Santa Barbara Historical Museum

The Santa Barbara Historical Museum is identifiable by its U-shaped architecture, constructed from over seventy thousand stabilized adobe bricks and roofed with tiles imported from Mexico. Dedicated in February nineteen sixty-five, the building was designed by architect Robert Ingle Hoyt to provide a permanent home for the Santa Barbara Historical Society. This organization formed in nineteen thirty-two and spent its first three decades as a self-described vagabond, storing its growing collection of artifacts in the Santa Barbara County Courthouse tower and later at the Old Mission.