A Historical Hub for Pinole
by Jeff Rubin, President, Pinole History Museum
Faria home ORIGINAL (Courtesy of Margaret Prather) Faria House move (Courtesy of Margaret Prather)
OOne day in a few years, a visitor to the Faria House
at 2100 San Pablo Avenue will enter a contemporary
learning and cultural preservation center in a classic
home.
In this elegant Victorian-era farmhouse built around
1880, one of the city’s most historic and beloved
buildings, he or she will find a technology-rich
museum, with multi-media presentations, interactive
exhibits and history games, video screens, wireless
access to recorded oral histories, and access to videorecorded
history programs.
With a limited amount of space, the Pinole History
Museum will be a modern museum and research
center where visitors can access digitized photos,
illustrations, and images stretching back almost 200
years, and learn about Pinole and the surrounding
communities.
It will be a world-class, small-city museum.
With an ideal downtown location, the museum will
appeal to all people in our community — school
children, young and middle-age adults, senior residents
— and will be a place that people of all cultures will
want to visit repeatedly.
“For many, the old days go back to when you moved
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to Pinole, or for a very few living old timers, when
you were growing up in Pinole,” says former Pinole
Mayor Jack Meehan. “A museum is like an album of
photos or artifacts, memorabilia and records of the past,
what it was like back then, and helps us see and live
the present — and maybe the future, too — in clearer
perspective.”
On Saturday, November 2, the Pinole History
Museum will have its second fundraising dinner in
the St. Joseph School auditorium, 1961 Plum Street,
Pinole, as it raises money to help pay — along with
the City of Pinole — for the interior restoration of
the Faria House. Dinner tickets may be purchased at
pinolehistorymuseum.org, by e-mail at
info@pinolehistorymuseum.org, or by calling
(510) 724-9507.
If you are unable to attend the dinner, please consider
donating, either online or by sending a check to PO
Box 285, Pinole, CA 94564. You can help MAKE
HISTORY HAPPEN in Pinole.
In 2005, the city moved the Faria House from its
location near Interstate 80 to Heritage Park, in the
city’s Old Town district. In 2016, the Pinole City
Council designated it as a site for a museum.
