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.<\/p>\n
Now the all-clear signal had sounded. People were calling plumbers to get the natural gas turned back on, which they couldn\u2019t do without assistance from SDG&E. Which was, no doubt, forthcoming \u2014 eventually.<\/p>\n
Fortunately for Allen Hazard and Janet O\u2019Dea, 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 \u201cFriday the 13th\u201d curse. It was the release of this book \u2014 they had a copy sitting on the shop counter \u2014 that had brought me to the historic Powers Plumbing premises on this otherwise fine March afternoon.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t stop the phone from ringing. And ringing.<\/p>\n It only takes a quick glance to see what makes \u201cImages of America: Mission Hills\u201d particularly appealing \u2014 it\u2019s 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\u2019s \u201cImages of America\u201d 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\u2019t afford to buy or hadn\u2019t managed to wrangle a sufficient supply of quality photographs. (The books typically contain a couple hundred pictures.)<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.)<\/p>\n Several things set Mission Hills apart: its connection with San Diego\u2019s 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\u2019t 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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n The area attracted San Diego\u2019s 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\u2019s leading citizens called Mission Hills home as well: Roscoe E. \u201cPappy\u201d 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\u2019s architecture.<\/p>\n Although Mission Hills became a bit frayed around the edges in the \u201960s and \u201970s, 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were the first residence-driven historic district,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen we noticed on our walks a Craftsman that was being torn down \u2014 was that 2001 or 2002?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c2002,\u201d Janet chimes in, rising to answer the phone.<\/p>\n \u201cWell,\u201d Allen continues, \u201cwe said, we don\u2019t want this to happen again. So let\u2019s get a historic district. We went to the city. The city said, \u2018Why don\u2019t you do it?\u2019 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.\u201d That proved to be no easy task.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went through the lot books, and the county records, \u2018Builder and Contractor\u2019 magazine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWater records\u2026\u201d adds Janet.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of our early inspirations was Kathy Flannigan, who\u2019s since passed away,\u201d continues Allen. \u201cAnd Kathy always told us, \u2018You need to write it (the house history) as if it were a National Register house.\u2019 We held ourselves to that standard \u2014 that extra effort to find the builder and architect.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat led to the photos,\u201d explains Janet, having finished with her phone call. \u201cTrying to find the builder, or whatever we could in terms of documentation.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n \u201cMission Hills\u201d 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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n When asked how many hours went into the book, they shake their heads and laugh.<\/p>\n \u201cCountless hours,\u201d says Janet.<\/p>\n![\"Casady](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Casady-002-use-this-onewebtop.jpg\")
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(Courtesy of Bruce and Alana Coons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n