On Foot in San Diego: Sherman Heights, the Charleston of San Diego

Soon after I moved to Del Mar, a seaside town twenty miles north of downtown San Diego, my furnace needed to be replaced. They call it a furnace out here, but it's not more than a glorified heater. I complained to the furnace guy about needing a new furnace. His response, "well, lady, it is an old house". Where I came from a 1973 house was not an old house, but this formed my notion that San Diego was a city of fairly new houses without the history we had back East.

I still had that impression when I first saw the 1867 Villa Montezuma on one of my history outings a couple weeks ago. OK, I conceded there was an old house out here, but it was rare enough to be a museum piece.

That notion was dispelled last weekend when I took a walking tour of Sherman Heights led by Louise Torio who lives in a restored Victorian home down the street from the Villa Montezuma. Louise is a trove of information about the architecture and history of Sherman Heights. She pulls along a little suitcase of old pictures showing what this part of San Diego looked like more than a hundred years ago. I was fascinated walking in this place of history.

By the end of the tour, my head was spinning with Victorian, Queen Anne, Greek revival, mission revival, Craftsman, Spanish colonial revival...all this and more in these few city blocks.

By way of a little history, Sherman Heights was San Diego's first residential subdivision built on land bought by Captain Matthew Sherman, here fresh from the Civil War. While Alonzo Horton was buying the land for the now downtown San Diego, Sherman bought 160 acres just east with a great view of the bay. I figured he bought the whole lot for $800. He built his family a little farmhouse on the land in 1868 and the structure is still not only still there, but nicely restored.


Set a little uphill from Horton's New Town San Diego, Sherman Heights soon became the place to live - location, location, location - for all those doctors, lawyers, government workers, and other builders of the city. The county assessor built a home across from Louise's house.

This, by the way, is Louise's house and the cottage next door she and her husband have restored. I asked about the colors and, indeed, these are authentic Victorian house colors.


According to Louise, the area has about 400 historic places, some still unrestored but many are like this handsome home.


They were really into balconies and porches. I could just imagine the view looking east toward the mountains at sunrise or west over the growing San Diego town toward the bay at sunset.


The architectural detail in restoring the homes is amazing...


Even Jack in the Box has caught the revitalization fever with its Craftsman bungalow.


Many more historic homes are waiting to be restored in Sherman Heights. This little Queen Anne house still needing a redo caught my eye. Hm-m-m, with a little time and money...


Along the way, we came across a mural designed by muralist Mario Torero, reflecting the multi-ethnicity of Sherman Heights painted in 1980 on the side of a food market.


Louise introduced a woman in our group, Liliana Garcia-Rivera, who had actually been one of the young people who painted the mural, the girl in the yellow sweater.


Liliana's family lived in the home across the street from the mural and she is working on restoring this beautiful home. Like many of the homes in the area, the restoration will involve removing the stucco placed over the original wood siding of the house.


The view of the bay is gone, replaced by San Diego's building skyline. The beauty of it is still with us, thanks to Lousie Toro and those who are restoring and revitalizing historic Sherman Heights.



Louise leads tours of Sherman Heights every first and third Sundays of the month.

For more pictures of Sherman Heights and Villa Montezuma, go to http://www.withashield.smugmug.com/.

On Foot in San Diego: Villa Montezuma

After leaving the Marston house, I headed down to Sherman Heights to find Villa Montezuma, another historic place the San Diego Historical Society had to close in 2006 due to lack of funds. I wanted at least to check out the outside-- and what an outside!

I hadn't looked up much of the history ahead of time, so all I knew was the house was built in 1887 some distance from the booming "new town" of San Diego and that it was an ornate Victorian House.

Every window was a piece of art.


Beautiful patterns...


Spires and quirky things on the roof.


Even for Victorian, this house was a little over the top. Not only that, there was a strangely Russian flavor.

Check out this Russian church...


and our San Diego house.


Stepping over the "No Trepassing" sign I looked in through the window. Wow, an ornate wooden stair case. I was cursing various things, like the money spent on the Iraq conflict and Sarah Palin’s wardrobe instead of on our amazing Villa Montezuma, and wishing I could go inside.

I settled for coming home to read about the house and its flamboyant original owner, Jesse Shephard. His story is as complicated as the house, but in short he was a pianist, operatic singer and writer who spent his early years entertaining in salons in Europe and, guess what, Russia. When he passed into San Diego to play in some missions, two rich San Diego brothers built this house for Jesse and his "companion/secretary" of forty years, Lawrence Tonner. The dusty, frontier atmosphere of San Diego didn't come up to the level of European and Russian salons and royalty. Jesse and Lawrence left after two years, about the time the real estate market was declining. Declining real estate is something we can all relate to out here now. Well, it's happened before, dramatically so in the late 1880's.

San Diego population in 1880 was 2,600, in 1885 about 5,000 and by 1887 an amazing explosion of 40,000. Wonder why? Well, it seems the the Santa Fe Transcontinental Railroad was finished in 1887, ending in San Diego. Travel from east to west coast was now about a week. There was a land rush to San Diego with property sometimes turning over two to three times in a day. Our guy, Marston, made some good money in real estate and Wyatt Earp -- in his mid-thirties and always the gambler -- came out in 1886, likely part of the land fever. He was here for four years, speculated in real estate, opened a saloon and was sheriff for a while.

Unfortunately, in a short time, the Santa Fe railroad decided to reroute the railroad to Los Angeles and San Diego became just a spur line. By 1890 the population had dropped to 16,159. Earp was one of the defectors in 1890, moving on to San Francisco.

George, we're glad you stayed.

This weekend I'm going to check out the Old Police Headquarters. Seems like they're having a liquidation sale of cell doors, sinks and toilets. I'll be looking for the Spanish Colonial architecture before the Headquarters are razed for a shopping center. Can you believe it?

P.S. We're appending this comment to the body of the post so you're sure to see that Zorro (FOVM) is on the way and deserves our support! "Pat and Kathie, I enjoy your blog! Did you know that the Friends of the Villa Montezuma, Inc., have been around since 1974 and incorporated in 2006 to better help the Villa? We've done amazing things the past three years, and we hope to have all the funds needed to fix the Villa foundation and chimneys this year in order for us to reopen and hopefully operate the museum. See www.VillaMontezuma.org for more info. We do walking tours of the Sherman Heights Historic District. We'd love for you to be our guest to learn more about Jesse's neighborhood of downtown San Diego. If you're interested, send us an e-mail at Friends@VillaMontezuma.org. Louise Torio, Chair, FOVM"