From a 1917 industrial warehouse to one of Santa Barbara’s most important Chicano cultural landmarks

At the corner of East Montecito Street and Calle César Chávez stands one of Santa Barbara’s most recognizable community buildings. Its white stucco walls, long street-facing wings, and three-story octagonal tower have overlooked the Lower Eastside for generations.

Since the early 1970s, the building has been known as La Casa de la Raza—commonly understood locally as “The House of the People.” It has served as a cultural center, social-service organization, meeting hall, classroom, performance venue, emergency resource center, and gathering place for Santa Barbara’s Chicano, Latino, immigrant, working-class, and broader community.

Its history, however, began more than half a century before La Casa was founded.

The building before La Casa: 1917–1970

The first portion of the building at 601 East Montecito Street was constructed in 1917 as a contractor-supply warehouse at a reported cost of $5,000. An addition followed in 1929, designed by the Santa Barbara architectural firm of Soule, Murphy and Hastings.

In 1931, the prominent corner section and octagonal tower were completed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. Two long, single-story wings extended from the tower along Montecito Street and the street then known as Salsipuedes Street, later renamed Calle César Chávez. The structure continued to serve industrial and building-material uses for several decades.

Although industrial in purpose, the building reflected the architectural transformation of Santa Barbara following the 1925 earthquake, when Spanish Colonial Revival design became closely associated with the city’s identity. Unlike the style’s use in prominent hotels, civic buildings, and private estates, this building applied it to a working industrial property on the Eastside.

The Chicano movement reaches Santa Barbara

By the late 1960s, the national Chicano movement—often called El Movimiento—was reshaping political and cultural life throughout the American Southwest. The movement included farmworker organizing, educational reform, voting-rights campaigns, student activism, cultural preservation, neighborhood advocacy, and demands for greater political representation.

Santa Barbara’s Mexican American community had organized for social change for generations. Housing discrimination and restrictive real-estate practices had historically concentrated many Mexican American families on the Eastside, where residents developed strong neighborhood, church, labor, and family networks.

Local activists were influenced by organizations and movements that included the United Farm Workers, the Brown Berets, La Raza Unida Party, the Crusade for Justice, MEChA, and community-based Chicano organizations throughout California.

The purchase of the building

In 1970, members of the Chicano Positive Movement purchased the approximately 27,000-square-foot warehouse for $140,000. The community organization was established in 1970–1971 and gradually became known as La Casa de la Raza, a name in regular use by approximately 1973.

The purchase was a community undertaking. Supporters raised money through bake sales, rummage sales, carnival booths, dances, festivals, and other local events. Gardeners, construction workers, artists, attorneys, doctors, students, business owners, and neighborhood families donated money, materials, labor, and professional assistance.

Leo Martinez later recalled convincing a Bank of America executive to help finance the warehouse purchase. He described hundreds of volunteers contributing to the project at a time when some outsiders viewed organized Chicano activity with suspicion.

La Casa was not the work of one individual. It emerged from a broad coalition of community organizers and volunteers. People identified in historical accounts as early founders or organizers include:

• Tomás Castelo, a co-founder and La Casa’s first president
• Leo Martinez, an organizer who played an important role in acquiring the building
• Manuel Unzueta, an original founder, artist, educator, and muralist
• Benji Cheverez
• Cheila Castro
• Members of the Banales family
• Numerous additional residents, activists, professionals, students, and volunteers whose contributions were not always individually recorded

La Casa’s original mission described the organization not as separatist, but as a cooperative effort involving Chicanos and supporters from outside the Chicano community. Its broader goal was to create a permanent place where community members could organize, obtain assistance, celebrate their culture, and build institutions of their own.

A center for organizing and social change

La Casa quickly became an important gathering place during the Chicano civil-rights movement.

United Farm Workers co-founder César Chávez visited the center and met with local residents and activists involved in farmworker boycotts and organizing campaigns. The building hosted political meetings, educational workshops, public forums, community coalitions, and organizing efforts involving labor rights, immigration, housing, education, voting rights, and neighborhood representation.

During the 1990s, La Casa provided meeting space for people organizing in response to California ballot initiatives such as Proposition 187, which sought to restrict public services for undocumented immigrants, and Proposition 209, which ended state affirmative-action programs.

The 1997 renaming of the adjacent street as Calle César Chávez further connected the building to the history of Chicano and farmworker activism.

Services for families and young people

As La Casa developed, it became much more than a political meeting place. Programs offered or hosted inside the building included:

• Childcare and after-school activities
• Youth recreation and boxing programs
• English-language instruction
• Computer and employment training
• Educational workshops
• Career-development assistance
• Counseling and legal-resource referrals
• Food and clothing distribution
• Health and wellness programs
• Immigration and housing assistance
• Community radio
• Meeting and office space for nonprofit organizations

The center also provided affordable space for weddings, baptisms, quinceañeras, dances, fundraisers, festivals, memorials, and family celebrations.

Organizations and programs associated with La Casa’s community network helped contribute to the development of the dual-language César Chávez School, now Adelante Charter School; neighborhood health services; the community bicycle organization Bici Centro; Zona Seca; and PUEBLO, an organization that preceded today’s Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, or CAUSE.

Theater, murals, and cultural identity

The arts were fundamental to La Casa from its earliest years.

El Teatro Campesino, the theater company founded by Luis Valdez during the farmworker movement, performed at the center. Later, Santa Barbara’s Teatro de Esperanza was based at La Casa, using performance to explore labor, politics, cultural identity, family life, and the Mexican American experience.

Artist and educator Manuel Unzueta transformed interior walls into large public murals. His work combined Chicano history, Indigenous imagery, Mexican mural traditions, civil-rights themes, family life, and visions of education and social progress.

Among the best-known works associated with the building is “The New Spirit,” which greeted visitors entering from Montecito Street. Other murals depicted Indigenous faces, community struggles, cultural symbols, and figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. The murals became part of La Casa’s identity and contributed to the building’s later recognition as a historic landmark.

One of Santa Barbara’s important music venues

La Casa de la Raza was also one of Santa Barbara’s most distinctive live-performance venues.

Its stage hosted Mexican and Chicano music, rock, punk, hardcore, post-punk, blues, reggae, folk, hip-hop, community dances, and multicultural performances. Unlike more commercial concert halls, La Casa offered an accessible grassroots setting where local audiences—often including young people and working-class families—could hear both emerging musicians and internationally recognized performers.

During the 1980s, the venue became particularly important to Southern California’s punk, hardcore, and alternative-music circuits. Local music historians have described attending a concert at La Casa as a markedly different experience from attending a conventional downtown show: the setting felt immediate, community-based, and connected to the cultural edge of the era.

Selected performers associated with La Casa

Surviving concert records, flyers, set lists, and local reporting identify an extraordinary range of performers, including:

Ramones; Red Hot Chili Peppers; The Replacements; Hüsker Dü; Minutemen; Social Distortion; Suicidal Tendencies; Bad Religion; T.S.O.L.; GBH; Agent Orange; The Blasters; Blue Öyster Cult; Los Lobos; Los Illegals; Los Tigres del Norte; Burning Spear; Albert King; Albert Collins; Etta James; John Lee Hooker; Buddy Guy and Junior Wells; Robert Cray; Quetzal; and Las Cafeteras.

The surviving record is incomplete, so this should be understood as a selected list rather than a complete accounting of every musician who appeared at the center. Local reporting specifically documents La Casa’s importance to post-punk, Chicano rock, and the early Santa Barbara Blues Society, which presented performers including Albert Collins, Etta James, and John Lee Hooker.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers at La Casa

One of the venue’s most notable early rock performances took place on October 13, 1984, when the Red Hot Chili Peppers played La Casa during the tour supporting their debut album.

The band’s lineup at the time consisted of Anthony Kiedis, Flea, guitarist Jack Sherman, and drummer Cliff Martinez. The concert concluded with an encore performance of “Fire,” the Jimi Hendrix Experience song that became a recurring part of the Chili Peppers’ early repertoire.

Five years later, on June 20, 1989, the Ramones performed at La Casa during their Brain Drain tour, further demonstrating the venue’s place within the national punk touring circuit.

The musical history is essential to understanding La Casa. For many Santa Barbara residents, particularly teenagers and young adults, their first relationship with the building came not through politics or social services, but through a concert, dance, rehearsal, or performance.

Adapting to changing community needs

La Casa continued to evolve during the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s.

The building briefly closed in 1999 for earthquake-related retrofitting. In 2000, the organization conducted a community-needs assessment among Eastside families. The results helped shape youth and family programming and strengthened partnerships with Santa Barbara City College, which offered computer, employment, and educational classes at the center.

Offices and rooms were also rented to businesses and nonprofit organizations, allowing multiple community services to operate under one roof.

During the Thomas Fire and the January 2018 Montecito debris flow, La Casa distributed food, clothing, childcare assistance, educational support, and emergency supplies. The center again provided food and essential goods during the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in March 2020. It also offered space to organizations involved in immigrant rights, environmental justice, racial justice, and assistance for working families.

The low-power community radio station KZAA 96.5 FM also operated from La Casa.

Designation as a Santa Barbara historic landmark

On November 10, 2020, the Santa Barbara City Council unanimously designated the building a City of Santa Barbara Historic Landmark.

The designation recognized both its architectural importance and its association with the Chicano and Latino history of Santa Barbara. It became the city’s first designated landmark specifically recognizing that cultural heritage.

The landmark report recognized:

• The original 1917 industrial building
• The 1929 addition
• The 1931 Spanish Colonial Revival tower
• The building’s association with La Casa de la Raza beginning in 1970
• Its role in community organizing, education, social services, theater, music, and cultural life
• The interior murals and artistic contributions of Manuel Unzueta

Historic-landmark status protects significant exterior architectural features, although it does not by itself determine who owns or operates the property.

Financial and ownership transition

Beginning in the 2000s, La Casa experienced recurring financial and administrative difficulties involving taxes, loans, building expenses, and attempts to refinance the property.

Tomás Castelo, one of La Casa’s original co-founders and its first president, later became one of the organization’s lenders. Following years of financial negotiations and legal proceedings, the property went through foreclosure in 2020 and was transferred to an ownership entity associated with Castelo.

This later financial relationship generated disagreements among the nonprofit’s leadership, creditors, founders, and community supporters. Because the parties offered differing accounts of those events, the most neutral summary is that the building, the original nonprofit organization, its creditors, and groups operating inside the property eventually became legally distinct interests.

A Chapter 11 reorganization proceeding initiated in 2016 was dismissed in 2018 after the court concluded that the board bringing the case lacked legal standing. An involuntary Chapter 7 proceeding followed in 2021 and temporarily prevented the original La Casa de la Raza nonprofit from operating.

During this period, a separate organization associated with the La Casa Founders Holding Company and the Restorative Justice Education Center continued offering food assistance, immigration resources, legal referrals, wellness services, concerts, and community events inside the building.

The original La Casa de la Raza Inc., the property-owning entity, and organizations operating from the building should therefore not be treated as interchangeable. Each has had a different legal and operational role.

Building closure, repairs, and settlement

In May 2025, Santa Barbara officials temporarily red-tagged the property after inspections identified fire, electrical, gas-line, access, and emergency-exit concerns. Community activities were temporarily relocated while repairs and additional inspections were completed.

Following another inspection in July 2025, the red tag was removed and limited use of the building was permitted, although some areas remained restricted pending additional work.

A court-approved settlement in July 2025 established a process for selling the building, resolving outstanding claims, and allowing the original La Casa de la Raza nonprofit to resume operations once the bankruptcy matter is completed.

Representatives of the original nonprofit have announced plans to restore family-resource programs, food distribution, housing and eviction assistance, youth services, case management, immigrant support, and the KZAA community radio station.

The building remains for sale

As of the most recent published report located for this history, dated May 5, 2026, the building remained for sale.

The original asking price of approximately $4.3 million had been reduced to approximately $3.2 million, and no completed sale had been publicly announced. The eventual buyer, the financial terms of the sale, and the organizations that will occupy the building afterward will determine the next chapter of La Casa’s physical home.

The original nonprofit has stated that it intends to continue its mission regardless of the outcome of the property sale. Meanwhile, the Restorative Justice Education Center and affiliated volunteers have continued providing services associated with the building during the transition.

More than a building

La Casa de la Raza cannot be explained solely through architecture, nonprofit records, financial proceedings, or real estate.

Its history belongs to the people who raised the money to purchase the building, repaired its rooms, painted its walls, organized meetings, distributed food, taught classes, formed community organizations, attended concerts, celebrated weddings and quinceañeras, rehearsed plays, trained young boxers, sought legal assistance, and found companionship within its walls.

It was simultaneously a Chicano institution and a gathering place open to a much broader community. It connected activism with daily life, social services with art, and cultural identity with music that ranged from Los Tigres del Norte and Los Lobos to the Ramones and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The building’s ownership and future use remain unsettled. Its place in Santa Barbara history does not.

For more than fifty years, La Casa de la Raza has represented something rare in the city: a major cultural institution built from the ground up by the community it was created to serve.

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Editorial disclosure: This article was researched and drafted with assistance from artificial intelligence. SantaBarbaraLocal.com reviewed, edited, and fact-checked the final text using public records, archival materials, published reporting, and other cited sources. Artificial intelligence was used as a research and writing tool, not as an independent factual source. Final editorial responsibility rests with SantaBarbaraLocal.com.