District Delivered Award

Laura Henson and Geoffrey Hueter, the Talmadge Historical Society, and
Eileen Magno of Heritage Architecture & Planning
District Delivered Award

In 2023, residents of San Diego’s Talmadge community set a rewarding but labor-intensive goal of creating a new historic district called Talmadge Park Estates. The 138-acre area includes nearly 600 resources, most of which are homes. Revival styles, such as Spanish Colonial Revival houses, are found here, along with the small Ranch House, which originated in this neighborhood; and Minimal Traditional style homes.

Guided by the newly formed Talmadge Historical Society, volunteer residents began preparing a National Register of Historic Places District nomination with help from Heritage Architecture & Planning. Volunteers and professionals researched, recorded, and evaluated hundreds of resources and historic people and events in two Talmadge Park subdivisions. They also cataloged the structures’ developers, architects, and builders, such as Cliff May, Louise Severin, and the Dennstedt Building Company.

This thorough research revealed that Talmadge Park Estates had been an evolving example of San Diego’s suburban development in the post-Great Depression era, which then moved forward with the Federal Housing Administration’s launch of small house principles for neighborhood planning. After that, the subdivisions grew to meet housing shortages resulting from World War II. When the impressive historic district nomination was complete, it included masterful descriptions for a whopping 419 contributing and 175 non-contributing resources! As a result, the Talmadge Park Estates National Register Historic District was officially listed in March 2024.

There’s a dual reason SOHO is recognizing this amazing community effort. To organize and streamline information collection and sharing, the society devised two innovative, web-based databases for public use. One database captured earlier research facts and data, which volunteer field surveyors could access through a smart phone or tablet as they added their own reports on an individual parcel’s conditions and character-defining features. The second database enabled homeowners, past and present, to enter their property’s history, photographs, drawings, and other information. Both of these innovative tools can now be replicated by other communities and organizations, locally and statewide.

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Norma Drive streetscape, looking southeast.

Original gate at Monroe and Euclid Avenues looking northwest. All photos by Sandé Lollis

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