FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Alana Coons
Save Our Heritage Organisation
(619) 297-9327 · (619) 291-3576 fax
sohosandiego@aol.com
View PHOTO GALLERY at http://sandelollis.com/soho/hometour2010/4housesB.htm
SOHO's 2010 Historic Home Tour reveals the work of four of San Diego's most acclaimed
architects.
SAN DIEGO, CA – One of Southern California’s finest enclaves of historic Arts & Crafts homes,
designed by Irving J. Gill and three other master architects, will be open for a rare public tour on
March 21 from 10 am to 4 pm, Save Our Heritage Organisation has announced. Headquarters for
the event will be the Marston House Museum & Gardens, 3525 Seventh Ave, a National Historic
Landmark that SOHO manages for the city of San Diego.
Six of the stately residences that line a secluded block of Seventh Avenue next to Balboa Park were
designed by Gill, William S. Hebbard, Frank Mead and Richard Requa for prominent citizens
between 1904 and 1913. These large homes represent an English-influenced, transitional Arts &
Crafts style in brick, Prairie style, Pueblo style and early Modernism.
“This tour includes some of the best preserved examples of these architects’ interior and exterior
architecture anywhere, and reflects San Diego’s social history. Some landscape designs remain by
Samuel Parsons, Jr. and John Nolen and we can see the influence of horticulturist Kate Sessions,
‘the mother of Balboa Park,’” said Alana Coons, SOHO’s director of events and education. “This is
a very rare opportunity to view these special and important homes.”
The interior décor of the residences ranges from Arts & Crafts period furnishings and paintings to
contemporary furniture and art. One house is undergoing a thorough restoration Inside and out.
SOHO will also host a silent auction of art, architectural salvage, ephemera and more from 10 am to
3 pm on the grounds of the Marston House. Food service will be available in the formal gardens
from 10 am to 4 pm. In addition, the Museum Shop in the property’s charming Carriage House will
hold a special sale on home furnishings, period décor, and architecture and do-it-yourself books
from 10am to 5pm.
The homes on this year’s popular annual SOHO tour reveal Gill’s experimental early Modernism
and Mead’s fascination with the indigenous architecture of the American Southwest and North
Africa. The privacy, architectural integrity and tree-shaded landscaping of this lovely cul-de-sac led
some families to build more than one house on the street and, in several cases, to live there for
generations.
Hebbard & Gill, San Diego’s most prestigious architecture firm in the early 20th century, designed
most of the residences open to tour goers, beginning with the Arts & Crafts-style mansion for
George White Marston, a visionary civic leader, philanthropist and department store owner. He
moved his family into the three-story, red brick and stucco home in 1905, when the street was still
unpaved.
Also in 1905, Alice Lee, a socially prominent developer, hired Hebbard & Gill to design three homes
arranged around a common central garden. She and her companion, Katherine Teats, shared one of
the houses - which will be open during the tour - where they entertained President and Mrs. Teddy
Roosevelt and Mrs. Grover Cleveland.
“The Alice Lee House has been in the same family for at least two generations and is in the early
stages of forensic work and restoration, so tour goers get to see a work in progress and ask
questions,” said Coons. “This in-progress feature is something we try to offer every year that is
unique to the SOHO Home Tour.”
Lee rented out the side cottages, which were joined to the main house by a U-shaped pergola.
Architectural historian Thomas S. Hines has written that these horizontal, hip-roofed structures
represent “the best of Gill’s California improvisations on [Frank Lloyd] Wright’s Prairie themes.”
Marston sold land directly north of the Marston House to his sister and brother-in-law, Lilla and
Frederick Burnham, another civic leader who was a harbor commissioner, in 1906. They also hired
Hebbard & Gill, with Gill as the lead designer, to design a large red brick house that broke with the
English Arts & Crafts cottage style in favor of the Prairie Style. This home has been converted to
offices, but still showcases original features such as the main staircase and windows that carefully
frame views of nature.
Mead and Requa designed a stripped-down, geometric home inspired by pueblo architecture for
Lorenze and Miriam Barney in 1913. Generous windows and French doors illuminate the richness
of contrasting interior materials: redwood paneling, beech floors and a brick fireplace. It stands next
to the house Lorenze’s parents had commissioned two years earlier from Pacific Building Company,
a San Diego design and construction firm staffed by some of Gill’s former draftsmen.
The Home Tour begins at the Marston House Museum Shop which is housed in the original
Carriage House, 3525 Seventh Avenue. Tickets are $30 in advance, $25 for SOHO members, and
$35 the day of the tour. Contact SOHO at (619) 297-9327 or (619) 297-7511 or log onto
www.sohosandiego.org for more information and to purchase tickets.
Proceeds from the tour and auction will benefit SOHO’s advocacy and preservation work.
TICKETS (Advance purchase)
$25 SOHO members
$30 non-members
$35 Day of the tour
PURCHASE TICKETS
Online http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/84809
Call (619) 297-9327
In person Whaley House Museum Shop - 2476 San Diego Avenue in historic Old Town San
Diego
NOTE: Digital photos available at http://sandelollis.com/soho/hometour2010/4housesB.htm
Please contact Sandé Lollis at Sande@SandeLollis.com
####
SOHO, San Diego county's largest preservation organization, protects historic architectural,
cultural and environmental resources and landscapes. It operates three historic sites: the Whaley
House Museum and Gardens and Adobe Chapel, both in Old Town San Diego; and the Marston
House Museum & Gardens. Founded in 1969, SOHO is California's oldest continuously
operating group of its kind.