His vision for the Atascadero Civic Center included an Opera House, providing a site for the arts.
Lewis was heavily influenced by the City Beautiful Movement, with the intent of introducing beautification and monumental grandeur in US cities, creating a harmonious social order to enhance the quality of life. He also printed the Illustrated Review, a photo/news magazine, as well as sections of the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Sunset Magazine. Lewis first published the Atascadero News in 1916 with an initial printing of 100,000 copies. Surprisingly, the Printery, as the largest printing operation west of the Mississippi, was in the fledgling community of Atascadero, away from major cities of the time. The Printery, completed in 1915, was the first civic building in Atascadero and held the first rotogravure presses west of Chicago. Lewis’ advanced thinking, and some say scheming, garnered enemies over time, along with significant debt.
Lewis’ objective was not only a completely self-sustaining colony, he based the whole community on advancing women’s rights, with all property initially in the name of the American Women’s Republic. Lewis, a magazine publisher from the east, founded Atascadero in 1913, his second utopian colony, the intended home for the American Women’s Republic. The Atascadero Printery, a 100 year old structure along California’s Central Coast, now listed in the National Register of Historic Places, stood vacant and vandalized when the Atascadero Printery Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization, formed out of an online community discussion about the building and its historic role in the development of the City, and a vital purpose for its future.Į.G. In most instances, these structures retain a portion of their original purpose, redefining their objective to fit current times. Throughout millennia communities and cultures around the world have maintained, renewed and unearthed historic structures, recreating them in form and fashion to support the ongoing needs of the current population.
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