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SOHO's 38th Annual People In Preservation Awards
Honors Outstanding Preservationists
May/June 2021
 San Diego's countywide preservation group, Save Our Heritage Organisation, celebrates its 38th annual People In Preservation Awards with an online award presentation, demonstrating that the pandemic has not halted the valiant efforts of local preservationists and their projects. This year's awards will honor twelve distinctive projects and people ranging across multiple historic preservation mediums, from building restorations and adaptive reuse to historic community traditions and important arts and cultural centers.
SOHO will celebrate each individual, group, and organization on Thursday, May 27, at 4pm, during National Preservation Month. This year will feature an outstanding group of people and projects, including the extensive restoration of a Mid-Century Modern coastal gem, the rehabilitation of a support building at the beloved Hotel del Coronado, and the recognition of a long-time writer especially known for her work in La Jolla. Awards will include recognition for commercial and residential restoration and rehabilitation, adaptive reuse, cultural landscape, keepers of the flame, and more.
On Niagara Avenue in Ocean Beach, you will find a charming turn-of-the-20th-century cottage that plays host each spring to abundant blooms of colorful purple wisteria vines. Susan and Pat James, active with the Ocean Beach Historical Society (OBHS), are the current occupants of this modest OB landmark, constructed in 1907 as a vernacular beach cottage. Each year, during wisteria season, Susan and Pat open their historic home and its magical gardens to members of OBHS and community dwellers to gather and share its history and greater history of the neighborhood. This tradition was started by Ned Titlow, past president of OBHS, and Carol Bowers, OBHS co-founder, and is now known as the Wisteria Garden Party, where local artists and famous OB residents play music, showcase art, and bring photos and memorabilia to showcase the community's history. Pat and Susan honor this tradition, and their efforts showcase the importance of keeping the spirit of local history alive right in your own backyard.
The Fort Rosecrans Post Exchange, now more commonly referred to as Navy Building 158, is situated within the Fort Rosecrans Historic District and was constructed in1908 for use as a post exchange and gymnasium. Boasting a Georgian Revival architectural style, this large red brick building was recommended for remodeling many times, but these projects never happened, and the historic building has sat vacant for the last 20 years. In 2019, Shane Liberty of Barnhart-Reese Construction, Inc. was awarded the contract to carry out a massive adaptive reuse project that would showcase this important military structure and Point Loma's development. Today, the Fort Rosecrans Post Exchange houses administrative offices and a training center, with a wonderfully intact historic exterior.
When Holland Partner Group began a large mixed-use development project at a building site located downtown at the corner of G Street and Park Boulevard that included a historically designated home, they set off on a project that would incorporate this architectural marvel into a new and modern design. The Remmen Building, a unique Craftsman-style building with Neoclassical details, was built in 1907 and is now situated prominently at the corner of the block as an anchor to the new development. The building was temporarily relocated during the construction process and moved back to the site where it now boasts a freshly painted and historically accurate exterior, beautifully restored leaded glass windows, and reconstructed rough-faced stone foundation. With this project Holland Partner Group has demonstrated the delicate harmony that can be struck between old and new in urban development.
The tale of the formation of Chicano Park, a National Historic Landmark, is one of San Diego's most moving activist and preservation stories. Author Beatrice Zamora and illustrator Maira Meza set out to tell this important story and share the history of the development of Logan Heights and Barrio Logan in their bilingual children's book The Spirit of Chicano Park / El espíritu del parque Chicano. This picture book is presented through the eyes of two children as they discover a park located under a bridge in their neighborhood and the pages are filled with vibrant illustrations representing the park and its colorful painted murals. This impactful historical fiction book demonstrates the power of activism and finding a voice, and features biographies and backgrounds of many of the leading community members, artists, musicians, and all types of activists who have cultivated this important historic park.
When Breeann and Nick Zamonis bought their historic 1925 Spanish Revival style home with Monterey influences in Mission Hills, it had undergone multiple renovations. Luckily, a historic photo of the home from around 1925 was found, and restoration work began. This key photograph compiled with others from throughout the century lead to the removal of the front addition to restore the original entryway, and reconstruction of the original cantilevered wood balcony. Now, the Walter and Margaret Trepte House shines with all the former glory of its original 1920s design.
You will be hard pressed to find another writer who has a better way with words for sharing San Diego and La Jolla history than La Jolla Historical Society historian Carol Olten. The breadth of topics she has written about include discussions of popular architectural styles and building types in La Jolla. She has also chronicled La Jolla landmarks, such as the Red Roost and Red Rest, the long-lost Green Dragon Colony, and the magnificent Marine Room. Her alluring articles and books flash you back to the past, including captivating facts interspersed between literary paintings of vivid past images. Starting her career in San Diego during the 1960s as a reporter and writer for the San Diego Union, today Carol has served as La Jolla Historical Society Historian since 2006, Editor of the LJHS Timekeeper periodical, and countless research contributions.
When the iconic Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) Munk Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography began to show the wear and tear of decades situated on the coast, Sam Farmer, Facilities Management Project Manager at UCSD, and a dedicated team of professionals stepped in to rehabilitate and preserve this important modern resource. Designed by San Diego Master Architect Lloyd Ruocco and constructed in 1963, the post and beam style building remains highly regarded for its organic design, functionality, and exterior redwood siding that blends with the natural bluffs overlooking the Pacific. The restoration team took extensive care to restore the exterior by sensitively repairing, replacing, and stabilizing the Douglas fir structural beams, redwood siding and trellises, and floor-to-ceiling glass windows. The restoration of the IGPP Munk Laboratory honors Ruocco as well as Walter Munk, known as the father of oceanography, and his wife Judith Munk, who commissioned the lab and played an influential role in its design.
This year, four different groups and projects are being recognized within Balboa Park. The San Diego Automotive Museum has received a major facelift with the recreation of four historic murals in tile. The work is thanks to the Committee of One Hundred, whose mission is to preserve and protect the park's Spanish Colonial style architecture. When the Automotive Museum, located on the Palisades Plaza, was constructed for the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition, these four monumental murals hung over the entrance. The original murals were made of fiber board, designed to look like tile, and depicted imagery of California's commerce, scenic beauty, agriculture, and industry. The Committee of One Hundred reconstructed the elaborate murals in tile, and repaired and restored missing architectural details of the exterior. Recently completed, this project has given back to San Diego a monumental piece of history and public art.
On Park Boulevard across from Inspiration Point is the Centro Cultural de la Raza, a cultural community center, whose mission is to create, promote, preserve, and educate about Chicano, Mexican, Latino, and Indigenous art and culture. Amelia Enrique, president of Centro Cultural de la Raza, heads this essential community center now celebrating its 50th year. The center was founded in 1970 in Balboa Park, and today occupies a rehabilitated water tank with murals on the exterior by nine local artists. It has been transformed into a lively gathering place hosting rotating exhibits, music, dance and theater performances, and other events that promote an educational, celebrative, and collaborative community space. The center also has published exhibition catalogues, children's books, and poetry, and has cultivated many distinguished and influential artists.
Nearby you will find another concrete water tank that has been adaptively reused and converted into the vibrant and colorful home of non-profit multi-cultural arts organization, the WorldBeat Cultural Center. Founded in 1984 by Executive Director, Makeda (Dread) Cheatom, WorldBeat moved into the water tank in 1996. Covered inside and out with cultural murals, the center is dedicated to promoting, presenting and preserving the African Diaspora and Indigenous cultures of the world through music, art, dance, multi-media arts, and education, by offering programs and events, including art shows, poetry readings, musical performances and dancing, crafts, and exhibits, and the George Washington Carver EthnoBotany Peace Garden. WorldBeat is a vital community asset and important cultural resource for San Diego.
And, finally, the Balboa Park Conservancy, in partnership with the Friends of Balboa Park, raised the funds and organized this collaborative restoration of Alcazar Garden with the City of San Diego. In 2019, work began on various water features, landscape and tree trimming, walkway updates, restoration of the historic art tiles, and fresh coats of paint matching historical color schemes. After months of planning, partnering, and hard work, the famed gardens were successfully restored to their 1935 glory in the summer of 2020.
The Hotel del Coronado, an 1888 Victorian landmark operated by BRE Hotels and Resorts, rests on the beach in Coronado. Often overlooked support buildings, like the Laundry Building, a single-story brick construction, had been neglected over time. In 2019, an adaptive reuse and rehabilitation project began, overseen by Michael Haslett, as a part of the Hotel del Coronado's master development plan, that included interior renovations and structural upgrades. This project has converted the historic laundry space into a new, modern guest-serving facility and possible event venue that retains many of its historic details, including the overhead laundry conveyance system and wood trusses. Now there's a new, flexible use for one of the hotel's important outbuildings.
SOHO's People In Preservation Awards will be held on Thursday, May 27, at 4pm, as a virtual event. Find the digital awards ceremony HERE and more information about SOHO, membership, its historic sites and museums, and historic preservation advocacy, and education programs at SOHOsandiego.org.
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