It's not just that the people of California are restless, the buildings themselves have a tendency to pack up and move when, for one reason or another, the neighborhood no longer suits them or the neighbors no longer welcome them. And when they are not moving, they are searching for their identities.

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.