Tributes to Sea Ranch at 50 look to future as well as past

The question now, 51 years since the first buildings went up, is whether the 10-mile stretch of Sonoma County shoreline still influences what might come next. Or if it should be viewed as a piece of history, though history of the most scenic sort.

This either-or is prompted by two very different tributes to the 5,200-acre settlement dotted with 1,800 houses, perhaps a third of them occupied year-round, and a handful of commercial and community buildings.

One tribute is in Washington, D.C., where the National Building Museum is hosting “The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin,” an exhibition organized by the Cultural Landscape Foundation.