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San Diego Historical Resources: Designations and Board Reports
By Ann Jarmusch
March/April 2025
At their January 2025 meeting, the City of San Diego Historical Resources Board designated one Spanish Eclectic style house built in 1924 and recommended that two ferry boats, the Cabrillo (with a period of significance 1964-1968) and the Silvergate (1940-1957) be approved for listing on the California Register of Historical Resources and the National Register of Historic Places.
Heritage preservation staff presented the results thus far of their ongoing statewide and national benchmarking study of historic preservation programs, and how those programs compare to that of the City of San Diego. Key points include the makeup of historic preservation boards, how cities identify and designate historic resources, how they regulate them, and their incentive programs.
This study is part of the City’s Preservation and Progress initiative for evaluating and overhauling the historic preservation ordinance and policies. In the works for a year with little to no public input, the initiative was to be presented by staff during this meeting, but the item was postponed.
You can watch the entire January 23, 2025 HRB meeting on YouTube. Staff’s benchmarking PowerPoint starts at timestamp 1:23.
The benchmarking effort studied San Diego and the other nine largest U.S. cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Dallas, and Jacksonville, Florida. In California, the study also included San Diego County, Coronado, San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose, Riverside, and Palm Springs.
Here are some of the main points and conclusions that associate planner Kelsey Kaline highlighted:
- Most jurisdictions studied do not require the support of a property owner to designate a resource.
- In this group, only San Diego uses an “over 45 years old” threshold to establish potential historical significance. Other cities conduct and update citywide historic surveys, and/or review properties only before demolition.
- Most jurisdictions have design guidelines for historic districts. San Diego has 24 historic districts, while New York City has 157, the most among the surveyed jurisdictions, San Diego has few.
- Of the California cities studied, only Los Angeles and San Jose have specific design standards for ADUs (accessory dwelling units) built on historic properties.
- City planners use a tool called the California Tax Allocation Committee (CTCAC)/Housing and Community Development (HCD) Opportunity Map to define and assess equity in historic preservation to further fair housing objectives. The San Diego map they produced deserves closer study.
- Staff said that in San Diego many of the barriers to equity in preservation stem from process, not policy. Historic resources in low opportunity communities have not been surveyed, for example. And more public outreach is needed to raise awareness of the benefits available to historic property owners through the Mills Act.
- The report noted that the City of Los Angeles’s Mills Act program emphasizes equity and sustainability, but pending recommendations for improvement have meant no Mills Act contract has been processed since 2022.
Here is a description of the house the board added to the local historic register:
 1214 Sutter Street in Mission Hills is the Alberta Security Company/Martin V. Melhorn House Spec House #9. The 1924 Spanish Eclectic style home was designated under two HRB criteria: C, for architecture, and D, as the work of a Master Builder. It retains the characteristics and integrity of the style in its asymmetrical primary facade, projecting front gable with a focal window, varied roof forms covered in tile, little eave overhang, medium sand stucco cladding, a concrete front porch with a stucco wall, a courtyard, and original wood-framed fenestration comprised of multi- and single-light fixed, double-hung, and sliding windows. The house is a notable creation of Master Builder Martin V. Melhorn and retains integrity as it relates to his original design. This house brings the total to at least 14 Melhorn houses listed on San Diego’s historic register, and it matches the others in quality of design and construction. |
At the February HRB meeting, the board designated one Spanish Colonial Revival style house, considered and postponed their decision about another, and heard a much-anticipated staff presentation on the City’s Preservation and Progress initiative.
The HRB also approved the Certified Local Government Annual Report 2023-2024 on San Diego’s historic preservation efforts to the State Office of Historic Preservation. Read the report online.
Kelley Stanco, Deputy Director, Environmental Policy and Public Spaces Division of the City of San Diego’s City Planning Department, presented a workshop on the Preservation and Progress initiative, launched in February 2024.
Watch the workshop and the entire HRB meeting on YouTube. You can also read Stanco’s February 21, 2025 memorandum to the HRB with preliminary proposed changes.
Preservationists pushed back at the meeting and in letters against some of Stanco’s proposed changes to preservation and development policy and a revised preservation framework, which divides the initiative into two “packages” on different timetables when all the elements are actually intertwined. One speaker said City officials must overcome distrust in Encanto, where residents are organizing preservation efforts, after recent redevelopment blunders that the City Council reversed.
In response to Stanco’s memo, SOHO and Mission Hills Heritage each sent letters to the HRB. Read the letters from SOHO and Mission Hills Heritage.
SOHO’s letter stated support for proposals to streamline procedures for adaptive reuse of historic buildings, amending the 45-year threshold for designation eligibility, and using part of the City’s preservation fund to support low- and moderate-income homeowners in applying for historic designation and financial relief through the Mills Act.
In its letter, SOHO opposed “all proposed updates and amendments that would seek to weaken current protections and incentives or San Diego’s historic resources and potential historic resources.” The letter elaborates on these objections.
Preservationists repeated their earlier requests for in-person public meetings with staff for dialog and input into Preservation and Progress. They said some of the proposed changes were too vague for them to comment on.
Bruce Coons, SOHO executive director, and Barry Hagar of Mission Hills Heritage emphasized that the preservation community recently raised funds to commission a study of San Diego from PlaceEconomics, a firm respected both nationally and internationally. They urged the City to pause work on Preservation and Progress until the consultant finishes its report in a few months. PlaceEconomics has completed illuminating and clarifying studies of preservation economics, climate issues, and other related factors in several major cities.
“We’re going to vigorously defend protections of historic resources,” Coons said, after listing parts of the plan that SOHO supports. “We’d also like to understand the cost of this initiative in light of the City’s $252 million deficit," he added. "Especially when there has been no significant conflict between historic resources and development projects in recent years, this is a lot of effort for a nonexistent problem.”
Peter Kempson, a colleague of preservation architect and former HRB member Ione R. Stiegler, presented her recommendations for revising San Diego’s guidelines for historical resources designation reports, emphasizing improvements for interpreting architectural styles.
Regarding designations, an interesting case of history and change over time occupied the board with three lengthy reports and public comment on the nomination of a 1912 Prairie style house at 310 San Fernando Street. An early and rare example of the style in San Diego, historic photos depict the two-story, square home as an outpost seven miles from the city and rising from Point Loma’s nearly vacant La Playa area. Neighbors noted that it is one of La Playa’s oldest remaining house and an important touchstone for the community.
 San Diego’s Historical Resources Board is expected to receive new information and to rehear the case for designating this 1912 Prairie style house with Mission Revival influences in the La Playa neighborhood at its April 2025 meeting. |
This house has an unusual history with the HRB, beginning in 2018 and including reports comprising hundreds of pages, incomplete reports the Heritage Preservation staff could not officially accept, and the staff’s current recommendation not to designate the house due to extensive alterations. The three detailed architectural evaluations presented at the meeting came down either for or against designation, based on modifications, materials, and setting. Other germane facts slipped out during the hearing: The house is now boarded up and its owner has a demolition permit good for 90 days.
Bruce Coons, SOHO executive director, told the board he had visited the property several years ago at the owner’s invitation to help determine its historicity. He favors designation because it is an important house for Point Loma. In his view, the alterations—such as the replacement of the original flat tile roof with asphalt and the addition of a bay window—do not detract from the 1912 design integrity and are not sufficient enough to disqualify it from designation. “It is instantly recognizable,” he said, as a Prairie-style home both in early photos and today.
The HRB did designate this Spanish Colonial Revival style house:
 7964 Roseland Drive in La Jolla, which is the one-story John and Mary Elizabeth Lambert Spec House #1, built in 1929. It meets HRB Criterion C for embodying and retaining integrity of the Spanish Colonial Revival style. Its distinctive characteristics include a U-shaped plan; fully enclosed central courtyard; ornate courtyard gate; prominent arched arcade; stucco exterior; low-pitched gable and hipped roof sheathed in double-barreled red clay tile; wide eaves with exposed rafter tails; wood-framed casement windows; decorative window grilles; and an elaborated chimney top. The designation excludes the rear deck and alterations made in 2022: the west elevation addition, kitchen, and lanai. Courtesy Google street view |
All photos are from the California Historical Resources Inventory Database (CHRID), except where noted otherwise. The above designations were reviewed and approved by the City of San Diego Historical Resources Board (HRB), the County of San Diego Historic Site Board (HSB), or the Coronado Historic Resources Commission.
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