By Michael Good

Let’s rethink the historic designation process by populating architectural homes with historical homeowners

For better or worse, California’s Mills Act has come to define what it means for a house to be historic in San Diego.

A house can qualify based on a number of criteria but, basically, historians are looking for a “yes” to any one of four questions: Is the architect or builder a recognized master? Is the house a significant part of an already designated historic neighborhood? Does the house represent an outstanding example of a recognized house type or style? Was a former resident a historic figure?

It’s the answer to that last question that most people associate with historic houses — in the popular imagination it’s not enough that a house is architecturally significant. People want to know that something historical happened there — and that it happened to an historical person. George Washington was born there. George Washington slept there. George Washington had a beer, had an argument, made a plan, started a revolution, told a lie, chopped down a tree, danced with his wife, danced with John Adams’s wife. Something. But in reality, very, very rarely in San Diego is a house declared historic because of a former resident.

The reason is simple: There are no established criteria for what makes a person historic in San Diego. For the builder, there is a list. Getting on that list is the result of a steady drip, drip, drip of evidence. It’s like a court case where circumstantial evidence piles up until the verdict is inescapable: The builder was responsible for five houses in an historic neighborhood; six more of his houses in other neighborhoods are excellent examples of Spanish Eclectic architecture; he apprenticed with Richard Requa; he partnered with master builder Carl B. Hays; he built more than 100 houses in Mission Hills, North Park, South Park and Kensington. The evidence mounts. Eventually there’s a tipping point, and the builder gets added to the all-important list of master builders.

But there’s no list for historic homeowners. And it doesn’t really make sense to have one, since this historic house process starts with, well, a house. What we need is a framework for establishing whether a person — not a house — deserves historic designation. Here are my suggestions:

• Anyone who had anything to do with the 1915 Panama California Exposition. The 1915 Expo is the biggest thing San Diegans have ever agreed to do together. And this is a city that has a hard time agreeing on anything. Airports, stadiums, football teams, how thoroughly to sanitize our sewage. But pretty much the entire city agreed on the Expo — and attended it.

Admittedly, “anyone who had anything to do with” is a pretty wide net. But a good place to start is with the 100 or so tuxedo-clad fellows who attended the epic dinner party where the plan was hatched. (The guest list was printed in the newspaper, so we know who was there.) The principal architects of the Expo — Goodhue, Davidson, Collier, Spreckels, etc. — deserve a nod, of course, as do the movers and shakers listed in Richard Amero’s book on the Exposition.

• Political figures. Let’s at least start with the mayor. A president or two would be nice. A governor perhaps. But if a sitting mayor conducts business in his home, from his bedroom, while propped up in bed, really, that should be enough to designate the house as historic. (It wasn’t, however, in a case from a couple years ago.)
• Industry leaders. Particularly industries that have shaped our city: The military. Fishing. Airplane manufacturing. Aerospace. Telecom. Bioscience. Education.
• Those who lived in infamy. History is not always pretty. How society actually works becomes clear when someone screws up. The backroom deals only become apparent when someone gets caught. San Diego has had its share of scandals. And we’ve usually had the press to record them. And Genealogy Bank to look them up. And Ancestry.com to check if the woman our infamous historical figure took that cruise to Hawaii with was really his wife.
• Hidden figures. In recent months I’ve written about women builders, architects and designers. Some, such as Louise Severin, were for many years all but ignored by history (and the Historic Resources Board). Others, such as Alice Klauber, seemed to court anonymity. Klauber’s behind-the-scenes negotiations to get women accommodated at the 1915 Expo weren’t widely reported at the time. Her decorations for the women’s building were. She was too well-mannered to require recognition. People of African, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese and Native American descent were also often overlooked by history. It’s not that they weren’t out there doing stuff, it’s that polite society wasn’t there to record it.
• Trendsetters. We recognize the architects who were on the cutting edge of fashion — for example, the first to bring arts and crafts to San Diego. We should recognize people who set social trends as well. Not just the first woman president of a college, but the first woman president to wear a pantsuit, flash the peace sign, join a commune and retire to raise alpacas on Mt. Woodson. And lets not forget the first guy to mount skateboard wheels to a flexible board, the first San Diegan to ride a redwood surfboard, and Ted Williams, the first Major League ballplayer to emerge from the shadow of the water tower, who became a great ballplayer because he happened to live across the street from a baseball diamond in North Park (and why isn’t that house designated?).
• People who built houses, but weren’t master builders. The carpenters who designed and built the built-ins. The stained glass artists, the tile designers, the guy (still unidentified) who designed the pyrographic, art deco style front doors for Spanish houses in 1929 and 1930. We already recognize the master builders. Let’s celebrate the master plasterer who could make stucco look like stone and the master painter who rag-rolled ceilings to look like clouds at sunset.

Establishing historic significance for residents should be no different than determining master status for builders: It would require the steady accumulation of evidence. Being the mayor is good. Being a civil engineer as well as mayor is better. Designing a magnificent suspension footbridge that has stood the test of time would seal the deal, as it should for Mayor and City Engineer Edwin Capps, who designed the Spruce Street Suspension Bridge. (Having a street named after you doesn’t hurt either. Capps even dipped his toe in a juicy, or at least damp, scandal: he hired rainmaker Charles Hatfield in 1915.)

Let’s consider another mayor, Enrique Aldrete, who was the president of the municipality of Tijuana at the time of the Mexican Revolution in 1913 and 1914, Mexican Consul in San Ysidro after that, and secretary of the Baja government prior to those two appointments. In 1929, Aldrete moved to a house on Marlborough in Kensington that was recently designated historic by the HRB (but not because of its first owner).

Aldrete later wrote a book about his experiences during the revolution. He was also a custom broker, had an early version of a department store (Cinco de Mayo) in Tijuana, operated a store on this side of the border as well, and was, with his brother Alberto and Miguel Gonzalez, among the first Mexicans to live in North Park (he and his brother also lived in South Park and then moved with their families to Kensington in the late 1920s — during a time when many neighborhoods had deed restrictions designed to keep Mexicans out.

His family owned land in the center of Tijuana (which became the country club), he was the president of Tijuana Chamber of Commerce, and the Aldretes were among the oldest and most established families in northern Baja. He was related by marriage to the Estudillo family, one of the oldest in San Diego (their house in Old Town is now a historic museum). Aldrete was also friendly with mayors, governors and presidents. Two Mexican presidents, when they retired, moved to Kensington, presumably because the Aldretes lived there. (President Abelardo Rodriquez purchased his brother Alberto’s house.) Enrique could cross the border without papers, because the agents knew him by name (this according to a border agent’s notes on Aldrete’s crossing card).

So … Enrique Aldrete. Trendsetter, check. Major politician, check. Hidden figure, check. (In fact, he had been pretty much forgotten on this side of the border until the current owners of his Marlborough house looked him up at the San Diego History Center’s research library.) Aldrete was also a business leader; he was a founder of the Tijuana Chamber of Commerce and the Tijuana Country Club. Online I found an account by his daughter Carmen, on the occasion of her 100th birthday in 1913, remembering fondly Jefferson Elementary in North Park, which she attended, and the house on Marlborough, where she lived as a young woman. She also recalled how when she and her father crossed the border, everyone on both sides, Mexican and U.S. agents alike, greeted him by name.

Like a slowly dripping faucet, the evidence accumulates and pretty soon it just seems reasonable and prudent to stop fighting it and accept that Enrique Aldrete is a historic person. In fact, he represents someone who can’t exist today: a binational businessman and politician who could freely cross the border and exist with feet planted in both countries. Rather than look for reasons why he can’t be considered historic (such as the claim that his biggest accomplishments were on the other side of the border) we should consider how he represents a historic type that has long gone unrecognized, a member of the Mexican aristocracy that provides a bridge between the California of the Dons and the California of the dot-coms, between Mexican Territorial-era San Diego and 21st-century San Diego in the age of the Great Big Beautiful Wall.

We don’t know where the future will take us but we do have the opportunity to discover where we’ve been — and to find, perhaps, a clue to our future.

—Contact Michael Good at [email protected].