History of San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter Historic District

The Gaslamp Quarter Historic District is the most authentic place in all of downtown San Diego to see the story of San Diego’s transformation from a small settlement centered along 5th Avenue into a modern American city. Its history begins well before the neighborhood acquired the name “Gaslamp Quarter.” The district developed as part of New Town San Diego, beginning in 1850, and became the commercial heart of downtown during the late nineteenth century.

William Heath Davis and the First New Town — 1850

In 1850, businessman William Heath Davis, working with Andrew Gray and other investors,

attempted to establish a new community closer to San Diego Bay. They acquired approximately 160 acres, laid out streets, constructed a wharf near present-day Market Street, and imported prefabricated wooden houses shipped around Cape Horn. Their settlement became known as New Town. Davis believed the waterfront location offered better opportunities for shipping and commerce than Old Town near the Presidio, several miles to the north. But the expected population and commercial boom failed to materialize, and New Town largely declined during the following two decades.

One remarkable survivor from this period is the Davis-Horton House, now located at Fourth and Island avenues. Built in 1850, it is a historic landmark and city museum. It is regarded by the city as the oldest house in the Gaslamp Quarter. The museum holds and collects original documents and artifacts found nowhere else in the US.

Alonzo Horton Creates a Successful New Town — 1867–1870s

The turning point came with Alonzo Horton. Horton arrived in San Diego in 1867, purchased

about 960 acres near the bay, and began aggressively promoting what became known as Horton’s Addition or New Town. Horton understood that San Diego's future depended on the harbor. A wharf was constructed at the foot of Fifth Avenue, helping make Fifth Avenue the principal commercial corridor of the growing downtown. Businesses, hotels, banks, stores and government institutions increasingly moved toward New Town. The shift became official and symbolic when the county courthouse moved from Old Town in the Presidio area to Alonzo’s “Addition” in 1871. By this time, Davis's unsuccessful experiment had essentially become Horton's successful city.

The Boom Years — 1870s–1890s

During the 1870s and especially the 1880s, downtown San Diego expanded rapidly. Fifth Avenue became a bustling commercial street, while buildings appeared throughout the area between roughly Fourth and Sixth Avenues. The architecture that visitors associate with the Gaslamp today largely dates from this period and the decades immediately following. Buildings incorporated Victorian-era commercial architecture, Italian Renaissance influences, and later Spanish Revival and Chinese elements. San Diego's development accelerated with improved transportation and infrastructure. By the late 19th Century, the growing city had newspapers, telephone and gas companies, electric street lighting, streetcars and railroad connections.

A Multicultural Neighborhood

The district was also much more ethnically diverse than traditional accounts of early San Diego. Chinese, Black, Japanese, and Filipino residents established businesses and community institutions in and around today's Gaslamp Quarter. A particularly important Chinese business district developed south of Market Street, especially around Third Avenue and J Street. The Black community created businesses and a thriving entertainment spot at the Creole Palace at 2nd and Market. In the 1930’s a thriving Japanese business community developed along Island Avenue. At about the same era, single male Filipino migrant workers formed a small community along 5th Avenue and Market Streets. The city of San Diego notes that thirteen buildings associated with Asian history are located within the Gaslamp Quarter National Register Historic District and today is identified as the Asian Thematic District. This multicultural history is important because the Gaslamp District was not simply a district created by Horton and wealthy developers. It was also shaped by immigrants, merchants, laborers, hotel operators, restaurant owners, sailors and working-class residents from many backgrounds.

The Stingaree — Late 1800s to Early 1900s

As respectable businesses gradually expanded northward, parts of the Gaslamp District south of Market Street developed a very different reputation. The neighborhood became known as the “Stingaree,” San Diego's notorious vice district. Saloons, gambling establishments, brothels, cheap lodging houses and entertainment venues catered to sailors, laborers and visitors arriving through the waterfront. The name supposedly suggested that, like a stingray, the neighborhood could deliver a painful “sting” to anyone who wandered into it unprepared. By the early twentieth century, reformers increasingly demanded that the city eliminate the vice district. In 1912, police raids associated with a broader morality campaign helped suppress the Stingaree.

Decline During the Twentieth Century

The neighborhood continued functioning as part of downtown through the 1920s, but the Great Depression slowed development. After World War II, San Diego's commercial center gradually shifted. During the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, major businesses increasingly preferred larger and newer buildings elsewhere. Many of the small nineteenth-century buildings in the old commercial district deteriorated. Ironically, this economic decline helped preserve part of the neighborhood. Because large-scale redevelopment had bypassed many blocks, numerous Victorian-era commercial buildings survived when similar structures elsewhere were demolished.

Preservation and the Creation of the Gaslamp Quarter

By the 1970s, preservationists, business owners and civic leaders increasingly recognized the

architectural and historical value of the old downtown neighborhood. Instead of demolishing

everything and starting over, San Diego pursued a combination of historic preservation and

redevelopment. Old storefronts and hotels were rehabilitated, façades restored and historic

buildings adapted for restaurants, shops, offices, hotels and entertainment. The District's

surviving concentration of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century buildings became the

foundation for what we now call the Gaslamp Quarter Historic District. The city describes this

period as the neighborhood's “second renaissance.”

Overall Timeline of the Gaslamp Quarter

The Gaslamp Quarter can therefore be understood as several layers of San Diego history

occupying the same streets:

1850 Davis's New Town

1867 Horton's Addition

1870s-1890s commercial boom

1870s-1900s multicultural downtown community

1800s-1900s Stingaree vice district twentieth-century decline

1970s historic preservation and redevelopment today's Gaslamp Quarter.

Perhaps its greatest historical significance is that it preserves the physical landscape of the period when San Diego's center of gravity shifted from Old Town near the Presidio to the waterfront and the foundations of modern downtown San Diego were established. The Davis-Horton House provides an especially effective starting point for telling that story. The surviving 1850 structure connects William Heath Davis's first New Town experiment with Alonzo Horton's later development and the rise of the surrounding commercial district.

Gaslamp Quarter Planned District Design Guidelines

In 2009, the city of San Diego adopted the Gaslamp Quarter Planned District Design Guidelines (link below) which is used to help property owners and businesses operating within the 17-block area to renovate and improve buildings and structures in ways that respect and enhance the historic quality and character of the historic district. The Gaslamp Quarter Historical Foundation provides assistance to those needing help in applying historic design guidelines. PDO: City of San Diego – Gaslamp Quarter historical overview and design guidelines