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Historic Architecture of SDSU
A SOHO Self-Guided Tour
November/December 2022
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Celebrating its 125th year in late 2022, San Diego State University has become a powerful regional force in higher education and more. It boasts some 36,000 current students, more than 200 degree programs, 17 athletic teams, 40,000+ alumni, and a complex redevelopment project taking shape in Mission Valley. An educational, cultural, and economic force is exactly what late 19th-century San Diego developers and promoters wanted when they advocated for a local college. They considered such an institution essential for San Diego to grow into a big, thriving city. Today, SDSU’s main campus, overlooking Mission Valley from atop Montezuma Mesa, is itself a busy, vital metropolis.
SOHO is marking SDSU’s anniversary with a new online walking tour of the campus’s original historic core. You’ll find 10 remaining buildings designed and constructed in the 1930s and early ’40s. The Spanish Colonial Revival architecture mixed with Mission Revival and expressive elements of Moorish style has held up well. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, this unifying design, laced with a large quadrangle and courtyards, reflects the distinct vision of university President Walter R. Hepner and chief architect Howard Spencer Hazen.
We hope you enjoy the tour!
Dovetailing with our new tour of SDSU's original historic core, and also in this issue of Our Heritage News, we’re sharing University Heights Historical Society’s commemoration of the university's 125th anniversary with their history of SDSU’s origins. It sprouted in that community as the San Diego Normal School for training elementary school teachers. We include a link to the society’s self-guided walking tour of this former campus, where thousands of local children went to school.
SOHO joins UHHS and others in strongly urging the San Diego Unified School District to restore and adaptively reuse the school’s remaining buildings.
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