City’s Historic Buildings Open For SOHO Tours

Alice Lee built her summer cottage in 1905 in an area considered to be way, way out in the country . . . on Albatross Street, south of Laurel.

The city once rented 30 acres of land for an annual fee of 400 trees. The tenant was Kate Sessions; the trees began the forestation of Balboa Park.

Mothers, fearing that their children would be electrocuted, kept them far away when underwater lights were turned on in the Horton Plaza fountain for the first time.

It was called Rattlesnake Canyon when rattlesnakes were there, City Pound Canyon when stray dogs were impounded here. It’s called Cabrillo Freeway today.

Rabbit hunters on a scrubby, desolate peninsula envisioned a grand resort hotel, and that was the start of Hotel del Coronado.

Those fascinating anecdotes of early-day San Diego, and hundreds of others, will be recounted by hostess-commentators when a four-part series of Historic Bus Tours is inaugurated today.

The tours, which will visit more than 100 historic structures in a three-hour period, are being sponsored by SOHO, Save Our Heritage Organization, as a fundraiser for historic preservation activities.

Today’s tour, which is booked, will start at 9am at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion parking lot. Future tours, open to the public and beginning at the same place, will be a 9am Thursday; 12:30pm Dec. 9 and 9am Dec. 13.

Fundamentally, the tours will be sightseeing from the bus, as few of the structures will be entered. The running commentary will be given by SOHO members who have achieved near-professional tour-guide status and who have researched their topics thoroughly.

Among the structures that will be entered are the Villa Montezuma, the Quartermass-Wilde House, the Horton Hotel and the High Life Bar.

A bar, on a historic tour? Yes, says Mrs. Phillip Kaplan, tour chairman.

“It’s a kind of a campy place to walk into,” she said. “Once it was the longest bar in town; they’ve made two bars out of it now.” “The ceilings are 25 feet high, the walls are covered with photographs of stage and motion picture celebrities, famous jockeys and horses.”

“It’s like walking back 30 or 40 years in time to walk into the Sports Palace Bar.”

But no one could question the choice of a stop at Villa Montezuma, without doubt the most interesting and imaginatively designed Victorian house still standing in San Diego. The magnificent main floor is remarkably well preserved, a repository of wonders in art glass, decorative surfaces and carved woods.

The structure known as the Quartermass-Wilde home is a classic revival style castle, containing 8,800 square feet. Built in 1896, it still is one of the city’s most charming buildings.

Not so well known are dozens of other structures on the tour, including seven homes on Seventh Avenue. Three of them reflect the genius of Irving John Gill, one of the earliest of contemporary designers who introduced the anti-ornament house.

“His place in the development of contemporary architecture is assured internationally as well as locally,” Mrs. Kaplan said of architect Gill.

“As long as his structures stand, Gill will continue to reaffirm fundamental truths in the lasting beauty of the straight line, the arch, the cube and the circle.”

On the tour will be the Wednesday Club at 540 Ivy Street, designed by a student of Gill, and a home at 3506 Brant Street, which Gill designed as an experiment for later tract houses.

A little white house at 336 Upas Street was a farmhouse on farmland when it was built, and is the oldest in the neighborhood.

Of the Albatross and Upas neighborhoods, Mrs. Kaplan said, “This residential area offers examples of every type of home built in San Diego from the 1890s to the 1960s.”

A surprise to even old time San Diegans may be stops at canyon-spanning foot bridges. They were built by John D. Spreckels, sugar baron and financier, who was said to have “owned” San Diego in the early 1900s.

Spreckels bought Hotel del Coronado, at one time owned all the lots south of Broadway, acquired the water system and the city streetcar system. The bridges he built were to allow residents to reach the streetcars which he owned.

Interesting homes on Front Street will be seen before a stop at the Klauber House at 3060 Sixth Avenue, a home called “Gill’s finest.”

Innovations incorporated in the Klauber house design were a garbage disposal that allowed trash to be dropped directly into an incinerator, an ice box that opened to the outside for grocery deliveries, and a slot in the wall especially for mail deliveries. Such inventions were a matter of wonder in the year 1907.

It’s called “Pill Hill” now because so many physicians have established offices, but in the mid 1880s the area radiating from Fir Street between Third and Fourth Avenues was called Florence Heights.

At the north end of the area, the son of President Ulysses S. Grant, Jesse Grant had a home built in Southern Colonial style in about 1895. Tour guests will be asked to view it from the Quince Street side; the Sixth Street side has been remodeled for a doctor’s office.

Another stop will be made at the city’s first “town house,” an architecturally exciting home lived in by millionaire newspaper publisher E. W. Scripps while his Miramar ranch home was being built. It is known as the Britt-Scripps house, at Fourth Avenue and Maple Street.

Commentators will tell the tour guests that the Britt-Scripps property is an unusual treasure, in that it is in beautiful condition after 86 years, with towering chimneys, irreplaceable stained glass carriage house and caretaker’s cottage, all still intact.

Another treasure in showcase condition, which will be seen on the tour, is the home on First Avenue known as the Long-Waterman house. It was built by John Long, a wood veneer manufacturer; purchased by Robert Waterman, governor of California, in 1890. Seven years later, Dr. A. H. Gilbert bought the home for his bride; Mrs. Gilbert still lives in the house.

“The Long-Waterman house is an outstanding example of ornate gingerbread architecture so fashionable in the 1870s and 1880,” said Mrs. Kaplan.

“It’s a large home, but it has a dainty look, achieved by curving surfaces and small scale ornamentation.”

Bus hostesses will call attention to shingle patterns, curved-pane windows, round bay, the gently curving porch and the use of lattice.

“We hope to make the trip just as educational as it is entertaining,” said the chairman. “We’ll point out interesting structural features and historical notes at every stop.”

For instance, when the tour stops at the Timken House at First Avenue and Laurel Street, the hostesses will point out the influences of Queen Anne, Georgian and Classical Greek architecture in the late Victorian structure.

The hostesses will tell of the influence of Henry Timken, a nationally known millionaire inventor and founder of a family of philanthropists, who built the house as a retirement home in 1888. It contains Tiffany glass panes, burl inlay, parquetry floors, and spindled and carved fireplaces.

The larger part of the tour will be spent in “Horton’s Addition,” a 960 acre area which Alonzo E. Horton purchased in 1867 for 27 and a half cents an acre. It is called downtown San Diego today.

Stops will be made outside of more than 12 commercial buildings in the downtown area. This is part of SOHO’s plan to acquaint the public with buildings of historic interest that are worthy of preservation or that are doomed by redevelopment programs.

Among these will be the gorgeously gingerbread-y Ratner Building, ornately detailed in Second Empire Victorian style, and the Somner Building, first to be built in a modern style that snubbed curlicues and ornamentation.

Another commercial structure on the tour will be the Horton Hotel with a lobby “straight out of a wild west movie,” said Mrs. Kaplan.

Horton himself had nothing to do with the hotel; it was named for him, perhaps to capitalize on the fame of the Horton House, which he had built, when it was demolished.

The interior has a three-story skylighted interior court. Rooms, arranged along balconies, are reached by an elaborate old-fashioned staircase.

Although all other Victorian structures pale in comparison with the ebullient Villa Montezuma, there are many other buildings in the Golden Hill area that will be introduced as noteworthy on the tour.

The 1887 home at 24th and J Streets, for instance, stands as a prime example of restoration and preservation. It is the home of the Rev. Robert Stevens who has been responsible for saving this beautiful bit of Victoriana.

After a visit to the Quartermass-Wilde House, the tour will stop at numerous residences built in the late 1890s and early 1900s when Golden Hill was the most fashionable address in the city.

These will include the Classic Style mansion built by Senator Leroy Wright in 1898, and the large home built by Fred Heibron in 1906.

An unexpected charmer, which tour guests will see in the Golden Hill area, is the home at 2460 A Street which is called the “Anne Hathaway Cottage.”

The quaint cottage, reminiscent of Elizabethan architectural styles, was built in 1905 from plans drawn by E. Brooks Weaver, who had worked in the office of Irving Gill.

The hostess-commentators on the tours, all members of SOHO, are Barbara Briggs, Claire Kaplan, Lizz Matto, Ramola McKenney, Kay Nicholas, Terri Recht, Phyllis Vodicka, Pat Teaze and Zenda Norte.

They have been trained in monthly meetings by Mrs. Lynn Kaplan and they have become so knowledgeable concerning San Diego history and traditions that their services are hired by commercial tour enterprises and the University of California Extension.

Their fee for acting as tour guides is donated to the SOHO treasury and earmarked for historic preservation.

Information and reservations for the three remaining tours may be obtained by calling the A-1 Answering Service, said Mrs. Kaplan.

[Long-Waterman House] The excellently preserved Long-Waterman house, one of more than 100 structures to be visited on SOHO bus tours, was built in 1889, a period reproduced in the costumes of Mr. and Mrs. Donald L. Skidmore. The tours begin today and will be repeated Dec. 6, 9, and 13.

[Hotel Staircase] The elaborate staircase of the Horton Hotel, is background for Philip Kaplan, left, and Dick McLaughlin, dressed as travelers of 1887 when the hotel was built. It is one of a dozen or more commercial structures to be seen on the SOHO tours of the city.

[Strong House] Popularly known as the “Anne Hathaway Cottage,” the Strong House was designed in 1905 by E. Brooks Weaver who had worked in the office of famed architect Irving Gill. Dressed in quaint styles are Jennifer Ratner, left, and Wendy Ratner, with baby Neal Kaplan in the carriage.

[Suspension Bridge] Unknown to many residents are suspension bridges in the Hillcrest area which were built by John D. Spreckels to provide access from isolated areas to streetcars. This footbridge is traversed by, from left, Mr. and Mrs. Donald L. Skidmore, Dick McLaughlin, Danny Ratner and Ms. Barbara Briggs.

[Walnut Street] Although this home is on Walnut Street in the Hillcrest area, it was a farmhouse on “out of town” farmland when it was built. It is typical of the carefully tended structures, both residential and commercial, that will be seen on the SOHO tours. Wearing the knicker suit and cap is Danny Ratner.

[Golden Hill Home] The authentically restored Golden Hill home of Rev. Robert L. Stevens, built in 1887, furnishes a period setting for Ms. Barbara Briggs, a member of SOHO which is sponsoring four tours of historical structures.