VOSD Monthly Magazine | December 2012

Your Favorite Spots In The Park: San Diegans weigh in on the park’s most treasured places

www.voiceofsandiego.org

DECEMBER 2012

Vol. 1 No. 8

Crown Jewel Everyone’s wanted a piece: the military, McDonald’s and even the revered Kate Sessions. Here’s how Balboa Park has withstood a century and a half of tension.

— A VOSD Magazine Special Edition —

Voice of San Diego is a member-based news organization. Join our community and get a subscription to this magazine. Learn more at VOSD.org/join-members ▸▸

December 2012 Volume 1 Number 8

16 THE PARK IN WARTIME

The Military Takeovers of Balboa Park At times, San Diego hasn’t even had control of the park. Soldiers have.

12 CHANGING LANDSCAPE

When Cabrillo Bridge Was Considered a Monstrosity Many of the park’s icons weren’t even supposed to be permanent. And that famous bridge? Its construction caused quite a ruckus.

Inside 2 EDITOR’S NOTE | Sara Libby What the Park Teaches Us

3 RAISE YOUR VOICE | Mary Walter-Brown

20 DIRTY SECRET

The Garbage Dump Hiding in Balboa Park The most vexing of the many incursions and controversies in the park’s 143-year history.

An Eventful Year

4 IN THE PARK

COVER PHOTO BY SAM HODGSON

The History of Balboa Park Five Hurdles to Partying Like It’s 2015 When the Golden Arches Loomed A Freeway Runs Right Through It Kate Sessions Makes a Deal

32 The Hospital In the Middle of the Park 34 Your Favorite Spots In the Park — All stories in this issue were written by Kelly Bennett —

26 PHILANTHROPY

How 1960s San Diego Navigated Another Big Gift The City Council feared it would lose a multimillion-dollar gift for Balboa Park if it did not act quickly and in favor of the proposal the donors had in mind.

December 2012 VOSD MONTHLY

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Editor’s Note What the Park Teaches Us KELLY BENNETT’S SERIES ON BALBOA PARK and how it’s changed throughout the years was only supposed to last a week or two.

That was six months and two editors ago.

As Kelly delved into the Jacobs plan to overhaul the park, she was amazed to find so many analogous anecdotes in its past.

Now, here we are with a magazine full of content from half a year’s worth of park coverage — a collection of stories brimming with tensions and constant development, just like the park itself.

But our long quest to find out how Balboa Park became what it is today didn’t just help us learn about a beloved city landmark. The snowballing series gave us plenty to think about in terms of how we want to approach big stories.

Uncovering the long and complicated history of the park gave us a much clearer understanding of the proposals to shape the park’s future.

We want to use that lesson to anticipate the big conversations happening about San Diego’s future, and be well-versed in them as they take shape.

We were also tremendously heartened by the passionate responses to the series — San Diegans love Balboa Park. They really, really love it.

That’s why helping to increase the shared understanding of facts on big community assets, and the dilemmas surrounding them, is a challenge we think is worth tackling over and over again.

Finally, we were also thrilled to see Kelly’s series bolster our case for covering specific narratives, over traditional beats.

A conventional business or city hall reporter probably would have covered certain stories on the Jacobs plan for the park. An arts reporter may have tracked down Ruth Hayward, who sculpted the “mother of Balboa Park,” for a feature. But with Kelly at the helm of the narrative, “How did Balboa Park get to be the way it is?” those stories were all woven together and explained by one guide.

Can someone get Kelly an honorary park ranger hat?

SARA LIBBY

Managing Editor

MANAGING EDITOR

Sara Libby

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Andrew Donohue STAFF WRITERS

Kelly Bennett, Will Carless, Liam Dillon, Lisa Halverstadt CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Ashley Lewis

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Scott Lewis

VICE PRESIDENT, ADVANCEMENT & ENGAGEMENT

Mary Walter-Brown WEB EDITOR

Dagny Salas MEMBER MANAGER

Summer Polacek FOUNDERS

Buzz Woolley & Neil Morgan BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Blair Blum, Reid Carr, Bob Page, Gail Stoorza-Gill, Buzz Woolley

December 2012 | Volume 1 Number 8 Subscriptions and Reprints

VOSD members at the Speaking Up and Loud & Clear levels receive a complimentary subscription to Voice of San Diego Monthly magazine as a thank you for their support.

Individual issues and reprints may be purchased on demand for $7.99 at VOSD.org/vosd-mag.

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DISCLOSURE: Stories in this edition feature philanthropist Irwin Jacobs and his plan to remodel the park. Jacobs is a major supporter of Voice of San Diego.

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2 VOSD MONTHLY December 2012

Thank you to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for supporting innovative journalism.

News and Updates from Our Member Community

An Eventful Year THE YEAR 2012 turned out to be the year of events for Voice of San Diego. Since the beginning of the year, we’ve hosted 21 gatherings with our members, subscribers, community partners and people we’ve never met before. We’ve introduced residents to interesting arts enthusiasts at Meeting of the Minds, to city leaders and innovative thinkers at One Voice at a Time and Politifest and to our VOSD reporters and staff at Brews & News and monthly Member Coffees.

We’ve tried to not only expose people to new faces but also to new places and new ideas. We use our events to further educate and engage residents about what’s happening in San Diego, giving them an opportunity to discuss and debate

their differences while celebrating their common interests.

It’s civic discourse at its finest!

If you haven’t had a chance to come to one of our events, don’t worry, there will be more opportunities in 2013.

Remember, VOSD members receive free or discounted admission and other perks at every event, so if you haven’t joined, please consider doing so by the end of the year. It’s tax deductible.

Thanks for a great year, see you in 2013!

MARY WALTER-BROWN

Vice President, Advancement & Engagement

One Voice at a Time with Donna Frye

Meeting of the Minds atop Horton Plaza

One Voice at a Time with Jan Goldsmith

Revelers at VOSD’s election night party

Politifest rocks Liberty Station

The SeaWorld crew at Politifest

UPCOMING EVENTS JAN 3

One Voice at a Time

MATT YGLESIAS | 7:00 P.M.

Join us for a special One Voice at a Time with national political blogger and author of “The Rent Is Too Damn High,” Matt Yglesias.

Location TBD. Visit voiceofsandiego.org/members/news to RSVP.

QUESTIONS? CONCERNS? Write to mary.brown@voiceofsandiego.org

JAN 31

Member Coffee

8:00 A.M. | VOSD OFFICE

VOSD members are invited to join us for coffee, a light breakfast and lively discussion with CEO Scott Lewis and the VOSD reporting staff.

Space is limited. Please RSVP to summer@voiceofsandiego.org.

December 2012 VOSD MONTHLY

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In the Park

BIRD’S EYE VIEW The park’s prominent architectural features as seen from above.

HAPPENINGS

In the Park The History of Balboa Park

IN 1953, people who lived in San Diego mulled whether to let the Padres build a baseball field in the city’s central park. The Union newspaper’s Joe Brooks penned the news with a haven’t-we-seen-this-before air: “San Diego is expected to resume one of its favorite indoor sports — squabbling about the development of Balboa Park,” Brooks wrote. The baseball bid was unsuccessful, but it wasn’t the first or last time private interests proposed parceling off sections for their own use.

Brooks continued:

The whole history of the park is one of civic controversy dating back almost of May 25, 1868, when the City Council authorized acquisition of 1400 acres of hard pan and chaparral as site of a park.

History shows San Diegans have been proud of their park and jealous of its uses since then. Almost every proposal to locate something in the park has met with opposition — even the things that today are regarded as the park’s prime assets. Sometimes public opinion has prevented use of the park property for whatever plan was being considered at the moment; other plans have been adopted despite the opposition.

Fifty-nine years later, people who live in San Diego are mulling the

249 Private uses and roads had eaten up 249 of the park’s original 1,400 acres by the 1960s.

latest plan, and “squabbling” is a nice word for the discussion the plan has sparked.

The idea is to remake the park’s western entrance in order to remove traffic and parking from the park’s Plaza de Panama and Plaza de California, which front structures built for the park’s 1915 Panama-California Exposition. The City Council eventually gave its approval this summer, handing a victory to Mayor Jerry Sanders and Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs.

It did so over cries that the remodeling would destroy the park’s historic features and public access.

Opponents described Jacobs and his committee as the latest interests to exert private influence over a public park. Though his plan doesn’t carve out parkland and restrict it from the public in the manner of the hospital or the landfill, the iconic park’s rocky history hangs heavy over the debate.

TIMELINE

1868

How Balboa Park Has Changed Since 1868

San Diego sets aside 1,400 acres of hard pan and chaparral for City Park.

A graphic guide to the history of our city’s crown jewel.

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Number of the Month

6 VOSD MONTHLY December 2012

It’s the latest in a long history of passionate and sometimes hyperbolic discussion over what is one of the city’s best assets.

Some of the fighting was about preference: Architecture for the 1915 expo that’s being fought so vehemently over was itself contentious to people who thought the park should remain natural and open.

Other arguments dealt with big footprints for puzzling uses. The park lost more than 100 acres to freeways and more than 90 to the naval hospital.

In the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s we thought it’d be fine to dump garbage in it.

Now the Arizona Landfill is closed but unstable, yet to be reclaimed for the park. Perhaps the history we tell in this series will help explain some of

“The number of assaults on park land over the past 143 years is nothing less than shocking.” the vehement, heated debate over who gets to say what happens there.

“Yes, San Diego got a park in 1868, but from that day forward the question of whether or not we can keep it has been on the table,” said University of San Diego law professor Nancy Carol Carter at a luncheon last year, telling stories from her Balboa Park research.

“The number of assaults on park land over the past 143 years is nothing less than shocking,” she continued.

1892

1911 Kate Sessions leases 32 acres of park land to grow her nursery plants; agrees to plant 100 trees and donate another 300 to the city per year in exchange.

The Olmsted brothers, landscape architects, resign over location of expo grounds.

SAM HODGSON FOR VOSD

CONSTANT CONTROVERSY

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

“Yes, San Diego got a park in 1868, but from that day forward the question of whether or not we can keep it has been on the table.”

— University of San Diego law professor Nancy Carol Carter

“Some of the schemes for converting the park for other uses were outlandish and others are so brazen and avaricious as to take your breath away.”

100-YEAR BASH

Five Hurdles to Partying Like It’s 2015 BALBOA PARK knows how to party.

Most of its iconic architecture came from two major parties — the 1915 Panama-California Exposition brought icons like the California Tower, Cabrillo Bridge and the Spreckels Organ Pavilion. And then the city decided to throw another expo to pull itself out of the Depression in 1935. That spurred landmarks like the Spanish Village and The Old Globe.

As the 100-year anniversary of that first expo looms, a gang of city leaders has been scheming initial ideas for a yearlong celebration. They include retired lobbyists Ben and Nikki Clay, Mayor Jerry Sanders and his wife Rana Sampson, City Councilman Todd Gloria and hotelier Mike McDowell.

The organizers formed a nonprofit specifically for 2015, and they even unveiled a brand for the year of celebration: Edge 2015 — a nod to the idea of discovery and what’s next in technology, art, business and culture.

But even among the optimistic crowd at the brand unveiling, Ben Clay acknowledged the project will involve “one heck of a heavy to-do list.”

Here are five hurdles the organizers

1915

must clear in order to pull off a massive year-long party.

▸ Money

Clay says they’re shooting for a $50 million budget. They have $1.1 million in seed money. That means they’ll be looking for foundations, companies, local government and individual donors to contribute.

▸ Space

You can’t just tell all of the museums to clear their calendars and surrender their spaces to squeeze in 2015-themed exhibits and parties. So the team has to pinpoint spaces where large fair-like operations can happen.

And organizers are conscious of the impact their events could have on the park grounds.

▸ Electricity

If you’ve gone to December Nights, the park’s annual wintry weekend festival, you might’ve seen generators scattered throughout the park. The 2015 team saw them, too, at last year’s festival.

It’s got them concerned. Several people I talked to said they worried about the plans to project lights and images on buildings, or to keep museums open late or to power outdoor exhibitions.

“We want to have the capability to not shut the whole thing down when we flip that switch,” Clay said.

That’s an exaggerated fear, according to SDG&E. There’s enough electricity already in the park to handle double the demand as the most intense day

1917 Panama-California Exposition opens, drawing millions of visitors and creating much of the park’s iconic architecture.

U.S. Military converts expo buildings and teaches sailors to swim in the lily pond.

last year, an SDG&E spokeswoman said. But the electricity grid in the park needs some upgrades, which SDG&E has begun working on.

▸ Renovations

The list of needed fixes to buildings and infrastructure in Balboa Park is long. The committee will likely lean on the city and private donors to make some a priority, especially in spaces that could house events for the centennial. The municipal gymnasium needs a new roof. The Museum of Man’s electrical network needs fixing.

The Starlight Bowl’s plumbing needs some work, and the bowl’s wooden stairs are deteriorating.

“It’s never sexy to talk about the foundations and the water and the sewer,” Clay said. “But you know, after 100 years, we have to talk about it.”

▸ Connections

There are dozens of groups, large and small, in the park. There are lots of people who want to volunteer. And there are tons of ideas about how the party should look, what it means to celebrate 2015, how each organization can work on its own mission and still collaborate with its neighbors.

Integrating all of those — and the people who live all over the region — into a coordinated and cohesive series of events will be a challenge.

▸ Fireworks

Too soon? I did hear a couple of chuckles when a picture of the Coronado Bridge being lit by fireworks flashed up on the screen. The concept

1935

1941

City throws a second expo to pull itself out of Depression; activists convince city leaders not to raze temporary buildings from 1915.

U.S. Military takes over the park again for WWII. Voters agree to let the city deed 38 acres of parkland to make the 163 freeway.

December 2012 VOSD MONTHLY

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HAPPENINGS

In the Park

BURGER BUST

When the Golden Arches Loomed IF YOU WANTED TO MAKE a rhetorical point about commercialism clashing with a public place, you might imagine aloud a beloved park, all full of tranquility and fun, interrupted by the deep-fried scent of the first fastfood place that came to mind — say, McDonald’s.

This scenario was actually considered in Balboa Park in the late 1980s. It’s one of the more peculiar chapters in the city’s long-running challenge to pay for the park’s needs.

As the city created its park blueprint calling for better-planned parking and traffic control, officials wanted to start a tram system to ferry people from outer parking lots into the center of the park. But they needed money to pay for it. City lawmakers directed parks staff to look for ways to raise around $400,000 to cover the tram yearly. The idea was that a big corporate sponsor might pay for the service in exchange for advertising and logos on the tram itself.

City parks officials wrote letters

1952

1953 City starts throwing garbage in Arizona Street canyon in the park; by 1974 nearly 2 million tons of trash are buried there.

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to a couple of dozen large national advertisers like Pepsi and Kellogg’s.

They heard back from two. One of them, McDonald’s, tweaked the proposal. The burger behemoth offered to pay for the trams as long as it could open up shop in the concession stand near Spanish Village.

Assistant park and rec director Dave Twomey said city staff talked with McDonald’s decision-makers about how the franchise could blend its operations into the park’s landscape.

No golden arches, for example.

“They were interested,” he said.

“How you dealt with smoke, the smell of hamburgers cooking, all of that.”

Twomey said the department was just following what it thought was City Council direction — to find revenues in the era following Proposition 13, a statewide tax-limiting overhaul passed in 1978 that left the city struggling to cover services.

But when Twomey’s team presented its idea to the City Council, the deal didn’t go over well. The plan sparked fears that the park would become over-commercialized. Opponents included the Sierra Club and a local businessman whose concessions selling burgers and shakes would’ve been supplanted.

Then-City Councilman Bob Filner took special exception. A 1989 Los Angeles Times story described his reproach: Filner delighted in lampooning the possible ramifications of allowing fastfood providers to gain a foothold in the park.

Noting the Old Globe Theatre’s plans for an expansion, Filner worried about

8 VOSD MONTHLY December 2012

the production of “Burger King Lear.”

“The Casa del Prado. Think of it: Casa del Taco,” he added.

Those underlying conditions, which fomented the debate about the McDonald’s, still exist today and continue to cause conflict.

DIVIDING LINES

A Freeway Runs Right Through It WHEN HIGHWAY PLANNERS have a road to build, they look at where they want it to start and where they want it to end.

Then they try to draw a line, straight as possible.

But what happens when that line goes through Balboa Park?

When the Cabrillo Freeway first came up in the 1940s, lots of San Diegans cheered. Civic leader George Marston told the San Diego Union newspaper in 1941 that he considered the Cabrillo Freeway the answer to “the extreme necessity of another broad modern thoroughfare from north to south.”

Such enthusiasm wouldn’t always endure for the highway through the park, especially as it threatened to grow in future decades. The city had taken its park, which began as 1,400 acres, and sliced off dozens of acres here, dozens more there. The park today features two freeways — the State Route 163 coursing through it and Interstate 5 slicing off the southwestern corner.

“A freeway through the park? I mean,

EARLY 1960S San Diego mulls whether to let the Padres build a baseball field in the park.

1967 City decides to raze two original 1915 buildings to make room for the Timken Art Museum.

San Diegans successfully fight Caltrans’ plans to widen SR-163 to eight lanes.

SAM HODGSON FOR VOSD

is to light that bridge so San Diegans all over town on New Year’s Eve 2014 can still be part of the event even if they aren’t directly in the park.

But, as someone near me said after the presentation last week, it’s a tough sell in the year of the “Big Bay Bust,” when all of our fireworks exploded in one confusing moment this July 4.

HAPPENINGS

In the Park come on,” said Nancy Carol Carter, a law professor at the University of San Diego who has studied the history of Balboa Park. “There is not one place in the park where you can’t hear traffic.”

The Jacobs plan’s supporters describe a romantic central plaza, free of cars, in front of many of the park’s iconic structures. Its detractors focus more on the new road that diverts the cars and a paid parking garage.

“Although there have been many individual uses proposed and granted on park property, none stirs up more controversy than roads,” wrote San Diego Union reporter Michael O’Connor in 1963. “However, in most cases the park land has been turned over by a vote of the people.”

Over the years, city leaders wanted to add roads and private buildings, but they needed at least two-thirds votes in a public election.

Voters overwhelmingly agreed to let the city deed about 38 acres to the state Division of Highways for the freeway in 1941. The highway builders broke ground in 1946, replacing lily ponds and bridle paths under the iconic bridge leading across the Cabrillo Canyon.

Cars could pass under the arches, and landscaped hillsides bore trees and plants, making the highway a beautiful route. Even JFK may’ve agreed when he traveled down it in 1963. It was the first freeway in San Diego County.

Private uses and roads had eaten up 249 of the park’s original 1,400 acres, according to a 1963 estimate in the Union.

Highway planners, however, weren’t

1980S

When the idea of the Cabrillo Freeway, which now runs through the park, was first floated in 1940s, many San Diegans cheered.

done eyeing the park. San Diego’s population had boomed after the World Wars, and traffic built up on the freeway. By 1965, Caltrans revealed it planned to double the freeway’s width, to eight lanes.

A civic group called Citizens Coordinate passionately opposed the widening and went head-to-head with the Chamber of Commerce and a pro-highway association. Clare Crane describes their strategy in her book, “Citizens Coordinate and The Battle for City Planning in San Diego.”

The group’s members fanned out throughout the park to educate people and ask them to sign a petition against the freeway.

1989 U.S. Navy tussles with the city over expanding the naval hospital in the park; federal government seizes land on Florida Canyon and builds current hospital.

City creates the Balboa Park Master Plan and identifies a penny from hotel-room taxes that should go to help pay for fixes.

From the petition:

Economics as well as an emotional attachment to the Park reinforce our belief that additional highway encroachment, by damaging one of this city’s major assets, would be a disservice to the general well‐being of San Diego. We ask you not to sacrifice any more of the space, the clean air, the greenery of Balboa Park to expediency.

With thousands of signatures on their side, the Citizens Coordinate group caught the ear of the City Council. The state changed its widening proposal from eight lanes to six. By the end of 1968, the state

LATE 1980S

2004

City considers allowing McDonald’s to set up shop in the park to pay for a shuttle.

San Diego Zoo drives a plan to build 4,800 new parking spots and connect Park Blvd with a promenade.

December 2012 VOSD MONTHLY

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HAPPENINGS

In the Park highways chief said the department would abide by any city decision.

The group reminded the council they didn’t want any widening at all, not even the revised plan. And then in 1969, the federal government gave the freeway a commemorative citation for its beauty.

The council turned down any widening and the whole event bolstered the group’s confidence that they could have a voice in planning issues.

SHAPING THE LAND

Kate Sessions Makes a Deal BALBOA PARK could’ve been a square.

But two days before city park leaders wrote the first resolution to set aside land for a public park, Isabella Carruthers bought a chunk of 40 acres for $175 in February 1868. The leaders eventually designated 1,400 acres for the public, with Carruthers’ plot taking a bite out of the side.

And ever since, the park’s faced pressure to be split, carved off, divvied up and worse.

The city set aside the park as natural canyons covered in dirt and native plants like chaparral. The first decades of City Park — what would eventually be called Balboa Park — featured some entertaining uses: a smallpox infirmary, a squatting beekeeper. A cave-dwelling man rumored to be a talented pianist lived in a hole in the hillside.

2010

2012 Balboa Park Conservancy launches to shepherd private donations into the park.

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It wasn’t a given that the park would remain. City residents fought over whether it was too large. “Grumbling and naysaying about the size of City Park began immediately,” said University of San Diego law professor Nancy Carol Carter in a presentation last year.

“This research has been hair-raising because it shows how endangered the park has been since the day the land was set aside,” Carter said.

The people behind the Jacobs plan see their efforts to remove cars and parking from the park’s central plaza as continuing the legacy of the city leaders who preserved this land for people so long ago. But their opponents see a continuation of another legacy — private interests trying to control what happens there.

Keeping the park intact hasn’t been easy throughout time. Park lovers thwarted an attempt to change state law to divvy up and sell off the park.

The city sliced off a parcel for its first high school and allowed buildings for specific populations like indigent women.

But despite the late 1800s’ reputation as a “heyday of shady land deals,” as historian Gregory Montes put it, all this resulted in the park remaining generally preserved.

Even to the woman deemed mother of Balboa Park, the horticulturist Kate Sessions, the park held a chance to profit in those early years. The city wasn’t spending money to improve the park, arguing it had more pressing financial concerns.

Sessions thought the park shouldn’t languish in its natural form and laid

10 VOSD MONTHLY December 2012

out a vision for superlative landscapes.

In 1892, the city agreed to let Sessions lease 32 acres of park land to grow plants for her nursery business. In exchange, she agreed to plant 100 trees per year in the park and donate another 300 trees to the city each year.

Sessions’ arrangement resulted in the planting of cypresses, oaks, eucalyptus groves and jacarandas, many of which can’t now be separated from what one thinks of Balboa Park.

“At that time, it was 1,400 acres of nothing,” historian David Marshall told me. “They said, ‘Hey, we get some free trees. Let’s do this!’”

Sessions’ deal caught others’ attention. More nursery growers asked for the same deal. A tobacco plantation eyed 60 acres. A homebuilder wanted to carve off a few hundred acres but failed to win approval.

The early 1900s brought an idea to the city’s leaders. What if we snagged the world’s attention with an exposition, tied to the opening of the Panama Canal?

But San Francisco, a much larger city, wanted the fair, too.

The city would have to fight for its chance to showcase its giant park.  Note on sourcing: There are many great resources available for digging into Balboa Park history. I’ve used them to cobble together these tales, in addition to interviews I’ve done with people who know lots about the park’s history.

Those sources include Richard Amero’s archive (http://vosd.org/TOFnT0), the Committee of One Hundred (c100.org) and historical architect David Marshall.

2015 City approves a plan to remodel the western entrance and clear the Plaza de Panama of cars.

100-year anniversary of the PanamaCalifornia Exposition.

Historical photos used with permission from The Committee of One Hundred, David Marshall, San Diego Public Library Special Collections, and the City of San Diego Environmental Services Department.

All other photos by Sam Hodgson.

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Much of the iconic architecture that has so captivated ardent supporters of the park was originally intended to have little more durability than a movie set.

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12 VOSD MONTHLY  December 2012

CHANGING LANDSCAPE

When Cabrillo Bridge Was Considered a Monstrosity

COMMITTEE OF ONE HUNDRED

Central pieces of what we now have in Balboa Park weren’t always intended to be permanent, and even the 1915 exposition’s location within the park wasn’t a given.

F

OR AN EPIC, MARQUEE EVENT, San Diego leaders booked the country’s marquee landscape firm. The Olmsted brothers’ dad had, after all, designed Central Park in New York City.

The Olmsteds hoped to put the city’s planned 1915 exposition on the edge of Balboa Park, where the naval hospital is now, leaving much of the interior land wild.

As the expo got closer, the architect on the team, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, began to dream of a different location for the exposition grounds than the place close to downtown. He wanted to send people across a grand cement bridge into the center of the park, over Cabrillo Canyon, from Laurel Street.

But that didn’t sit well with the landscape architects. “Olmsted Brothers replied that their decision was final and that they could not be a party to a deep, massive, permanent encroachment on Balboa Park’s existing and potential natural landscape,” wrote historian Gregory Montes.

They resigned, and the team went with Goodhue’s central location, where the park’s iconic museums and theaters are today.

December 2012 VOSD MONTHLY

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