Poultry farm, gun batteries, tuna packing, a couple of nomadic yacht clubs, and even a bite to eat: There’s something for everyone at the Jennings House Café. Its walls are talking!
Café owner, Cathy Gallagher, has partnered with members of La Playa Trail Association (LPTA) in hosting a Point Loma photo exhibition. “It fits with the historic significance of this old house,” Gallagher says.
It’s your history that’s being “spoken,” a narrative reaching far into Point Loma’s past.
At about the time purveyor Alonzo Horton was developing his 960 acres in New Town San Diego, German-Jewish immigrant Louis Rose was initiating his Point Loma settlement known as Roseville. That was 1870-ish.
Yet these land developers were long preceded by native peoples such as the Kumeyaay. Along the bayside trail came Spanish priests and soldiers, fur trappers, Boston-China traders, Portuguese whalers and Chinese fishermen, U.S. Cavalry, American cowboys, and others. All of them traversing La Playa Trail, a commercial path on the peninsula of La Punta de la Loma de San Diego, or Point Loma.
Pictorial highlights gracing the Café’s walls include, for example, the history of the Jennings House itself. LPTA president Kitty McDaniel says, “This is one of the first homes built in Roseville in 1887 (date varies by accounts) and it is still standing, repurposed for leisure and safekeeping.”
The homes of Frank and Fred Jennings and in-law George Crippen were landmarks, McDaniel notes. “People coming down La Playa Trail would see a house with a family living it. Before that, there was not much more than a dusty path with fishermen’s shacks.”
In years to come, land parcel acquisitions, a wharf renovation, a poultry farm of some 260 laying hens, the Roseville ferry, and Point Loma Assembly are just some of the labors attributed to the Jennings brothers.
Elsewhere on the Café walls are images of the Portuguese fishing industry. The majority of early Portuguese immigrants earned their incomes from tuna fishing, thus the area’s moniker, Tunaville. Yellowfin and skipjack tuna were fished with bamboo poles, bait boats, and eventually the recognizable purse seiners.
Photos of the prominent Theosophist, Katherine Tingley, and her educational community high on Point Loma offer an intriguing look at this esteemed yet short-lived society.
San Diego Yacht Club’s curious move across the bay and its presence in Point Loma, early Army history and hidden gun batteries, and books published about Point Loma are also exhibited at the restaurant. The list includes LPTA’s book, “Point Loma.”
Jennings House Café is located at 1018 Rosecrans St. and is open daily from 6 a.m.-2 p.m. (except Wednesdays and Thursdays) for breakfast and lunch. Eat and sip inside the homey historic house, or on the outside patio. You’ll also find a full menu of beers and wines. (Gallagher looks ahead at some extended summer hours.)
Do take time to lap up the story of Point Loma’s past while engaged in some “time off” at the Café. Get up close to read and ponder. It’s your history, too.
