJ that the Bank of Italy "helped finance the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, which speaks to San Rafael's contribution to the region." He added, "I love that the building has served so many different uses over the years; it reflects how adaptable we are as a city to our community's changing needs."
The same block keeps adding uses. In October, the Downtown San Rafael Business Improvement District welcomed Scott Nichols Gallery, a fine-art photography gallery, at 1310 Fourth St., right next to the old bank. Farther west, chef Alexander Alioto closed The Kitchen Table in June. In August he reopened the same corner storefront at 1574 Fourth St. as Alioto's Focacceria, a fast-casual Italian deli, the Marin IJ reported. These changes happened this year, but they follow the same pattern as the 1930 bank: the use changes and the building stays.
The stops you can only see on your phone
Some stops have nothing left to visit, and for them the app does what a walk alone cannot. "Some of the most compelling stops are places that no longer exist," the IJ wrote. Its leading example was the old courthouse, a stately building that stood for about a century. Historic photographs in the tour show what once occupied the site.
A 2019 Marin IJ history column places the courthouse at Fourth and A streets, where it housed the county's courts, jail and offices for nearly 100 years. Construction began in 1872, and the building was destroyed by fire on May 25, 1971.
The tour also takes a different approach to markers than downtown has used before. The IJ noted that the existing metal plaques in the sidewalks can be hard to notice. Some have weathered badly or been painted over, and new sidewalk markers are expensive and complicated to install. The phone version puts the archive photo of a demolished building in your hand while you stand where it was. Marcie Miller, the museum's education coordinator and a co-creator of the tour, told the IJ: "People want to know what they're walking by." She has led in-person walking tours for nearly 15 years.
If San Rafael history on a weekday afternoon interests you, the Falkirk Cultural Center is another stop. It is a shipping captain's house that became the city's free gallery, another building that changed jobs instead of coming down.
Why the holiday season is the time to take it
The holiday calendar puts people on the tour's blocks. Between late November and early January, the Business Improvement District's events take place on the same blocks of Fourth Street the tour covers.
- Saturday, November 28. Shop Small Saturday and the Holiday Window Walk begin. The same day, the Downtown Elf Hunt starts and runs through January 10, 2027, on Fourth Street from Lincoln to H Street.
- Saturday, December 5, 1 to 6 p.m. The free Winter Wonderland fills Fourth Street between A Street and Lootens. The City Library and Recreation Department hosts it with the Chamber of Commerce and the BID. The annual tree lighting runs at Downtown Plaza from 5 to 7 p.m., overlapping Winter Wonderland's last hour.
- Sunday, December 6, 5 to 6:30 p.m. The Giant Menorah Lighting and Gelt Drop takes place at Downtown San Rafael Plaza, 1000 Fourth St., with Chabad of Marin and the City.
- Saturday, December 12, 1 to 4 p.m. Carol-oke in the Plaza takes place at Court Street Plaza. Singers can sign up ahead or walk in.
Winter Wonderland starts at A Street, at the corner of the block where the 1872 courthouse stood, so you can open the courthouse stop while waiting for the tree lighting.
The Elf Hunt route covers much of the tour's ground. You pick up a map online or at T&B Sports, 1345 Fourth St., find each elf inside a downtown business and write its name on the map. Completed maps go to Mike Bike's at 836 Fourth St., which is on the same block as the old Packard dealership at 831. The BID will draw five winners in January for gift baskets.
Parking also makes a longer walk easier. From November 28 through January 3, City lots and garages offer free three-hour parking, and weekends are always free. The tour takes about an hour, so three hours leaves time for it, an elf map and a stop at Alioto's Focacceria.
The museum plans to expand the tour beyond Fourth Street. Suggestions for new sites can go to [email protected]. For now the tour starts at the depot, ends at Fourth and D, and works on any phone.
Many of the downtown buildings on this tour have outlasted several owners and uses, and homes here have histories too. If you're curious what yours means in today's market, Brannan Palmer Group is glad to talk it through over a calm, no-pressure conversation. Request your complimentary home valuation.
