'San Diego's Historic Places' Looks Back To 1915 Expo

Maureen Cavanaugh: This is KPBS Midday Edition, I am Maureen Cavanaugh. We have talked a lot about the centennial celebration at Balboa Park this year but it’s one thing to talk about it, it’s another thing to experience the history of the park through archival photos and current date tours. That’s why the KPBS TV series San Diego’s Historic Places is devoting a whole six part series to Balboa Park. That series is hosted by Elsa Sevilla and it’s a pleasure to welcome Elsa right here to the show. Welcome. Elsa Sevilla: Thanks for having me. This is exciting to be here. Maureen Cavanaugh: Also joining me is Iris Engstrand. She is historian and professor of history emeritus from the University of San Diego. Iris welcome back to the show. Iris Engstrand: Thank you very much and I also have a new job in a way. I am the curator of the 1915 centennial exhibit at the History Center. Maureen Cavanaugh: Well, you are the perfect person to be here. Elsa Sevilla: Exactly, yeah. Maureen Cavanaugh: Now San Diegans I also think they know all about Balboa Park. So what is this series going to tell them that they don’t know? Elsa Sevilla: There are so many stories in Balboa Park that I’ve been covering Balboa Park for Historic Places for the last almost seven years and I think I’m just scratching the surface. They have really are so many stories and what I find so interesting are the black and white photos and the film. When you look at those you almost get a completely different story than what you knew before or what you think you know. What I found super exciting was how did this idea come of establishing the park which was of course then called City Park and then the other one was who came up with the idea to do a world’s fair in San Diego and so those were the things that we focused. The other is who decided on the architectural design for the structures in Balboa Park. So there’s so many things that we continue to uncover and that’s really exciting. Maureen Cavanaugh: This TV series as you said, it’s rich with old photographs and even all news reels of the park. What is the earliest image of the site that you were able to find? Elsa Sevilla: Well, some of the pictures, some of the photos, the black and white photos show Balboa well City Park then and it’s just shrubs, very dry and I think the earliest that I found was 1904 maybe 1905, the park originally was established in 1868 and so it took some time before it was developed. George Marston donated $10,000 of his own money to bring architects from New York to help develop and design the plan for Balboa Park. So there were so many key players and those were other stories that I find super interesting. Who were the players, who donated the money, how did the funds come up to first establish the park, build the structures and then plan a world’s fair which was two huge undertakings. Iris Engstrand: Especially is it considering how much smaller San Diego was at that time. Elsa Sevilla: Yeah, at the time there were about 40,000 people in San Diego, living in San Diego so to do those two major events is really wonderful. Maureen Cavanaugh: Iris, Elsa talks about the history of the park dating back to the 1860s, this was in an era when a lot of cities in the US were creating city parks, wasn’t it? Iris Engstrand: Yes, except that San Diego had an advantage over these other cities by having what we all know as pueblo lands, the Hispanic heritage and we had a whole lot of space and when we thought we would have a park of 1400 acres some of the people on the trustees said oh my God she had his way too much but Jose Guadalupe Estudillo who was one of our old town resident said that no that’s common and we should have a large park like that. And so that’s how it came about in 1868. Maureen Cavanaugh: So it’s State City Park for about half a century, for about 50 years? Iris Engstrand: Actually until the 1915 plans were being made and a committee with George Marston on it decided that it needed a more glamorous name so they named it after Balboa not only was a discover of the Pacific Ocean but was quite a humanitarian and most people don’t know that his wife is Indian and the reason he was executed was the governor of what was then the section [indiscernible] [00:04:23] wanted to have him stop complaining to the King that he was mistreating the Indians. Maureen Cavanaugh: I see. Let me ask you about George Marston. Is it fair to call to test, to say that he is the man responsible for turning City Park into Balboa Park? Iris Engstrand: In a way yes but in a way no because the people that he wanted to be in charge Samuel Parsons and the Armistead brothers had a completely different idea and they were more of a landscaping aspect and although he was okay with hiring Bertram Goodhue, he never realized that the park would turn out completely different from what his original imagination of what it was. Maureen Cavanaugh: What do we learn about Bertram Goodhue and his architecture in the series? Elsa Sevilla: So much. I think at least for me I didn’t know that much information about who the architect and the architects were and where the idea came from to design the buildings in the Spanish Colonial Revival Style and that a lot came from Bertram Goodhue who came from New York and so Iris has mentioned before to me and several other experts that we have interviewed that there was sort of this tug of war whether to go with Mission Style Revival. Maureen Cavanaugh: Which was much more current, right? Elsa Sevilla: Which was current and was also much more simple. It was so simple and that was Irving Gill, architect Irving Gill who had that idea but then Bertram Goodhue had the colonial much more visual and picturesque architectural design and that’s the design that won out. Obviously those were the buildings that we have in Balboa Park today. Maureen Cavanaugh: Exactly and it was do you think Iris it was because he was from New York and he was taken with a sort of allure of Spanish architecture out here to go that road in Balboa Park? Iris Engstrand: Oh not exactly. He was a true New Yorker and when he was 20 years old he took a trip through Mexico on his own and he wrote a book called Mexican Memories in 1892 describing he fell in love with Mexico, he fell in love with the architecture and in his book there are number of sketches that look very much like the buildings. So when he came to San Diego he had this idea of a dream city of a fantasy city and even though it was not based on the history of San Diego in anyway... Elsa Sevilla: Right, yeah. Iris Engstrand: It was going to be really remarkable but Irving Gill said all right if that’s what you want to do I am leaving and he did and George Marston and some of the other Samuel Parsons wanted to have a smaller group of buildings on the other side of the park and there could be a bridge but so they finally sort of had to give up and Frank Pallone and Goodhue and then his partner Carleton Winslow really went full speed ahead on Spanish Colonial Design. Maureen Cavanaugh: Let’s talk for a minute about the California building and it really illustrates the Spanish Colonial style and it’s now a national historic landmark. Tell us a little bit about the building Iris at the heart of the park. Iris Engstrand: It is based pretty clearly on a Truth Santa Prisca in Taxco, Mexico and in Goodhue’s book you can see a sketch that looks very much like it. And it’s interesting that the inscription on the dome is from Deuteronomy which describes, let’s see the land of olive oil and honey, with wine and pomegranates and it’s like San Diego was just the epitome of a wonderful place that people would want to live. Maureen Cavanaugh: Paradise? Iris Engstrand: Paradise. And the tower, the tower is very similar to the Cathedral Tower on the mosque at Cordoba and if you see that you would be amazed how similar these towers are. Maureen Cavanaugh: Now, Elsa you recently went up in the California Tower, tell us what that was like? Elsa Sevilla: Yeah. And that wasn’t my first time so it was amazing and I think it felt even more special because that tower hadn’t opened just yet, it open like opened like about a week and a half ago. So I think it was a little bit more special because not a whole lot of people had been up there and it had been closed for 80 years. Maureen Cavanaugh: Sure. Elsa Sevilla: The climb is interesting, you don’t expect that it’s going to be that high once you are inside, what you see outside and what you see inside is so different but it’s also just so amazing but climbing to the top you got these views of San Diego, of Balboa Park, of the bridge that you won’t get anywhere else. So the climb to the tower was amazing. So we hope that people enjoy the footage that we captured and the interviews that we got to give everyone a full story of the tower. Maureen Cavanaugh: Speaking about the kinds of things that people will see in this series, we want to play just a short clip from Episode 3. This is Chris Travers from the San Diego History Center talking about a 1915 newsreel. It’s a very complete newsreel, it’s about 38 minutes long so it shows a lot and it goes into a great detail of what was happening at the fair, people driving around in electro cars and pigeons landing on them. And you do see that in that clip? Elsa Sevilla: Yeah, we do. Maureen Cavanaugh: It’s sort of a real time capsule. Elsa Sevilla: It is. And most of the things that I find aside from the stories themselves as I mentioned a moment ago is those black and white photos and the footage it just– it really just take you to another time and of course a hundred years ago but you almost feel like you are there because it’s so real and just to see people walking the crowds and I guess apparently it was a pretty popular thing to have the pigeons sort of land on your shoulder and then take pictures. You see a lot of those photos and so it was actually pretty popular to do that in the park but yeah the electro cars are pretty interesting, were in the process of doing another piece to ride on one of the electro cars that will be used in Balboa Park for the centennial throughout the year. So that will be fun. Maureen Cavanaugh: They were pretty cutting edge for their time, weren’t they, those there was little electric cars they had back in 1915? Iris Engstrand: No, in fact I wished we had more of them today. But another interesting part is there are visitors that came in 1915 such as Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, Franklin Roosevelt, Maria Montessori was there and… Maureen Cavanaugh: From the Montessori School? Iris Engstrand: Right. That was one very early in her career. And so some of the visitors that we found and Joseph Pendleton visited with William Kettner about perhaps having a marine base here, and we have quotes from the two planning the navy and the marines coming to San Diego. Maureen Cavanaugh: If you were to after doing this series Elsa, if you were to give somebody one thing that perhaps people just overlook all the time at Balboa Park and they should take a second look at, what would it be? Elsa Sevilla: Oh my gosh, I can’t. There was way too much things. Maureen Cavanaugh: It’s too much? Elsa Sevilla: I mean there was a fire station in Balboa Park that people don’t know about, it’s not there anymore, most of the buildings that were built were only meant temporarily, only a handful about seven of them were meant to be permanent structures which is the Museum of Man now, the California Building Quadrangle that was one of the permanent one, so was the Botanical Building, so was the Organ Pavilion and so there were several– so a lot of people don’t know that a lot of those buildings were meant to be only be there for a year. Another thing that people don’t know they won’t be able to see it there but the world’s fair really went to San Francisco instead of San Diego but the amazing thing that Iris and I talked about and so many other people is that San Diego’s civic leaders at that time they weren’t discouraged by that and amazingly were able to gather funds, gather support and built the park and do the expose. There are so many stories I couldn’t tell you one honestly. Maureen Cavanaugh: What would you like people to take away from the series, Elsa? Elsa Sevilla: To learn about the history of San Diego and to learn about those stories that aren’t always told and so we hope to bring stories from the past and bring them to the present. Maureen Cavanaugh: All right then, I think that’s a good place to leave it. Episode 1 of San Diego’s Historic Places 1915 expo it airs tonight at 8:00 on KPBS television. I have been speaking with Elsa Sevilla, host of the KPBS program San Diego’s Historic Places and Iris Engstrand, historian and editor of the journal of San Diego History. Thank you both so much. Elsa Sevilla: Thank you. Iris Engstrand: Thank you. Maureen Cavanaugh: Be sure to watch KPBS Evening Edition at 5:00, again at 6:30 tonight on KPBS television. Join us again tomorrow for Midday Edition Friday. I am Maureen Cavanaugh and thank you for listening.