Historical Overview of the Gaslamp Quarter
Downtown San Diego began in the Gaslamp Quarter. The original New Town was established by William Heath Davis (aka Kanaka Bill) in 1850. Unfortunately, Davis’ settlement never developed into the thriving post town he had envisioned. Development in New Town finally took hold almost two decades later when Alonzo Horton established a wharf at the south end of Fifth Avenue in 1869. From that point on, Fifth Avenue has served as the commercial backbone of the Gaslamp Quarter. In the 1880s, the area of the Gaslamp Quarter south of Broadway, between Fourth Avenue and Sixth Avenue, developed at a rapid pace. During the same era, a strong community of Asian businesses began to grow in the area bound by Market Street, J Street, Third Avenue, and Fifth Avenue. The defining character of the Gaslamp Quarter was established by the Victorian, Italian Renaissance, and Spanish Revival buildings still standing today. As businesses, catering to both miners and sailors, flourished throughout the turn of the century. The Gaslamp Quarter experienced its first renaissance in 1912 when surging citizen morality pressured police into raiding the red-light district. The Gaslamp Quarter continued to grow at a steady pace through the 1920s to around 1930 when the Great Depression slowed development nationwide.
During the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, major commerce continued to abandon the smaller scaled buildings of the Gaslamp Quarter in favor of larger sites in the north end of downtown. Once again, the district became dominated by illicit activities. The Gaslamp Quarter began to experience a second renaissance in the 1970s when concerned property owners and merchants started to restore the turn of the certury architecture. In 1976, the first Gaslamp Quarter Urban Design and Development Manual was adopted by the City Council. The area bound by fourth and Sixth Avenues, Boadway, and Harbor Drive was listed on the national register of Historic Places in 1980 as a historic district. Property owners and merchants, along with the Redevelopment Agency of the City of San Diego, continue to restore and revitalize the historic buildings of the Gaslamp Quarter Planned District. The District features the highest concentration of historically significant commercial buildings in San Diego.
For a virtual tour of manly of the victorian buildings of the Gaslamp Quarter click here
Character of the Area
The Gaslamp Quarter Planned District is unique in that it marks the beginning area of development for downtown San Diego. The area retains much of the original architecture of its early history as a collection of late 19th and early 20th centrury structures. The District is valued for its historical signigicance not only at the local level by the City of San Diego and also on a national level by the United States Department of the Interior.
The architecture of the area is characterized by structures erected during a 57 year period from 1873 to 1930. The structures are typically 2 to 4 stories high and are constructed of common brick with continuous facades at the property line. Ground floors are frequently 20 feet high with cornices separating them from the upper floors. Corbeling is very often found at the terminal cornice, particularly in the case of brick buildings. The front sides of structures are often designed with closely set bays framed with segmental, stilted, or flat arches that are 10 to 12 feet apart. The opeings are deep-set and the entrances are typically inset. Heavy ornate cornices and spandrels, carefully detailed parapets, and bay windows are also typical design elements of the structures
Alonzo Horton
Alonzo Erastus Horton (October 24, 1813 – January 7, 1909) was an American real estate developer in the nineteenth century. Known as “The Father of San Diego,” the Horton Plaza mall in downtown San Diego is named for him.
Horton was born 1813 in Union, Connecticut, the scion of an old New England family, and grew up in Onondaga County, New York. By his 20s he had developed a keen entrepreneurial spirit, and in 1834, at age 21, he began transporting grain by boat from the Lake Ontario port of Oswego, New York, to Canada. He also taught school there, and in 1834 ran for constable on the Whig ticket. But having developed a cough, and with his family and friends fearing tuberculosis, he was advised to move to the West. At that time, the Western frontier was Wisconsin, and in 1836 he moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There he became a success at trading land and cattle.
In 1847, he purchased 1,500 acres of land in the rural wilderness of northern Wisconsin. In 1848 he filed the first warrant for what would become the village of Hortonville, Wisconsin, in Outagamie County near Green Bay, Wisconsin. At the time, the small settlement was quite far from the rest of the world. Today, although it is rather in the shadow of the larger cities of Green Bay and Appleton, Hortonville still exists as a village, with a 2009 population of over 2,700.
In 1851, with his town a success, Horton decided to join others in seeking his fortune in the gold fields of California. He sold his interests for $7,000, and traveled to El Dorado County, California, the heart of the Mother Lode. He became a success yet again, not so much through gold, but through trading ice and supplies in the mining towns. In 1857, he returned to Wisconsin. During an Indian attack, he lost a bag of gold dust worth $10,000, but kept the money he had made trading ice.
During the late 1850s and early 1860s, Horton spent some time in the East, even marrying his second wife, a prominent New Jersey woman. Horton’s first wife, whom he met in Wisconsin, had died of consumption. Horton is known to have married at least thrice, but relatives claimed he married about five times.
In 1862 Horton returned to California, this time to San Francisco, where he opened a furniture and household goods store at 6th and Market streets. While there, he heard about a growing settlement and interest in a small town called San Diego, located in far southern California, just north of the U.S.-Mexico border. It had become heavily acclaimed for its dry, warm, healthy climate, very welcome to many cold-weary Easterners. Upon visiting there, he noticed that while the small town was built around the old Spanish presidio (fortress) well inland near the mouth of the San Diego River, no large settlements had been made along the large San Diego Bay just a few miles south, even though all ships sailing to the town docked in the bay.
New Town San Diego
In 1867 Horton sold off his merchandise in San Francisco and journeyed to San Diego. There he bought 960 acres of land on San Diego Bay for just 27½ cents an acre. The district became known as “Horton’s Addition” or “New Town.” At first there was much opposition from the residents of the former site of the town center, which became known as “Old Town.” But new businesses began to flood into the new tract due to its greater convenience for ships arriving from the East. Eventually the new addition began to eclipse Old Town in importance as the heart of the growing city. Local land exploded in price throughout the 1880s, making Horton a financial success yet again. Horton helped to establish San Diego’s Chamber of Commerce in an effort to further expand the developing city. In 1867, Horton was the first person to ask for a public city park to be developed, which later became Balboa Park. More people from the East came in when the California Southern Railroad (now a part of BNSF Railway) became the first line to connect the city with the rest of America’s rail network in 1885. Unfortunately, land values crashed in the late 1880s, devastating much of Horton’s fortune. By the time he died in 1909, he had lost much of his former wealth.
Personal life
Horton went down in history as a tireless, enthusiastic supporter of the interests of whatever locality he happened to be living in, saying after moving to Wisconsin, “My principle is to be as happy as I can every day, to try and make everyone else as happy as I can, and to try to make no one unhappy.” He also had something of an effect on San Diego’s political scene. When he moved there in late 1860s, most locals, many of whom had migrated from the South or the border states, had supported the South during the Civil War and were Copperheads, or Democratic sympathizers of the Confederacy in an officially Union state. Upon being told that San Diego was a “Copperhead hole”, Horton remarked, “Then I shall make it a Republican hole,” and encouraged strong Republican sentiment in the city’s newspapers. A great supporter of Abramham Lincoln, he even grew his beard to resemble “Honest Abe’s.”
Horton was one of San Diego’s first Unitarians. He helped found the first Unitarian church in San Diego.
Horton died at age 96 in Agnew Sanitarium, San Diego. He is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery.
Bum the Dog
Few canines have earned the distinction of having their likeness preserved for posterity in a statue; “Bum,” however, was a remarkable dog.
Bum disembarked off a ship in San Diego as a stow-away in 1886 and proceeded to win the hearts of all those he encountered. He was a free spirit who belonged to no one, but was loved by everyone. All the town folk attended to Bum’s needs. The Chinese butchers fed him well, he slept on people’s front porches, and the local doctors met his medical needs (he once had his front leg amputated from being hit by a train in a fight with another dog on the tracks). The people of “New Town”/ San Diego took excellent care of their half-St. Bernard, half-Spaniel mascot, so much so that when San Diego issued its first dog license, an image of Bum adorned it.
Subsequently, Bum became San Diego’s first and only town dog. A statue of his likeness sits (lies, actually) in the GQHF’s Pocket Park, along with another famous canine, “Bobby.”
For more detailed information on Bum, see the link below to an article in the Huffington Post by Kate Kelly of the website www.Americacomesalive.com.
Bobby’s legacy lies in his incredible loyalty to the policeman who owned him. The little Terrier spent years guarding his deceased owner’s grave after he died in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The same two statues of Bum and Bobby occupying the Pocket Park also stand near Greyfriar’s Church in Edinburgh, one of San Diego’s sister cities. Ceremonies are held annually in both locations to commemorate how much these two dogs were revered in their respective home towns.
Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Earp came to San Diego between 1885 and 1887 and could have remained here as late as 1896. He was accompanied by his third wife Josie who he met in Tombstone, Arizona. She was an actress and possibly a dance hall girl and she accompanied him in his many travels until his death in 1929.
Wyatt Earp had a lot of miles under his belt prior to his arrival in San Diego in the late 1800’s. He displayed his courage at an early age where as a teenager, his first job was as a stagecoach driver in California. He was later a buffalo hunter out of Illinois where he met his longtime friend Bat Masterson. His reputation as a fearless and determined lawman was established in Wichita and Dodge City Kansas as he tamed these cities thought of as some of the wildest in the west.
In Tombstone, Earp took part in the famous shoot-out at the OK Corral where three of his enemies died. He could have been directly responsible for the shooting deaths of at least 5 men in his lifetime. Wyatt left Tombstone soon after the OK Corral and started a lifelong journey throughout the western frontier, settling in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Nome, Alaska.
He was an active businessman in addition to a gambler and was engaged in a variety of real estate ventures including the land boom of the mid 1880’s. Earp leased four saloons and gambling halls in San Diego, the most famous was his Oyster Bar located in the Louis Bank of Commerce on Fifth Avenue. He was listed as a capitalist (gambler) in the San Diego City Directory in 1887 and among his other winnings, he won a race horse. Wyatt also lived for a time in The Grand Horton, now known at the Horton Grand Hotel located on 4th and Island Avenues.
During these times the Stingaree District was the heart of entertainment for the city and offered all kinds of diversion and vice. There was gambling, saloons, gunmen, prostitutes, speculators, and honest and dishonest gamblers. Mixed in among settlers who came in droves were tourists who crowded the train lines so much that some weekend vacationers didn’t make it home to Los Angeles until Tuesday or Wednesday. Another big draw for the city was its close proximity to Tijuana where one was sure to find prize fights, bear and bull fights, and all varieties of gambling.
A major part of the Stingaree District is included in the footprint of the Gaslamp Quarter. Officers patrolling the area would not venture far apart as the level of danger was pronounced in San Diego’s red light district. Many of the restaurants and dance halls were open 24 hours, and their business was best from midnight until 3:00 am.
Adalaska Pearson, in his oral history from the San Diego Historical Society dated 1928, described the scene as “crazy with gambling fever developed from fortunes made in real estate, saloons and gambling houses.” He also added that “Crime was rampant. Murder, theft, robbery, fights and general licentiousness was the order of the day, hold-ups were a daily occurrence.” But this type of frenzied activity didn’t last too long as there was coming a period of dormancy to the overheated and overpopulated area.
Ida Bailey
Strolling through the streets of the Gaslamp today, you’ll experience exquisite dining, gorgeous shops, spectacular hotels, and fitness studios. Travel back in time to those same streets about 115 years ago, and quite a different experience you will have.
Welcome to the Stingaree in the late 1800s and early 1900s. What is known today as the Gaslamp District, was the Stingaree, the red light district, back then. You’re much more likely to get “stung” here, in the Stingaree, than by an actual stingray in the Pacific. You’ve now entered the realm of the gamblers, thieves, and prostitutes. Around each corner is an opportunist looking to make easy prey of you.
Throughout this time there were many well-known law-breakers, outlaws, swindlers and more, but none were as infamous as Madame Ida Bailey. Feisty, red-haired, Ida Bailey was the Madame of a pale-yellow cottage, dubbed the Canary Cottage, at 530 Fourth Street.
Prostitutes at this time were plentiful, but Ida Bailey and her ladies were the aristocracy of the Stingaree. These women dressed as if they were going to an opera every evening. They spoke with sophistication and class, and had parlor conversations with their “gentlemen callers.”
The “fat cats” as they were called, the wealthy, well-known business men of San Diego at that time, were Ida Bailey’s most frequent customers. Being frequented by wealthy and powerful men is what enabled the success and continuation of the Canary Cottage for so long.
Another factor in Ida Bailey’s success was her knack for marketing at the time. She would hire a carriage every Sunday, and take her girls for a drive through residential San Diego. This drive horrified and enraged the decent housewives, but the men thought it was quite entertaining. Some even claim Ida Bailey was the forerunner of outdoor advertising in San Diego.
Raids happened frequently in the Gaslamp, but Ida Bailey was always tipped off in advance. Both the Mayor and the Chief of Police were frequent customers of the Canary Cottage, so it’s no wonder Ida Bailey made it through unscathed most of the time.
As time always proves, no one is indestructible, and eventually, as more and more citizens became upset, the Stingaree began to get shut down. From the mid 1900s all the way up until the 1970s, slowly but surely, the Stingaree began transitioning from the infamous red light district, into the incredible Gaslamp District it is today.
For more great reference materials click here Or go to gaslamp.org/history, The Gaslamp Quarter Historical Foundation website or the San Diego Historical Society website
For reference on Gaslamp Quarter Facades click here
For reference on the proper color pallate and paint used in the historic gaslamp quarter click here
For reference on awnings and canopies click here
For reference on sidewalks/ cafes click here
Click here for the Historic Preservation Color Palette
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