Author Archives: Gaslamp Foundation

Reuben the Guide and his Historic Haunts

Douglas Hotel, Clermont/Coast Hotel, Ideal Hotel & the Crossroads, 1887-1985 As lead tour guide and historian for the Davis-Horton House Museum, I often wondered how the tour guide business got started. I inadvertently found the answer, while researching something entirely different. Not all Gaslamp “Landmarks” are buildings! San Diego’s first tour guide, known from coast […]

The Golden West, 1913

720 Fourth Avenue, northwest corner of G Street Architect :   John Lloyd Wright Prairie Style of Architecture- Modern As one strolls through the Gaslamp, most notice that although each building has its own unique characteristics, most are basically what can be termed “Victorian.”  The exception is the Golden West Hotel.  It is devoid of the ornate […]

Everybody Loves a Lover……

Keating Building, 1890 Architects:  Reid Brothers Architectual Style: Romanesque Revival Everybody loves a good love story, and San Diego is no exception.  The Keating building, a lovely Romanesque Revival gem on the northwest corner of 5th and F St., boasts two. George and Fannie Keating arrived in San Diego from Kansas in 1886.  As Mr. […]

From Silver Screen to Sundaes: Casino Theater

Prior to 1904 , the property between 643 and 651 Fifth Avenue was nothing more than a series of small wooden buildings housing a shoemaker, a jeweler and a cigar and cigarette merchant.   In 1904, George J. Chambers , father of famed Olympic swimmer Florence Chambers, purchased the property from L.G. Pratt for the unlikely sum […]