Foreign Beauty
San Diego's unique combination of architectural styles
By Frida Hernandez
By Frida Hernandez
For over 10,000 years, the land that we now call San Diego was inhabited by people of rich customs, culture, and beliefs who also had a heavy sense of community and unique sets of skills. Over time, their agricultural skills helped the land around them blossom into beautiful fields of grain, tall, fruit-bearing trees and practical plants used for medicinal purposes. Their hand-woven baskets and beautifully crafted pottery pieces, which were constructed from common supplies from the land, became their signature works of art. In later years, they would take it upon themselves to be environmentally conscious by maintaining wild animal stocks and building dams and watersheds in order to preserve their surrounding environment. These people were native to this land way before it was declared Spanish territory. This community was the Kumeyaay tribe.
When Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo arrived in San Diego in 1542, the Kumeyaay already had their own style of architecture. The Kumeyaay used materials that they could easily find around the land such as different grasses or reeds. This type of home was called an ewaa. It was a hut-like structure that wasn’t very long-lasting, but was practical. In fact, when these homes got dirty or when the Kumeyaay (being semi-nomadic) needed to move to another location for easier access to food, they burned down their houses and simply built more homes as needed in their new location. The Spanish on the other hand, had a different technique for building structures. They would make bricks out of mud, grasses, and water. These types of bricks were called adobe. The Spanish grew accustomed to liking adobe because it was the closest version of what their homes looked like in their homeland.
The change in cultures started to become apparent when the Spanish began their first project, which was to build Missions all across California. The missions served many purposes, but one of their main purposes was to convert the natives into their religion, which was Catholic Christianity. The Spanish wanted to do this so they could have more “civilized”, working citizens in their Spanish Empire. This lead the Kumeyaay people to be forced into a strange culture that they had never intended to be a part of and leave their own behind. If they did so, they would get benefits from the Spanish, such as land. Although that might seem like a pretty good reason, it wasn’t an easy time for the Kumeyaay tribe. Architecturally speaking, these two cultures had very distinct features. The missions, which started out as being built with adobe and had dirt floors and red roofs, eventually evolved into adobe structures with clay, tile, wood or stone floors and a practical tile roof to help protect the building from fires and other possible natural disasters. That change in aesthetic style was made possible by the fact that the natives were put to work. The more natives the Spanish converted, the more people they had to teach them the ways of the working field. Some of the most common jobs for the Kumeyaay were making adobe bricks and helping with construction. The Spanish structures were more long lasting than those of the Kumeyaay because they were primarily constructed of durable adobe and tile, and because they were maintained for religious and cultural reasons. As San Diego grew, many Spanish structures have been restored and are still standing today while the Kumeyaay structures have been preserved mainly in museums, but are mostly just remains and replicas. These reasons have caused many of San Diego’s newer buildings to look like the missions which were the city’s first establishments. If you were to take a walk down a neighborhood in San Diego, you would be sure to find a Spanish-style home. The Spanish-style home usually has a very distinct style which was inspired by the first California missions. These homes usually have a clean, stucco wall finish, terracotta roofs and clay tile. Mission-style homes often add related architectural elements such as a courtyard or patio, a detailed chimney or a balcony. These features are what accentuate the Spanish style in a home. La Casa de Estudillo in Old town, San Diego, was mainly a home from 1827 to 1880, and now stands as a museum that exhibits the Spanish colonial style. It was originally made of adobe and after being abandoned for a few years it was restored and served for other purposes such as a marriage place called “Ramona’s Marriage Place”. The home is a U-shaped structure and has its most striking features towards the inside of the U-shape. It is 113 feet on the front side and each of the wings is 98 feet. The building includes 13 rooms which are all connected only by an outdoor corridor. This style of building is sometimes also called a ranch style home. The use of adobe is what made this building unique because at the time there weren’t many trees in San Diego at all. No homes in San Diego were entirely built of wood until the United States began to take control of California from Spain. In fact, settlers who lived in that era and wanted to build a home out of wood, would have to build something called a prefabricated home. Prefab homes were built on the east coast and shipped to California mainly during the gold rush era and civil war period because there were few trees in San Diego due to the desert-like area. These prefab homes came in packages with wood that settlers could use to easily assemble their "perfect” wooden home. The San Diego Union building, located in Old Town, is an example of what used to be a prefab home in early San Diego. The Cosmopolitan Hotel, also in Old Town, is a very interesting example of the shift in architectural style from adobe buildings to wooden buildings. This building was a home owned by the Bandini family and was built around 1829. It was originally a one-story adobe home, but was later fixed up by Albert Seeley and turned into a hotel with an added second story which was made out of wood. The hotel still stands today and is still a full-functioning 10 room hotel and restaurant, but has undergone multiple restoration processes along the way. Ellen Green, a Park Aid in Old Town, told me that during the recent restoration process they discovered that the second wooden-story of the Cosmopolitan Hotel was never actually bolted on correctly onto the adobe, it was only supported by the columns. After the restoration, it was fixed and is now a lot safer. “It’s amazing that given the little earthquakes and stuff it still managed to stand,” exclaimed Ellen from Park Aid. I also asked her what modern buildings, in her opinion, were modeled after buildings that started in Old Town and she made a very interesting comparison. She mentioned that she thought of the new Central Library in Downtown as a modern representation of the old Spanish churches because of their use of the dome. She believes that it could be indirectly influenced by that era and was built differently because of the new, modern materials that are available to us today.
Towards the end of my visit to Old Town, I walked around admiring the historic buildings once more and I saw them from a different perspective. I could distinguish different styles of architecture and even though traditional Kumeyaay structures are no longer visible, I know that they are a significant part of San Diego’s history. My dad drove us out of Old Town, and I gazed out of the car window at the trolley stop, new houses and stores. And further on, I imagined the Convention Center and the new Central Library downtown and I thought of new populations living in San Diego, this city that is full of colorful culture and history. |