National Register #78000772
Independence Hall
AKA Scout Hall
2955 Woodside Road
Woodside

Independence Hall originally stood several hundred feet west of its current location on Woodside Avenue. In 1894, when it was only ten years old, it moved to Albion Avenue where it remained for almost eighty years. During prohibition, it fell from civic grace when it was closed for rowdiness. (What Northern California building of a certain age does not have a prohibition story or a bordello story?)

In 1944, still on Albion Avenue, it changed its name to Scout Hall, a first step on the road back to respectability. About thirty years later, perhaps nostalgic as it reached the century mark, it moved back to its original home on Woodside Road where it resided for two decades. In 1991, as befits a patriarch whose lapses have been forgiven, it moved to its current home next door to Town Hall under its old identity of Independence Hall.

It's not just that the people of California are restless, the buildings themselves sometimes pack up and move when - for one reason or another - the neighborhood no longer suits them or the neighbors no longer want them.

And when buildings remain in place, they are often searching for their identities.

Alford-Nielson House in Ferndale
Commodore Watkins House in Atherton
Hodgdon Homestead Cabin in Yosemite National Park
Independence Hall in Woodside
Jorgensen Studio in Yosemite National Park

Lathrop House in Redwood City
Little Church on the Hill in Oakhurst
Twenty Mile House in Cromberg
Yosemite Transportation Company Office in Yosemite National Park