People in Grape Day Park head toward buildings that are part of the Escondido History Center’s unique Heritage Walk.
Last weekend I enjoyed a fascinating walk around the Escondido History Center!
Several original and reconstructed buildings operated by the Escondido History Center form the Heritage Walk at the north end of Grape Day Park. Anyone who is curious can freely visit the Bandy Blacksmith & Wheelwright Shop, the Penner Barn, the Victorian House, the City’s First Library, and an excellent museum inside Escondido’s old Santa Fe Depot. A very cool Pullman railroad car parked nearby contains a large model train layout!
While I really enjoyed my visit, I still don’t know much about the history of Escondido, so please visit the Escondido History Center’s informative website here.
Come along with me as we head down the Heritage Walk. We’ll make several interesting discoveries!
(Click the photos of signs and they will enlarge for easier reading.)
The functioning Bandy Blacksmith and Wheelwright Shop beckons. (It was closed the day I visited.)The 1947 Bandy Blacksmith Shop was reconstructed in Grape Day Park in 1993. The building is used today for education and blacksmith demonstrations.As we continue down the Heritage Walk, the Penner Barn and nearby windmill come into view.The Penner Barn at Escondido’s Heritage Walk.The 1907 Penner Barn was reconstructed here in 1976 using the original exterior siding and doors. It’s now used by the Escondido History Center for special events.Looking backward through the windmill, we see a vintage Caterpillar tractor parked in front of the Penner Barn.The Victorian House is furnished as it might have been a century ago. It is open to the public for tours. (I didn’t go inside the day I visited.)The Victorian Country House is an 1890 Queen Anne style farmhouse that was moved to this location by the Escondido Historical Society.A small tour group assembles on the front porch of the transplanted farmhouse.This modest building was the very first library in Escondido.Escondido’s First Library opened in 1895. In 1971 the Escondido Historical Society saved it from demolition and moved it to Grape Day Park.Escondido’s original public library is now headquarters for the Escondido History Center.Sign details the mission and work of the Escondido History Center, formerly the Escondido Historical Society, which was founded in 1956.A time capsule buried under the Heritage Walk is to be opened in 2076.The handsome old Santa Fe Depot was moved to Grape Day Park in 1984. It houses the main museum of the Escondido History Center.The platform side of the historic train depot, complete with Western Union sign and vintage baggage cart.Exhibits inside the old train depot concern local history, from the Native American Kumeyaay who lived off the land, through Escondido’s development as a town.A black-and-white photograph on one wall shows Escondido’s Santa Fe Depot.Parked next to the depot’s passenger platform is railroad car number 92, built by the Pullman Company in the 1920s.Inside the railroad car is a huge, detailed model train layout that kids love!Sacks of mail were transported at one end of the railroad car.Visitors inside the old railroad car relax and enjoy another facet of Escondido’s fascinating history!
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An amazing exhibition at the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park just opened!
As I entered the garden’s Exhibit Hall this afternoon, I and other visitors were welcomed by the smile of accomplished Japanese fiber artist Maki Ishiwata. On display in the nearby glass cases were many of her stunning creations!
Take a look at these photos and you can see how exquisite this art is. Maki told me a little about her craft, and showed me briefly how she assembles washi–traditional Japanese handmade paper–into delicate, subtle pieces that resemble natural flowers and plants. I learned that some of the larger creations can take eight hours to complete.
According to the Japanese Friendship Garden’s website: “…like many crafts, washi is facing a decrease and disappearance of its makers. For washi culture to survive, greater appreciation for the durability, purity, beauty, and versatility of this paper is essential. Through Ishiwata’s art work, she hopes to be able to connect traditional washi and Japanese aesthetic sense to global context and provide a unique experience for people to see an amazing transformation of one sheet of paper through one person`s hands.”
In the following photographs you can see some of the materials that are used, and a poster describing the complex process used to make washi. Kozo (Paper Mulberry) is harvested, the bark is scraped, boiled, snow bleached, wind dried, then soaked and softened…
The beautiful calligraphy in one photo was produced by Maki’s grandmother. Another unusual photo includes a reflection from the glass display case of a tree outside the Exhibit Hall.
This fantastic exhibition at the Japanese Friendship Garden will continue through January 26, 2020.
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I was getting ready to board a trolley this evening at America Plaza when activity in a window caught my eye.
A person inside the nearby Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego gallery was working above a small planet amid water-like artwork!
The title of the coming exhibition is Oscar Romo: Recovered Stream. According to the museum website: This fall and winter MCASD will present multiple talks by distinguished scientists who will share their knowledge about climate change in conjunction with the participatory exhibition Oscar Romo: Recovered Stream.
With some searching on the internet, I learned environmentalist Oscar Romo is a professor at UC San Diego. His area of expertise is coastal and marine ecosystem conservation, using a natural systems design perspective. He has a special interest in the San Diego-Tijuana border region.
The upcoming talks should be very interesting!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Stacks of old books contain important records in the cold vault of the San Diego City Clerk’s Archives Center.
Yesterday I stepped into City Hall to enjoy an educational event open to the public during the City Clerk’s 3rd Annual Archives Month. When I entered the Archives Center in the basement of the San Diego City Administration Building, I didn’t really know what I might experience.
I saw and learned more from this behind the scenes tour than I expected!
I and a few others were led into a small lecture room and introduced to City of San Diego Archivist Jerry Handfield. He’s an energetic historian and professional archivist who in the past has served as State Archivist for both Indiana and Washington.
Jerry Handfield presented an overview of his job and explained the critical importance of maintaining genuine, reliable, trustworthy public records.
We learned that good governance depends on maintaining accurate records. Trustworthy public records protect the rights of citizens and promotes public trust in government. A healthy democracy relies on trust in its institutions.
Archives play such an important role that in 1850, when San Diego was a tiny town with very limited resources, the city’s newly created common council directed that a very expensive iron safe be appropriated to the clerk for the safekeeping of city records.
As an archivist, Jerry Handfield provided a list of reasons why records matter: they protect life (medical records), protect the public from disasters (maps and floor plans), protect property rights (deeds), and include all sorts of other critical information. He mentioned insurance and bank records, marriage licenses, work licenses and business records.
We learned that for an archivist preservation is a constant war. It’s a war against time, negligence, disasters like floods and mold, decay caused by acids in paper, and other often unpredictable factors. Some media that store records, such as floppy disks and magnetic tape, degrade over time, become corrupted or technologically obsolete.
Some of the City Archive’s older paper documents are given a special chemical treatment to help preserve them. Many are placed in acid-free sleeves or boxes and placed in a temperature and humidity controlled cold vault.
The City Clerk Archives is continuously working to digitize its many hard copy records–to preserve them for all time and make them readily available to the public via the internet. But there remain thousands upon thousands of documents and photos to be scanned and classified.
After the lecture we stepped into the cold vault and saw shelves stacked high with archival material. Then we stepped into a room where photos and negatives are scanned and digitized.
Ranged all around the main room of the Archives Center are additional interesting displays. I saw many Mayoral Artifacts that were presented as gifts to the city from all over the globe. Among these are an assortment of beautiful decorative plates.
Enough of my inadequate written description. Let’s look at a few photos and you’ll get a better idea of what I experienced!
San Diego City Archivist Jerry Handfield describes the importance of accurately recording and carefully preserving critical information.Stacks of boxes containing official records fill the temperature and humidity controlled cold vault at the City Archives.Archivist Jerry Handfield shows visitors shelves of old canvas and leather-bound books, including many that contain past City Council Resolutions.In one room at the Archives Center, old photographs are scanned and categorized by trained volunteers, in order to be digitized for easy public access.Many cool historical photos of San Diego cover the walls of this room!Man and Children in Halloween costumes, circa 1960.First Official Map of San Diego, June 1867.A treasure trove of San Diego history at one’s fingertips!Mayoral artifacts displayed in the main room of the San Diego City Clerk’s Archives Center include gifts from other cities and people around the world.Armetale plate with Seal of City of San Diego.Paper mache oni mask from Mizusawa, Japan.Filner Mayoral Artifact RF-4. Ballast Point Whaling Station, San Diego, California (1820’s).While walking about the main room of the City Archives I spied this cover of an Official Views San Diego Panama-California Exposition souvenir book.Boxes upon boxes hold tons of paper records in the basement of City Hall!
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You might say this blog is a sort of digital archive. You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
Original concrete figure from San Diego Museum of Art, 1915-1916.
Today I walked to the City Administration Building in downtown San Diego to view a unique historical exhibit. During City Clerk’s Archives Month, from September 30th to October 31st, the public can step inside the lobby of City Hall and discover Hidden Treasures!
The San Diego City Clerk has partnered with the San Diego History Center to display a variety of documents and artifacts from our city’s past. In addition to this exhibit, Archives Month features many free educational events including lectures, movies and workshops.
(I attended one of the lectures today, and took a tour behind the scenes in the City Administration Building’s basement, where the City Archives are safely preserved. I’ll be blogging about that awesome experience shortly!)
Sign shows 2019 Archives Month Lecture and Tour Schedule. (Click photo to enlarge for easy reading.)City Clerk Archives Month in 2019 features an exhibit of Hidden Treasures in the lobby of the City Administration Building.Many historical documents in the exhibit provide fascinating glimpses into San Diego’s past. (I was pleased to see a Dog Tax Receipt featuring San Diego’s famous town dog, Bum.)Documents on display include an announcement for the Presidio Hill Park dedication in 1929. Pictured is the Junípero Serra Museum, original home of the San Diego Historical Society.A collection of old City Clerk seal embossers.Posters describe life in 18th century San Diego. Nearby are Presidio Excavation Artifacts from 1965.These fragments from an olive jar might date as far back as 1769.The exhibit includes fragments of bottles, jars, bowls and plates from early San Diego.Roof tile from the Presidio.Presidio artifacts include cannon and musket balls.Other artifacts on display include the New Town Excavation Collection from the 1980s.New Town artifacts include pistol fragments, 1850-1870.Other artifacts from 19th century New Town include a broken bottle, ceramic wire insulators and a clay effigy.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
One of my favorite attractions in Balboa Park is the absolutely huge, incredible San Diego Model Railroad Museum. And my favorite room in the museum is the fantastic Toy Train Gallery!
Check out these quick photos of the gallery’s super fun toy train layout operated by the San Diego 3-Railers Club!
The colorful layout features O-Scale Lionel-type trains running through a world full of sound and movement. Signs and billboards light up. Cars pull in and out of driveways. People move back and forth. Ghostbusters contend with a rampaging Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
A Choo-Choo Cam lets visitors experience an engineer’s perspective as one model train passes through tunnels, over bridges, and past nostalgic, often humorous scenery. The view is sure to delight children . . . and the child that hopefully remains within each of us!
If you or your family would like to visit the very cool San Diego Model Railroad Museum and their fantastic Toy Train Gallery, you can learn more here.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
An exhibition of truly amazing architectural designs recently opened at the SDSU Downtown Gallery.
Radiant Architecture: The Visionary Work of Eugene Ray showcases the futuristic architectural concepts of an emeritus professor from San Diego State University, who taught Environmental Design from 1969 to 1996.
Those who have driven through La Jolla might have seen the fantastic house and studio he built at 1699 Nautilus Street. It’s commonly referred to as the Silver Ship. It was erected in 1978 with the help of Environmental Design students from SDSU.
It’s no surprise that many of Eugene Ray’s designs appear a bit like spaceships. His inspiration comes not only from simple, efficient, resilient forms found in nature, but from his life-changing sighting of a UFO in 1947 when he was a boy.
According to one sign I read, many of the innovative designs synthesized “Ray’s concepts of the synergy of color, light, and sound to create holistic, healing and energizing environments.” He also sought to create modular structures, which would be affordable and easily assembled.
I was told that his organic, biomorphic designs are so futuristic, unusual and brilliant that world-famous science fiction author Ray Bradbury at one time had plans to make a movie about Eugene Ray’s work.
Here are a few photos of the original drawings, prototypes, renderings and highly creative artwork currently on display. This very cool exhibition at the SDSU Downtown Gallery runs through October 6, 2019.
James A. Perry Residence – New Orleans, Louisiana, 1968.Aerodyne Sports House – 1984.Nautilus Street Residence aka The Silver Ship – La Jolla, California, 1978.Blueprint of The Silver Ship, designed by Eugene Ray, located in La Jolla, California.Pavilion for Holy Cross High School – New Orleans, Louisiana, 1967.Untitled, Eugene Ray, 1969 (restored 2019). Acrylic and aluminum on canvas.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Appearance of rebuilt Notre Dame Cathedral with Radiant Spire, designed by San Diego architect Eugene Ray.
I guess it’s too late now. Last month the French Parliament passed a law that states Notre Dame Cathedral must be restored to its exact condition before the recent, catastrophic fire.
But how might Paris have appeared if Notre Dame were crowned by a glowing spire?
The Radiant Spire is a fantastic concept created by architect Eugene Ray, who from 1969 to 1996 headed the Environmental Design program at San Diego State University. In 2019, with the help of architect Joe Cordelle, he designed a geodesic structure that unites a cone and sphere, and which radiates light.
I saw these images today while visiting the exhibition Radiant Architecture: The Visionary Work of Eugene Ray at the SDSU Downtown Gallery. As a proposal the Radiant Spire is inspiring and very beautiful.
But, alas, it will remain an idea.
Description of Radiant Spire for rebuilt Notre Dame Cathedral. The elegant structure evokes an exuberant spirituality reaching skywards…Elevation view of proposed spire for Notre Dame.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Last Tuesday I headed to Liberty Station to check out a cool exhibition at IDW’s Comic Art Gallery before the start of Comic-Con. I arrived half an hour before the gallery opened, so I moseyed around Liberty Station’s beautiful park-like setting.
I walked by the Visions Art Museum and poked my nose inside.
There I discovered something inspiring! One of the museum’s walls featured a display of small quilts made by third grade students who attend Perkins Elementary School in Barrio Logan. (About a year ago I photographed part of this school’s outdoor mural.)
Their teacher, who was sitting at the Vision Art Museum’s front desk, briefly told me her students, some of whom are homeless, were super excited to create this artwork. They drew the design first, then cut out pieces of colorful fabric, which they assembled into expressive self-portraits!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Charlie Brown welcomes visitors to the Peanuts Pop-Up Shop in San Diego during 2019 Comic-Con, on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Today is the 50th Anniversary of the first human landing on the Moon. Half a century ago, Neil Armstrong, one of three astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission, stepped down onto the lunar surface and proclaimed: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
That first step by a man might not have happened without the help of a beloved cartoon dog.
Visitors to the Peanuts Pop-Up shop in San Diego during 2019 Comic-Con have the opportunity to see fun displays that recall how Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts, one of the world’s most popular comic strips, helped NASA to safely complete their missions to the moon.
This very special Comic-Con exhibition is titled To the Moon: Snoopy Soars with NASA. The exhibit, which includes humorous comic strips, is on loan from the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California.
If a couple of my photos appear unusual, that’s because I converted them into cartoons!
To read the signs, click those photos and they will enlarge.
Astronaut Snoopy graphic on the outside of Bubbles Boutique in the Gaslamp Quarter, where the Peanuts Pop-Up Shop is located during Comic-Con.A look inside the Peanuts Pop-Up Shop at two walls of the exhibit.One of two Peanuts comic strips on display. Snoopy won’t need dinner now that he’s heading to the moon.
Peanuts, NASA, and the 21st Century. NASA and Peanuts Worldwide have partnered to inspire generations of students to learn about space exploration.Snoopy to the Rescue. Snoopy became NASA’s safety mascot after the fire that killed three Apollo 1 astronauts.
50th Anniversary of Apollo 10. The Apollo 10 crew chose the call sign for the lunar module during their mission: Snoopy.
The Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center has the world’s largest collection of original Peanuts comic strips.Charles M. Schulz, 1922-2000. Many of his popular characters were named after art instructors he met.
The second of two Peanuts comic strips on display. Snoopy beat the neighbor’s cat to the moon.Photos from the Apollo missions, and how Snoopy was an important part of that history.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
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