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| Spreckels Organ Pavillion, opening day, 1915, Balboa Park, San Diego, California |
"A NOTEWORTHY CONTRIBUTION"--By Thomas Shess--By 1910, John
Dietrich Spreckels, (the eldest son of sugar company magnate Claus Spreckels)
was fully immersed in San Diego’s enthusiasm for the Panama- California
Exposition set to open in 1915.
......................
Editor’s note: “A Noteworthy
Contribution,” was part of 18-month series published in San Diego Home/Garden Lifestyles magazine that led up to San
Diego’s Balboa Park’s Panama-California Expo centennial in 2015. This segment, published in the December 2013
edition, received a First Place Award for Outstanding Journalism by the San
Diego Press Club. It is the second year
in a row the top award was presented to series author Tom Shess.
......................
He
wanted the city to be shown in its best light and recognized that the expo
would be good for business. Among his
holdings were the San Diego Union
newspaper, Hotel del Coronado
and San Diego Electric Railway. John reportedly offered to fund an organ
pavilion and underwrite exposition costs should the venture fall on its face in
exchange for the city’s park commission locating the expo at what is now Balboa
Park and allowing his railroad to lay tracks through the center of the park
from downtown to Hillcrest and North Park.
After
the commission approved the deal in October 1913, John commissioned Harrison
Albright to design the pavilion for $66,500 and Austin Organ Co. of Hartford,
Conn., to build the organ, named Opus 453, for $33,500. He also paid the pavilion’s
first organist, Humphrey Stewart, through 1917.
Dedicated
on Dec. 31, 1914, the organ had 3,400 pipes, ranging from the size of a pencil
to 32 feet long. In 2002, the organ was expanded to 4,530 pipes.
Many
expo architects railed at Albright’s ornate Italian Renaissance design instead
of the more daring Spanish Colonial
Revival designs of the expo’s lead architect, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue.
Now,
almost 100 years later, the organ and its pavilion remain
one of the icons of the San Diego social and cultural fabric. There have been
six civic organists. The current holder of that position, Carol Williams, is
the only woman civic organist in the country. She continues the tradition of
free weekly concerts on Sunday afternoons at 2 p.m.
In
August 2013, the Organ Pavilion received its latest update: the addition of
Wi-Fi. ❖
Credit:
Image courtesy of the San Diego History Center via San Diego Home/Gardens Lifestyles Magazine.
Additional
research for this article was provided by San Diego Home/Garden Lifestyles
intern Jinell VanCorbach while she was a journalism student at Pt. Loma Nazarene University in San Diego.
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