Downtown is the central business district of San Jose and its cultural and political center. The area was first settled in 1797, when the pueblo moved inland from its first site by the Guadalupe River, and in 1850 the town became the seat of California’s first state capitol.
After decades of decline as the city spread outward, the Redevelopment Agency rebuilt much of it from the 1980s with hotels, museums, theaters and parks. Today it holds City Hall, the San José Museum of Art, The Tech Interactive, the Children’s Discovery Museum, SAP Center at its western edge, and the main campus of San José State.