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John Henderson, Preservation Architect, Helped Build SOHO
By Ann Jarmusch
March/April 2019
 Architect John Henderson credits the late Homer Delawie, an architect and active civic leader, with getting him involved in SOHO and historic preservation 50 years ago. John worked with Homer at Delawie, Macy & Henderson in Old Town San Diego.
"Did you see that sign on First Avenue?" asked Homer, who didn't know it yet, but he would soon serve on SOHO's first board of directors. "Call this number."
"That sign," of course, was the one in front of the Sherman-Gilbert House (1887) in 1969 that said "Save This House" and the phone number of Robert Miles Parker. Callers and artist friends soon gathered at Miles' Victorian house near downtown and the group that would become SOHO was born.
Homer ended up calling Miles, but it was John who first attended a SOHO meeting.
At that time, Miles, an artist and teacher who died in 2012, "had a lot of hair and not quite flowing robes, but almost," John, now 84, recalled in a recent phone interview.
His memory of Miles' house is vivid. "There wasn't a surface not covered in art. The doorways, the light switch plates, even the lamp shades. And they were painted on the inside and the outside!"
John had designed and built his own airy, light-filled, very white contemporary home in Pacific Beach in 1968. One day, he hosted Miles and other SOHO friends for what may have been their first confab in a non-historic building. "Miles' eyes were just saucers. I asked if he was feeling ok. Then I said, "What do you think of the house?' He didn't answer right away. Then Miles said, 'It's nude.'"
"SOHO was kind of a ragtag bunch. They had no money, but a lot of enthusiasm," John said. He helped with SOHO's benefit art auctions, and created and led some of its early architecture tours. He also wrote two guides to San Diego architecture published in 1970 and 1976 by the San Diego chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and later was distinguished by being elected to the national AIA's College of Fellows.
"SOHO people carried the placards, stood in front of the bulldozers, and talked to the press," he recalled.
At a 1970 SOHO meeting, the group formed a Preservation Council, with John and Kay Porter, San Diego Historical Society members, in charge. The council's goals were a preview of practices and ordinances to come. SOHO and interested parties were to be alerted if an important historic property was threatened. The group would promote tax breaks for people maintaining certain historic buildings and the creation of a historic building code. And they would maintain a list of sellers and potential buyers of historic properties.
John moved easily among groups, including the Historical Society and the AIA, to help where he could and to connect people. His firm, Delawie, Macy & Henderson, was among the SOHO and Historical Society members who contributed money to buy the endangered Villa Montezuma in 1971. John then made the rounds of the Villa's neighbors to gauge support for its use as a community center. He had "fallen in love" with the elaborate, polychrome mansion during a chance private tour years before. "I'm a modern architect, but there's something magical about that house," he said.
He worked with SOHO to save the Horton Grand Hotel downtown. It was threatened with demolition to make way for Horton Plaza shopping center. The brick Horton Grand was moved, and he worked on its reconstruction. John also played an important role alongside SOHO members in the revival of the Gaslamp Quarter, and won awards for restoring the Keating Building and the Yuma Building.
Around that same time, in 1981, John was honored by SOHO with the President's Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Preservation of San Diego History.
John served on every historic preservation board you can think of, at the city, county, and state levels, plus chairing the National Park Service's Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) Advisory Board. He spent about a year helping to write the State Historical Building Code and led a SOHO workshop to explain it once it went into effect. Over the years, John wrote the National Historic Register nomination reports for ten significant San Diego landmarks, including the Marston House, Santa Fe Depot, Villa Montezuma, and La Jolla Woman's Club.
After being appointed to the State Historical Resources Commission in 2002, he made an impassioned and influential statement in support of designating the Coronado Railroad (1888). It was added to the California Historical Resources Register that day, a goal SOHO had pursued for three years. Today, John is still dismayed the state designation was later overturned.
He would prefer that the Coronado Railroad had not become a bike trail. "To give up a railroad for a bike path is abhorrent to me," he said. "If the railroad were restored, you could get on a train at the Santa Fe Depot and go to Coronado, and make stops along the way. If need be, you could also build a bike path."
John opposed the controversial Plaza de Panama project for Balboa Park that was put on hiatus in February. It was billed as a way to reduce the number of cars in the park with a new bypass bridge, road, and underground parking garage. In 1976, John presented a master plan for the redevelopment of the Plaza de Panama and El Prado to the San Diego City Council. His proposal would have emphasized pedestrian use, rid the park of cars, and replaced them with a tram system. The tram hub would have served a new multi-level parking structure on the Veteran's Administration Hospital parking lot, across Park Boulevard from the park.
Boundary streets would have handled vehicular traffic, keeping it out of the park. Vehicles could use Sixth Avenue and Park Boulevard, as they do now. The City Council balked at what came next: his proposal to bring Upas Street, the northern boundary, through the Girl Scout Camp into the park. And, to restore Ash Street—now cut off by Interstate 5 and State Route 163—as a continuous thoroughfare from downtown to Golden Hill and beyond. Once John mentioned disturbing the Girl Scouts, his promising proposal was dismissed.
John Henderson has some encouraging words for SOHO on its 50th anniversary: "Keep doing what you're doing, because history moves on. Every year we get another slice of history, so we need SOHO."
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