GUEST BLOG / By Save Our Heritage Organisation--Ready for an easy, enjoyable walk just north of Balboa Park? Take San Diego-based Save Our Heritage Organisation’s newest self-guided architecture tour: “1920s Park Boulevard: A Decade of Elegant Apartment Buildings.”
It’s free to read or download at SOHOsandiego.org/tours/indextours.htm, and is rich in history and vintage and contemporary photography.
“1920s Park Boulevard” invites you to walk along three handsome blocks to rediscover in detail one of San Diego’s most attractive and popular places to live. Go at your own pace on this flat, easy walk past 21 architecturally significant apartment buildings that residents still love and call home 100 years after their construction.
On the “1920s Park Boulevard” tour, you’ll see a harmonious collection of buildings in architectural styles made popular by the 1915-16 Panama-California Exposition. The styles include Spanish Colonial Revival, Spanish Eclectic, Italian Renaissance Revival, and Prairie apartment houses with open space around them.
These apartment houses by Master Builder Edward F. Bryans and others form a lovely linear neighborhood that was instantly accepted and appreciated. This Park Boulevard cluster sprouted during a housing crunch similar to that of today. Many of the building’s design elements, such as plentiful windows in various sizes and shapes, balconies, wrought-iron lamps and flourishes, mature landscaping, and shared open space, remain desirable to renters.
And the fact that these apartments are still occupied attests to the value and wisdom of preserving old buildings. The City of San Diego envisions these 21 apartment building as the heart of the proposed Park Boulevard Residential Historic District.
SOHO’s tour is inspired by the City’s research and preservation efforts along with our own investigation and photography of these distinguished two- and four-story properties. We strongly support the historic district nomination, and this free tour demonstrates its cultural and architectural significance.
SOHO's digital initiative programs deliver architecture tours and online exhibits to residents, students, and visitors with just a few strokes of a keyboard. As emphasis increases on the digital world, SOHO offers universal access to information and historic images to everyone, including those without the resources or time to travel or to visit historic places. SOHO provides a trusted resource for lovers and supporters of San Diego's historic preservation and history.
SOHO, San Diego County’s largest and most effective historic preservation group, offers a growing catalog of free self-guided architecture tours in addition to Park Boulevard. Choose from "Old Town San Diego," “San Diego’s Mid-Century Modern Marvels,” Egyptian Revival Architecture, and “Architecture and Art: The WPA in San Diego,” and more. They’re free to read or download and print at SOHOsandiego.org/tours/indextours.htm.
For more information, visit SOHOsandiego.org. or call (619) 297-9327.
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