Balboa Park Architecture & Expositions: A Self-Guided Walking Tour in San Diego Balboa Park Architecture & Expositions is a first-timer's flagship walk through the buildings and gardens at the center of San Diego. This tour covers twelve stops inside the park's historic core, from Sefton Plaza and Cabrillo Bridge at the western entrance, east along El Prado, then south to the Spreckels Organ Pavilion, the International Cottages and the Ford Building. The subject is the two world's fairs held in the park, in 1915 and in 1935, and the century of rebuilding that kept their architecture standing. About This San Diego Walking Tour In 1935 a sunken rock garden a few steps off El Prado was sold to the public as a nudist colony. Zoro Garden was leased out during the California Pacific International Exposition, and visitors paid admission to look at performers presented as people living a natural, unclothed life. The same sunken garden is planted for butterflies today, free to anyone walking past. Balboa Park is full of that kind of turn, and its architecture works the same way. Bertram Goodhue designed the 1915 Panama-California Exposition to read as an old Spanish American city, and the towers and arcades he set along El Prado still convince people they are looking at antiques. Much of that fair went up in temporary material meant to come down when the gates closed. Goodhue's own permanent contribution was the California Quadrangle, while Carleton Winslow carried much of the building program on the ground. San Diegans kept what had been built to be dismantled, and then had to work out how to hold it up. By the early 1930s the 1915 buildings were failing, and San Diego's business and civic leaders answered with a second fair, the California Pacific International Exposition of 1935, with Richard Requa overseeing the restoration work. Federal Reconstruction Finance Corporation money paid for much of the labor and materials while local organizations raised the rest, which is how a fairground built for a single season came out of the Great Depression in better repair than it went in. The Navy took over large parts of the park after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and San Diego History Center records list wards, barracks and classrooms fitted into the exposition buildings, with the House of Hospitality turned into quarters. Holding on to that architecture afterward took decades of organized campaigning by residents, and the modest fountain at the east end of El Prado carries the name of Bea Evenson, who led that work. Across the twelve stops you'll follow how San Diegans turned a reserved city park and two temporary fairgrounds into the cultural park visitors use today, and you'll learn to read the difference between an original 1915 structure, a 1935 remake and a modern reconstruction. The Route Through Balboa Park Twelve stops sit across the park's central mesa. Each one reads on its own, so the walk works in either direction and from any entrance. Sefton Plaza : Kate Sessions cast in bronze with a trowel and a young plant, for the decades of planting that came before the fairs.Cabrillo Bridge : reinforced concrete thrown across Cabrillo Canyon to solve an access problem and to stage a grand western approach.California Tower : Goodhue's California Quadrangle, an entry complex assembled from Spanish and Mexican sources to give a young city an old atmosphere.The Old Globe : a 1935 fair attraction that kept performing and kept getting rebuilt until it was permanent civic culture.Alcazar Garden : a reconstruction of the garden Richard Requa designed for 1935, held together by plants that have to be replanted season after season.Plaza de Panama : ceremonial exposition ground now used for finding a museum and deciding where to eat.Botanical Building and Lily Pond : great arches filled with thin strips of redwood lath, delicate in appearance and heavily restored in practice.Bea Evenson Fountain : the small monument at the head of El Prado, and the preservation fight that stands behind it.Spanish Village : bright paving and small facades built as 1935 exposition theater, now studios where artists work and sell.Spreckels Organ Pavilion : an outdoor organ dedicated on December 31, 1914, given to San Diego by John D. and Adolph B. Spreckels, and played in public ever since.International Cottages : the House of Pacific Relations cottages, where exposition-era internationalism became community-run cultural institutions.Ford Building : streamlined curves selling an automobile future in 1935, later reused as an Air & Space Museum. You'll Learn About… Why John C. Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. wanted the fairgrounds built farther south, closer to the developed city, and what exposition leaders did with the Central Mesa instead.Why the designers of the 1935 exposition gave Spanish Village low white buildings, patios, fountains and irregular little streets, a deliberately informal answer to the monumental facades along El Prado.Which parts of the historic center are permanent construction from the exposition era, and which ones look centuries old because they were designed to.How Reconstruction Finance Corporation labor and funding during the Great Depression paid to repair a fairground that was coming apart.What the Navy did with the park after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when the House of Hospitality became quarters and the museums became hospital wards.Why the San Diego Museum of Man became the Museum of Us in August 2020, in the institution's own account of the change. Who It's For This is a first-timer's flagship walk, written for a traveler with a free half-day in San Diego who wants to understand the park while moving through it. Readers who like buildings will get the most from it, and museum visitors can pick it up between exhibits, since every stop stands alone. Families can take it at their own speed, with gardens and open plazas spaced between the monumental buildings. Practical Details Twelve stops, all inside Balboa Park's historic core. Sefton Plaza and Cabrillo Bridge make a natural western entry, with the route running east along El Prado and then south to the Ford Building. Allow two to three hours at an easy pace, and more if you go inside the museums. Every stop carries narration you can play at the place itself, and the walk is self-guided, so the pace and the order are yours. Start Your Self-Guided Walking Tour of San Diego Download the app and take Balboa Park Architecture & Expositions at your own pace, through the buildings that two world's fairs left standing in San Diego.
