Tag: travel

Celebrities, ghosts and history in Bankers Hill!

The Hawthorne Historic Inn in Bankers Hill is a picturesque old Victorian. Built circa 1900 in the Dutch Colonial style, the building attracts the eyes of those passing down 1st Avenue.

A public tour of the Hawthorne Historic Inn was offered last weekend, as part of the San Diego Architectural Foundation Open House event, and I took full advantage of the opportunity!

Not only could visitors explore the interior, with its long, bright skylight and beautifully furnished rooms for rent, but we learned that the building has a very rich and surprising history!

A handout provided by the property owner explained how Mr. Jones, a movie starring Richard Gere, was filmed here in 1993. You might recall scenes of Richard Gere’s troubled character on the rooftop.

It also recounted how Mohammed Ali and Sammy Davis, Jr. stayed at the inn in the 1960s and 70s. Back then, unfortunately, African Americans had difficulty obtaining rooms in other establishments.

Another tidbit that interested me is that in the 1980s, the Hawthorne Inn was one of three officially haunted places in San Diego! (I saw no ghosts during my tour.)

The inn was originally called “The Plainsman” in an old classified ad. It was a boarding house. It is one of the few Working Man’s hotels remaining from the turn of the 19th century.

The second owner, last name Warren, was a women who was a Theosophist. She was likely involved in the founding of Lomaland, the Theosophical community located in Point Loma.

I learned the property has had its ups and downs, but is currently on the upswing. Today it’s a fine apartment building with great views of downtown and San Diego Bay from its upper floor and an outside balcony.

The Hawthorne Historic Inn is on the National Register of Historic Places. It is also a California State Historic Landmark.

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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 look inside San Diego’s Brain Observatory!

Refrigerator at the Brain Observatory holds brains preserved in formaldehyde.

About a year ago the Brain Observatory moved into downtown San Diego.

What, exactly, is the Brain Observatory?

It’s a museum-like place that the public can tour, whose mission is: Advancing knowledge of the brain and mental health through research, education, and the arts.

I enjoyed a look inside the Brain Observatory recently and much of what I saw was astounding. I was shown about briefly and learned about the unique facility’s history and mission.

The Brain Observatory houses a fully-functional research laboratory. Students and visitors can learn about the brain by utilizing authentic, state-of-the-art scientific equipment and by exploring real data, including samples from a large collection of donated human brains.

Founded in 2005 by Dr. Jacopo Annese, the Brain Observatory began as a brain research lab at UC San Diego. Ph.D. scientists from around the world, including a Nobel Prize winner from the Salk Institute, are on the Advisory Board.

The Brain Observatory uses MRI and microscopy to understand the biological basis of normal brain function and neurological disease. Advanced scientific equipment is also used to educate youth who take part in school programs.

Curious? The public can tour the Brain Observatory by reservation. In addition there are lunchtime lectures. Learn about these great opportunities by clicking here.

Dr. Jacopo Annese enthusiastically talked about his endeavors during my short visit. He has big plans. My own brain tried to assimilate so much information.

Brain Observatory tours and lectures, and the programs for students, are certain to be very stimulating!

A look inside the Brain Observatory in downtown San Diego. This space was last occupied by the SDSU Downtown Gallery.

The fascinating Brain Observatory uses scientific equipment to slice brains and conduct microscopic investigation.

Education is a focus of the Brain Observatory. Student artwork hangs on one wall.

Photos of people who donated their brains to science.

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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)!

Elegant beauty returns as Botanical Building rebuilt!

The shapely, elegant beauty of Balboa Park’s Botanical Building is returning!

San Diego’s iconic wood and steel structure, which was badly in need of repair, is in the process of being rebuilt.

I took these photographs today. Compare them to photos I took months ago. You can view those here.

New wood lath now forms the airy roof of one wing. When it was built for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, Balboa Park’s amazing Botanical Building was one of the largest lath structures in the world!

I can’t wait to see it finished!

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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)!

Two big March events coming to Balboa Park!

Two huge events are coming to Balboa Park in March. The amazing Cherry Blossom Festival and the epic Thursday Club Rummage Sale are just days away!

Pink cherry blossoms have begun to appear in the Lower Garden of the Japanese Friendship Garden. When the Cherry Blossom Festival opens later this week, walking through the cherry trees will be like walking through a dream. The event always attracts a large crowd. There’s Japanese food and entertainment, too! It’s a good idea to arrive early.

The 2024 Cherry Blossom Festival runs from March 7 – 10. Learn all about it at the JFG website by clicking here.

The second big event is the Annual Rummage Sale of the Thursday Club. For 2024, the rummage sale will be held in the Municipal Gymnasium, which is located between the Comic-Con Museum and the San Diego Air and Space Museum.

Arrive early for this one, too! The massive event, billed as San Diego’s Largest Rummage Sale Since 1927, attracts thousands of bargain-seekers. You’ll find gently used furniture, decor, clothing, electronics, collectibles, art, books, music, you name it!

Doors will be open Saturday, March 9, from 9 am to 4 pm. On Sunday, March 10, you can swing by from 10 am to 2 pm. Click the Thursday Club website here to learn more.

Proceeds from the rummage sale go to very good causes:

The Thursday Club, a group of volunteers dedicated to educational, cultural and civic community involvement and leadership for over 100 years in San Diego, has returned almost $2 million to Balboa Park and the community through club activities… Each year, half of the proceeds of the sale go to benefit a variety of programs and projects within Balboa Park, and half goes to support non-profit organizations in the San Diego community.

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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)!

Watch art conservators work at the Timken!

Visitors to the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego have the rare opportunity to observe conservators working to restore and preserve a fine art masterpiece!

Two expert conservators have been working on François Boucher’s gorgeous Lovers in a Park (1758) in one of the museum galleries, and the public is invited to watch and ask questions on Fridays from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm.

When I swung by the Timken during my Balboa Park walk last weekend, I noted the conservation effort was in Week 18–nearing its end. So you might want to drop by very soon.

Visitors stand at a safe distance from the nearly 8 foot tall French Rococo painting. For almost seven decades Lovers in a Park has been displayed, and with time it has become somewhat discolored.

A sign explains how surface grime has been removed, old varnish has been removed, and there has been a deep grime removal. All the old overpaint has been removed, and a synthetic resin protective varnish has been applied. The current phase of work is inpainting–where colors are matched and areas of paint loss are filled with conservation pigments.

Read more about the Timken Museum of Art’s conservation program here.

On the opposite wall, a large graphic divides the painting into quarters, demonstrating how the canvas was carefully examined before conservation efforts using visible light, ultraviolet light, infrared reflectography, and X-radiography.

Anyone interested in art really should check out this special “interactive” exhibition. You’ll probably learn a lot!

You can read about the Timken’s current exhibitions by clicking here.

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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)!

Downloadable maps of Balboa Park’s Australian Garden.

Three years ago I posted a blog titled Balboa Park’s hidden Australian Garden. You can read it here.

I’ve learned the San Diego Floral Association has downloadable maps of this large, little-known garden. The two maps show where different species of plants and trees (that were donated by the government of Australia for the United States Bicentennial) are planted.

Click here for a .pdf map of the Australian Garden’s lower area, which stretches along Paseo del Oro in Gold Gulch. There are different species of Acacia, Brachychiton, Eucalyptus, Grevillea, Melaleuca, and many others.

For a map of the upper area, where you can observe more beautiful plants below Presidents Way, click here.

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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)!

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)!

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)!