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Melville Klauber House
1907
In 1979 SOHO's hardest fought preservation battle ended with the demolition of the 1907 Melville Klauber House, designed by Irving Gill and Frank Mead. Despite lawsuits, countersuits, State Supreme Court hearings, proposals from a youth hostel, plans to move it to Heritage Park or into Balboa Park, and even the airplane crash death of the developer, nothing could stop the loss of this high-profile icon, universally considered to be Gill's best remaining work, after the loss of LA's Dodge House.
As has become all too common, more energy was put into the demolition scheme than in getting secure financing for its replacement. Those who remembered were taunted by a vacant lot at 6th and Redwood for more than a decade until this condo tower emerged. The lot across Redwood, site of another Gill house wrecked that year, remains the unsightly graveyard of another failed project.
(Click on images to enlarge)
More Lost San Diego
- Ammex Motion Picture Company
- Bankers Hill Residences
- California Southern (Santa Fe Depot)
- Levi Chase House
- Julia Dent Residence, Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library
- F Street Downtown San Diego
- Florence Hotel
- Gay Mansion
- Alonzo Horton's Home
- Hotel San Diego
- Melville Klauber House
- Normal School
- Middletown Schoolhouse
- Mission Olive Works
- Mission San Luis Rey
- Overbaugh House
- Pierce-Morse Block
- Point Loma Universal Brotherhood & Theosophical Society Homestead
- Sunset Cliffs Park
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