Michael Good | HouseCalls

For its annual Historic Home Tour, SOHO visits the old and improved North Park

Over the last century, San Diegans have found a variety of ways to discover North Park. For the better part of the 20th century, this streetcar suburb on the northwest corner of Balboa Park was where San Diego shopped. As Downtown turned seedy and the population center grew to the north and east, North Park became the go-to place for just about everything. If you had to go to the department store, the bank, the lumberyard, the movies, the hardware store, the grocery store or the pharmacy, you went to North Park. If you needed a bicycle shop, a roller rink, a magazine stand, an alcoholic beverage, an AA meeting or Sunday sermon, North Park was the place to go. Even after Mission Valley was converted from farmland to shopping mall, North Park continued to offer retail opportunities you couldn’t find elsewhere: looking for a trophy? Army surplus? A used safe? A musical instrument? A place to pump iron? North Park had it all. Today, there are breweries and beer pubs, bacon truffles and farm-to-table dining.

And over the years, many of these shoppers and visitors, at some time or another, in the back of their mind harbored the thought: Hey, maybe I could live here.

Of course, that’s how the area started — as a place to live. Before it was a shopping mecca, North Park was a real estate development — a patchwork of small housing tracts arrayed along the expanding streetcar lines. The man who owned those tracks, John D. Spreckels, also owned the lumber company that supplied the building materials and sat on the board of the banks that loaned the money to build. He left the actual development of land and building of houses to the speculators, and there were many of them, all with grand dreams and breezy promises. But like the north/south streets that don’t quite line up, the developer’s dreams and fiscal reality didn’t always harmonize. As a result, North Park isn’t quite as homogenous as Kensington and Talmadge, or as exclusive or expensive as Mission Hills. But that’s part of the area’s appeal; today there are a sprinkling of million-dollar mansions with harbor views on double lots cheek-to-jowl with 500-square-foot bungalows.

For the last 40 or so years, Save Our Heritage Organisation (SOHO) has been offering yet another way to get to know San Diego’s streetcar suburbs like North Park: the Annual Historic Home Tour. This year’s co-chair, Allen Hazard, had discovered North Park himself back in 2000 on a SOHO Tour. For this year’s event, which is again in North Park, Hazard walked the neighborhood, looking for prospects. And like many before him, Hazard found it an eye-opening experience.

“I was astonished by the changes I saw in North Park, by how many houses had been designated historic, by how many plaques I saw,” Hazard said.

He added that it wasn’t just the plethora of plaques or the boom in beer brewing that brought SOHO back to North Park. It was also the desire to work with the North Park Historical Society, which is taking the lead on the walking tour of North Park’s storied business district, which is in full-on revival mode, with new restaurants, brew pubs and businesses. One recent arrival, Carnitas’ Snack Shack, is on the tour — after all, bacon needs preservation, too.

There are seven houses included, ranging from humble Craftsman bungalow to sprawling 1920s Spanish. The most unusual? The David E. and Jennie McCracken house, built in 1925 by Frank D. Garside.

“It’s really, really, really unique,” Hazard said.

The house has been featured in American Bungalow magazine and in the coffee table book “The Bungalow, America’s Arts and Crafts Home” by Paul Duchscherer. Hazard describes it as a “brick bungalow with Mission Revival influences.” But it really defies description.

“The theory is that she was a native of Michigan, and convinced her husband to build a brick house, because it was reminiscent of what she knew from home,” Hazard explained. The mix of materials really fired Garside’s imagination. He threw in some swoopy curves, arched windows and a cobblestone wall and foundation.

Although the house is atypical, Garside represents a type of builder that was common in North Park but seldom gets much notice today. While the prolific “master builders” get all the attention, there were many carpenters that had the skill and taste to build interesting and pleasing little bungalows in small numbers during surprisingly short careers.

“Garside apparently didn’t build a lot of other houses,” Hazard said, referring to his notes. “He was from Illinois, moved to San Diego in 1910 as a clerk. Then he was an accountant with John D. Spreckels. (At least he had the right connections.) In the ‘20s, he was listed in the city directory as a carpenter.”

But by the 1940 census, Garside was living in El Cajon, working as a gardener. He died in 1946 at the age of 62. If this seems like a short building career, keep in mind that even McFadden & Buxton, who masterminded North Park’s West End (which is included on the tour) and Burlingame (which is not), didn’t last long either. Their “Systems Firm” fell apart after two years, and the two partners moved on to other things.

Today, Ron Oster, a real estate agent with Ascent in North Park, calls the one-of-a-kind brick bungalow home. In 1996, Oster’s partner at the time (who has since passed away) was looking for a place to buy in North Park when he saw a “for rent” sign being driven into a lawn in front of an unusual brick house. The couple rented the bungalow for a year. When the owners decided to sell, they snatched it up.

What appealed to Oster about the house?

“That it’s unique. And the brick,” Oster said. “My partner was from New Jersey and I’m from the Midwest. We were just extra fortunate that it came on the market when it did.

“I’m just very proud of it. It’s very charming and homey. It’s a conversation piece. When people walk by, they stop and talk about it. And it’s very well planned and laid out.”

And then there’s the neighborhood.

“I’m so pleased to live in this neighborhood,” Oster said of North Park. “I know all my neighbors. We have our First Friday potluck. We know each other. We watch out for each other. I had neighbors for dinner just last night. It is a very welcoming neighborhood. It’s not just the house that I find appealing. It’s the feeling of neighborhood.”

You can get a feel for North Park (and a taste for Carnitas’) on June 6-8, when SOHO holds its Annual Historic Home Tour Weekend. The walking tours are on Saturday. The home tour is on Sunday. On Friday, SOHO hosts its annual People in Preservation Awards. For more information, go to sohosandiego.org.