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Community Corner

A Look at the Novato Community House

Residents might forget the heyday of the shuttered building's legacy, including as a library, dance hall and chamber for the City Council.

Anyone relatively new to Novato wonders what's up with the big red building between the renovated Novato City Hall and the police station a block to the west on De Long Avenue. That structure — now faded, vacant and tired looking — used to be the epicenter of culture. It's the Novato Community House, and it has a heck of a history.

Welcome to Then & Now, an occasional look at Novato's past through the use of modern technology. Novato Patch is going to make these history lessons as visual as possible by handling it with video and archival photos rather than a whole lot of text. Videographer Eric Rivera is an expert in showing you local history with snappy clips of two or three minutes, and he has the expertise of Samantha Kimpel, museum curator and archivist for the city, to provide the script.

After you learn about the Novato Community House, check out our previous Then & Now installments:

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