Bill Zacha

Who was Bill Zacha?

Bill Zacha was an artist and entrepreneur who founded the Mendocino Art Center in Mendocino, California and by doing so started the artistic revival of Mendocino.

Zacha studied architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, spent four years in the United States Navy entertaining troops as a writer and actor during World War II, and later made unsuccessful forays into the priesthood and drama. Returning to Berkeley to continue his architecture studies, he supported himself as a cable car conductor, but dropped out after injuring his right hand in a fall. He moved to Washington, DC, where he studied art at the Corcoran Gallery and learned to paint left-handed. While in Texas in 1953 for a Houston exhibit of paintings he had made in Italy, he met his future wife Jennie Malone, a fashion designer. He then moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area and worked as a mail carrier while he earned a teaching credential at San Francisco State University.

The Zachas moved to Mendocino, then nearly a ghost town, in 1957, and Zacha took a job as a high school teacher. Hearing about plans to build a trailer park on the 1-acre former Preston estate, he borrowed $50 for a down payment, bought the estate for $5500, and in 1959 founded the Mendocino Art Center on the site. Zacha also ran a combination laundry/art gallery and restored many other buildings in Mendocino.