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Talmadge Park Estates National Historic District is Official
By Laura Henson
May/June 2024
 The Giraffe Gate Traffic Circle in Talmadge Park Estates, as seen in 1927. The historic district is organized around the development’s distinctive gates. Collection Museum of Photographic Arts at the San Diego Museum of Art |
 Giraffe Gate detail. Talmadge Historical Society photo from the canvas for historic district |
 The Talmadge Park Estates Homebuilders Guide (1940) shows historic home designs that still characterize the neighborhood. Courtesy private collection |
Our journey to becoming the Talmadge Park Estates Historic District (TPEHD) started in 1996, when the City of San Diego surveyed a portion of Talmadge as part of its Mid-City Preservation Strategy. Momentum picked up when two volunteers succeeded in getting local designation for the area’s distinctive gates and original streetlights. Next, residents formed a Maintenance Assessment District to pay for the gates and lights to be replaced, work that was completed in 2018.
In 2022, Talmadge residents—encouraged by historian and former City of San Diego Historical Resources Board member Priscilla Berge—set out to create a historic district. Because the city had at least a 12-year backlog for processing local districts, our group decided that seeking historic district status on the National Register of Historic Places was the best way forward.
Given the role of the gates in promoting Talmadge Park Estates’ early development, it made sense to structure the historic district around the locally designated gates and streetlights that run along the non-canyon subdivision boundary lines.
With those boundaries, we began the journey of assessing community interest and gathering data for our community development statement, beginning with Talmadge Park Estates’ establishment in 1926, and historic and background information on all 584 houses.
Volunteers filled out worksheets to record historic lot and block assessor's books, city directories, and comparisons between Sanborn and SANDAG maps. One volunteer had access to 70% of our notices of completion and another had a copy of an original Talmadge Park Estates Homebuilders Guide from 1940. The field survey team entered all the data collected, including past and present photos, into an app we created.
Berge, a Secretary of the Interior’s Standards Qualified Architectural Historian, assisted the architectural review team in evaluating each of the 584 houses for more than 120 character-defining features.
Interestingly, and contrary to local lore, our research revealed that TPEHD had little to do with the Hollywood glamour of the Talmadge Sisters movie stars. It is more about the impacts of the Great Depression and of Consolidated Aircraft (Convair) moving to San Diego in 1935, as well as the small house movement (Minimal Traditional Style) associated with the Federal Housing Authority, created under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
On February 2, 2024, 98 years after the neighborhood’s founding, the State Historical Resources Commission unanimously and enthusiastically recommended TPEHD to be listed on the National Register. It is amazing what good a group of preservation-minded neighbors can do for a community.
Laura Henson is president of the Talmadge Historical Society. For more information, visit www.tpehd.org
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