Tag: history

Cool photo memories from March 2019.

What was going on in San Diego five years ago?

Back in 2019, during the month of March, the City of San Diego was just beginning to celebrate its 250th anniversary. Also in March there was the annual San Diego Architectural Foundation Open House event. And there was another fun Seaport Village Busker Fest. And the Comic-Con Museum’s very first exhibition. And another big Mariachi Festival in the South Bay. And Asian culture celebrated at the San Diego Museum of Art. And other exhibitions around town, and cool street art to be found, and, and, and…

I’ve collected 18 links for you to explore. They will take you to blog posts from five years ago this month. You can enjoy hundreds of photographs!

Click the following links for lots of colorful photographs…

Cool photos of San Diego’s 2019 Busker Fest!

Art raises awareness about bird trafficking.

Beaumont’s naval Art of the Sea in San Diego.

See the Comic-Con Museum’s first exhibition!

More cool street art in Normal Heights!

Photos of the colorful 2019 Mariachi Festival!

Fun mosaic sculptures at IB’s Peoples Park!

Asian arts come to life on museum’s front steps!

Banner celebrates San Diego’s 250th Anniversary!

Art exhibition interprets Music in the Key of Blue.

New muralist in San Diego makes her debut!

Murals inspire, motivate students in schools!

Inside the historic Portuguese U.P.S.E.S. Chapel.

A look inside the Portuguese Historical Center.

Baggage, a silvery orb, and contemporary art.

Photos inside the historic Ohr Shalom building.

Quilters look to the stars for inspiration!

Learning one’s letters in Old Town San Diego.

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

Oceanside plaque for transportation visionary.

Byron Nordberg — In recognition of his many contributions to the development of passenger rail in Oceanside, San Diego County, California and the United States.

A plaque honoring Byron Nordberg is embedded in a boulder near the train platforms at the Oceanside Transit Center. It recognizes a visionary mover and shaker, who is largely responsible for the creation of this regional transportation center, where Amtrak, Metrolink, the Coaster, the Sprinter, plus Greyhound buses and several North County Transit District bus routes conveniently come together.

Here’s a great article that concerns the work of Byron Nordberg. And here’s a press release regarding his death in 1997. If you ride the San Diego trolley or the aforementioned trains, you might appreciate his early advocacy of rail in Southern California, as well as innovations that allow passengers to easily board trains without stepping up, safe tunnels and overpasses under and over tracks, and double tracks at stations that prevent unnecessary delays in the system.

From his childhood he was a lover a trains. I am, too. So I thank him.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

Swiss clock tower rises above San Diego!

This might surprise you, but the high clock tower that rises above San Diego’s downtown 12th and Imperial Transit Center came from Switzerland!

A detailed explanation of the 233 feet high tower clock and its history can be found here. This is part of the description:

The Swiss Bank corporation which worked with the County of San Diego and the Metropolitan Transit Development Board, arranged for the donation of the clock from “Ebel Watchmaker Co.” of Switzerland… The tower was built in 1988 and the clock installed later that year. The clock has four dials, with red Roman numerals, a white face and 6-foot long red hands. The mechanism was shipped unassembled to San Diego from Switzerland in a jumbo jet. It took 12 days for Swiss technicians to put the system together…

There’s no elevator in the tower, so assembly of the clock was a difficult task that required manually carrying boxes full of mechanism parts up the equivalent of fifteen stories!

I believe the impressive clock still operates. The clock was installed with electronic speakers for chimes–but I don’t believe I’ve ever heard them.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

Black History Month at San Diego History Center.

Black History Month is being celebrated at the San Diego History Center throughout the month of February. Special displays honor African American artists, families, trailblazers and champions in San Diego. And there are fun educational activities for young people, too!

Did you know that Audrey “Mickey” Patterson-Tyler was the first Black woman to win an Olympic medal? And that she in her later years lived in National City? I didn’t know.

Did you know that quilts played an unexpected role in Black History? Harriet Tubman used quilts to display secret codes along the Underground Railroad, guiding slaves to freedom. Kids exploring the exhibit can color or add stickers to their own special paper Story Quilt.

As I read various signs, I was reminded how the San Diego History Center partnered with the San Diego African American Museum of Fine Arts six years ago, to feature the work of local Black artists. I blogged about that event here.

There’s so much in the exhibition to absorb: historical photographs, biographies, a display about local struggles for civil rights, and a display concerning Martin Luther King Jr. and his visit to San Diego.

Want to check it out? The San Diego History Center is located in the heart of Balboa Park, Admission is free!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

Anti Slavery Quilt of the Women’s Museum.

This beautiful Anti Slavery Quilt is in the collection of the Women’s Museum of California. The quilt is now on display at the San Diego History Center, in celebration of Black History Month.

I was surprised to learn yesterday that the Women’s Museum, located for many years at Liberty Station, moved. It now makes the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park its home!

The quilt is by D’Andrea Davis Mitchell. A nearby sign explains how in the 1970s quilting experienced a revival and became considered work of both craft and art. Inspired artists have used quilting to challenge perceptions of gender roles and the African-American experience in US history.

The Anti Slavery Quilt is part of a larger exhibition inside the San Diego History Center that can be viewed all this month.

My next blog post will show a bit more of what you’ll experience should you walk through the History Center’s door in February!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

A visit to the Oceanside Historical Society.

Walk along the north side of the Oceanside Civic Center and you might spy the door of the Oceanside Historical Society. The unobtrusive glass door is a portal to Oceanside’s past!

Inside Oceanside’s small history center you’ll find dozens of old photographs on several walls. A glass display case contains historical artifacts. One corner of the room is occupied by a model of Oceanside’s famous Top Gun House. Just inside the front door, stairs wind upward and end mysteriously at a wall.

The space occupied by the history center was originally the home of Oceanside’s police department. Those stairs that end in a wall once climbed to a jail on the second floor. Where the jail was located is now part of Fire Station 1, which occupies the same building. The building was designed by famed architect Irving Gill, who apparently didn’t take into account that drunks and belligerents headed for jail would be ascending those steep, winding stairs! And there was a skylight in the jail, too, very convenient for escape!

During my visit earlier this week, I learned the nearby Oceanside Museum of Art will be expanding into both the fire station and history center, and the latter two will be relocated to Civic Center Drive.

Kristi Hawthorne, Director of the Oceanside Historical Society, also told me a little about the police and firefighter artifacts in the display case, including material confiscated from bootleggers during Prohibition. She maintains a great blog called Histories and Mysteries, where you’ll discover all sort of fascinating photos and little known stories from Oceanside’s history.

She explained that the society maintains a huge archive of historical photographs, and is presently digitizing tens of thousands of documents.

I also learned the Oceanside Historical Society leads downtown history walks!

The free walks are held the second Saturday of each month, April through September. If you’d like to participate, check out this web page. (You can also download a guide for a self-guided tour.)

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

The forgotten Seiko clock in San Diego.

There’s a street clock in downtown San Diego that few seem to know about. It rises at the southwest corner of 7th Avenue and B Street. Perhaps you’ve seen it. Many of the people I’ve questioned over the years haven’t.

The clock is slender and about 20 feet tall, and appears a bit like a sleek, elevated wristwatch–indeed, the word SEIKO appears on the clock’s face.

I did a little research and discovered this “Solar Post Clock” was a gift in 1983 from Seiko to Jacobs & Sons Jewelers, a family business that used to be located on this city corner.

According to an interesting National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors web page, this Seiko street clock is an unusual and novel device that was supposedly the first solar powered clock to be installed in San Diego…. It has a very accurate time only quartz movement and runs on a solar powered battery system that theoretically can run for 90 days without sunshine.

The clock’s hands no longer move. While our San Diego sunshine continues, it seems time eventually ran out for this unique street clock.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

Girl Scout brings fun to History Center!

Kids can have a ton more fun at the San Diego History Center, thanks to Girl Scout Audrey Weishaar!

For the past couple weekends, tables full of activities have greeted visitors to the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park. It’s Audrey’s Gold Award project, which is titled History: Where We Come From & How We Got Here. As a sign explains, the Gold Award is the highest award one can earn in Girl Scouts, and the main point of it is to benefit your community.

I saw a bunch of kids running about the museum, no doubt drawn by this awesome project. At the tables they can talk to Audrey, collect stickers, get a booklet about San Diego and California History (with connect-the-dot and coloring pages!), and use clues to solve a mystery. There are even several fun tongue twisters to try!

Want to have a fun, educational experience with the kids? Audrey will be smiling at her table inside the San Diego History Center for one more weekend: January 20 and 21, 11 am – 3 pm.

It’s free!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

Lemon Grove Women’s Club history remembered.

An inspiring exhibit at the Lemon Grove Parsonage Museum celebrates friendship and community service. It’s titled Marching Forward.

The history of the Forward Club of Lemon Grove (later known as the Lemon Grove Women’s Club) is detailed with photographs, newspaper clippings and assorted documents. Visitors to the museum can learn about the club’s beginning in early 1913 (when Lemon Grove was a small ranch community) to its “last meeting” in 1998 to its very recent rebirth.

The exhibit describes: The club began, like many of its time, as a place for women to study literature and discuss current events. They didn’t stay inside studying for long; they were soon outside planting trees. In 1922, when the club was just nine years old, they built their own clubhouse… By the 1950s, a time when Lemon Grove was one of the fastest growing communities in the state, the club had 150 members… In 2022 the clubhouse 100th anniversary celebration inspired a group of Lemon Grove women to resurrect the club. They voted to use the historic name, so once again the Forward Club is going about doing good.

Community service that club members have performed over the years include helping the needy, the encouragement of youth, and neighborhood beautification. In addition, cultural events in their old clubhouse brought joy to many.

If you’d like to enjoy a glimpse of Lemon Grove history, and see how a group of pioneering women made (and continue to make) their community a much better place, plan a fun visit to the Parsonage Museum in beautiful Treganza Heritage Park!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

Mysterious public art in Lemon Grove!

Take a look at this mysterious public art. You can find it by wandering around Treganza Heritage Park in Lemon Grove.

Three simple structures (that I found) seem to have been constructed for seating. Each resembles a fruit packing crate made of marble, and each features a unique lemon growers brand label. Two brands that are recognizable are On Honor Brand and Temptation Brand.

I asked a docent at the nearby Lemon Grove Historical Society & Parsonage Museum about these “marble crates” but he didn’t know they existed. I can find nothing on the internet about them.

Somebody out there must know the history of these very unique seats! If you do, please leave a comment.

The three different label images are faded, and, as you can see, one is now unreadable. I’ve added a lot of contrast to my photographs to bring out as much detail as possible.

This beautiful park was established in 2003 as Civic Center Park. It was renamed Treganza Heritage Park in 2020.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!