By Michael Good | HouseCalls

Allen Hazard and Janet O’Dea thought they were documenting a historic neighborhood, but they were writing a book

True to form, Friday, March 13, was not a particularly audacious day in Mission Hills, particularly if you were running a plumbing enterprise. Someone had reported a gas leak and the city had turned off the supply to a good portion of the neighborhood.

Now the all-clear signal had sounded. People were calling plumbers to get the natural gas turned back on, which they couldn’t do without assistance from SDG&E. Which was, no doubt, forthcoming — eventually.

Fortunately for Allen Hazard and Janet O’Dea, who own and manage Powers Plumbing on West Lewis Street in Mission Hills, their other joint endeavor, a picture book of the neighborhood, had avoided the “Friday the 13th” curse. It was the release of this book — they had a copy sitting on the shop counter — that had brought me to the historic Powers Plumbing premises on this otherwise fine March afternoon.

As luck would have it, the day was neither rainy nor cold. No one was going to freeze to death as a result of the Great Gas Shut Off of 2015. But that didn’t stop the phone from ringing. And ringing.

It only takes a quick glance to see what makes “Images of America: Mission Hills” particularly appealing — it’s the incredible richness and breadth of the photographs Janet and Allen had managed to compile over the years. In that, they had been exceptionally fortunate. These photo books for Arcade publishing’s “Images of America” series rise or fall on the strength of their photos, and while Arcade has published hundreds of these neighborhood picture books, some have been hampered because the authors couldn’t afford to buy or hadn’t managed to wrangle a sufficient supply of quality photographs. (The books typically contain a couple hundred pictures.)

Part of the appeal of personal photographs is their ephemeral nature. They capture a moment in time that is otherwise lost to us. And they only continue to exist, after 100 years, because someone had a compelling reason to safeguard them from the vagaries of life and the ceaseless march of time. When people pass away, when estates pass from one generation to the next, photographs have a way of disappearing in the wind, like so much natural gas.

Perched on a mesa above Old Town, Mission Hills was one of many streetcar suburbs that sprang up along the electric rail lines in the early years of the 20th century. Prior to the first subdivision, which was filed in 1908 by a syndicate that included George Marston, the area was home to a hunting club, a cemetery, a smattering of orchards and at least one house, the Villa Orizaba, which had been built by the family of ship captain Henry Johnston. (Johnston had dreamed of subdividing his 65 acres of hilltop land, but he died before his plan could come to fruition.)

Several things set Mission Hills apart: its connection with San Diego’s romantic past, the curving streets that followed the natural flow of the land, a highly restrictive code designed to keep out the riff-raff (which is to say anyone who wasn’t prosperous and white), and a requirement that all houses cost at least $3,000. So the seemingly identical houses built in Mission Hills and North Park would differ in construction materials and level of detail — the Mission Hills house would have more expensive materials (thicker walls made of hollow clay tile, for example) and more extensive wood trim, plaster effects, decorative painting, tile work, plumbing fixtures, and so on.

The area attracted San Diego’s prime architects, designers and builders, including Frank P. Allen, Jr., Louis Gill, Del Harris, William S. Hebbard, William Templeton Johnson, Cliff May, Frank Mead, Henry Preibisius, the Quayle Brothers, Richard Requa, Lillian J. Rice, William Wahrenberger, Emmor Brooke Weaver and William Wheeler, Sr. Many of the city’s leading citizens called Mission Hills home as well: Roscoe E. “Pappy” Hazard, Catholic bishop Charles F. Buddy, San Diego mayors Percy Benbough and John F. Forward Jr., store owner Guilford Whitney, Kate Sessions, her brother Frank and her nephew Milt Sessions, state Sen. Edwin Sample, aviation pioneer T. Claude Ryan, and state Sen. James Mills, who grew up in a modest bungalow on Ingalls Street and went on to create the Mills Act, which has helped preserve the area’s architecture.

Although Mission Hills became a bit frayed around the edges in the ’60s and ’70s, as middle class families fled to the suburbs, those who stayed managed to keep out the scourge of apartments that nearly doomed North and South Park. It was the more recent trend of teardowns and McMansions that finally galvanized homeowners. After seeing one particularly fine house destroyed on one of their walks through the neighborhood, Janet and Allen decided to get involved. Between rings from the office telephone, Allen explained how the Mission Hills and Ft. Stockton Line Historic Districts came to be.

“We were the first residence-driven historic district,” he says. “When we noticed on our walks a Craftsman that was being torn down — was that 2001 or 2002?”

“2002,” Janet chimes in, rising to answer the phone.

“Well,” Allen continues, “we said, we don’t want this to happen again. So let’s get a historic district. We went to the city. The city said, ‘Why don’t you do it?’ So we started to research our own district. We were the first to really find the builder and architect for every home within the district itself.” That proved to be no easy task.

“We went through the lot books, and the county records, ‘Builder and Contractor’ magazine.”

“Water records…” adds Janet.

“One of our early inspirations was Kathy Flannigan, who’s since passed away,” continues Allen. “And Kathy always told us, ‘You need to write it (the house history) as if it were a National Register house.’ We held ourselves to that standard — that extra effort to find the builder and architect.”

“That led to the photos,” explains Janet, having finished with her phone call. “Trying to find the builder, or whatever we could in terms of documentation.” Looking for photographs, Allen and Janet crawled through attics. They fished through garages. They finagled and borrowed from homeowners, collectors and fellow historians. When they found something interesting, they scanned it. They thought they were documenting a neighborhood, but they were also writing a book.

“Mission Hills” includes a series of aerial photographs, a section on family life, a variety of architectural shots, photographs of lost mansions, a section on artists as well as business people, and photos of churches and schools — not to mention a section on the cemetery hidden under a park. (You might say Janet and Allen know where the bodies are buried. Literally.) The majority of these photos were acquired without purchasing the rights from an historical association, such as the San Diego History Center.

When asked how many hours went into the book, they shake their heads and laugh.

“Countless hours,” says Janet.

“This is what you do when you don’t have kids,” says Allen.

The couple has been lucky in ways other than photo research. Through their interest in historic preservation they found a neighborhood, a calling, a business, and each other. The couple met volunteering for various historic groups. (They’ve been on the board of both SOHO and Mission Hills Heritage.) When they found they were spending so much time in Mission Hills, they decided they might as well move there (from Rancho Bernardo). Janet was concerned at first about the commute for work, but then the opportunity to buy the plumbing business came up — now she can commute by foot, and walk past the many houses she and Allen helped preserve. Thanks to Allen Hazard and Janet O’Dea (and hundreds of their neighbors), Mission Hills is once again one of the more desirable areas in San Diego.

And they’ve got the photos to prove it.

—Contact Michael Good at [email protected].