Tag Archives: Lemons

People

The Honeycutts in PB

Sterling Honeycutt was born in Tennessee in 1832. His family later moved to Indiana and in 1856 he married Nancy Huntington, an Indiana native. The couple moved to Rock Island County, Illinois, where in 1869 they reportedly erected the first residence in the village of Reynolds. They were also involved in building the first Methodist church in that area. In the 1880 census, Sterling Honeycutt, not yet 50 years old, described himself as a ‘retired farmer’, presumably having profited by selling his farm.

In the early 1890s the Honeycutts moved to San Diego and in 1893 they purchased Blocks 215, 216, 237 and 238 of Pacific Beach, four adjacent blocks between Grand and Garnet avenues and Jewell and Lamont streets (then Grand and College avenues and 9th and 11th streets, and just across College from the campus where the San Diego College of Letters had operated from 1888 to 1891). Although shown on the map as city blocks divided into lots and separated by public streets, there were no actual improvements or graded streets in 1893 and the Honeycutts developed this property as a lemon ranch. In 1894 they also acquired the northwestern portion of Block 214, on the other side of Lamont, and although they were still living downtown at the time they occasionally spent a few days at their cottage there, at the southeast corner of Lamont and Garnet, ‘looking after the interests of their fine lemon ranch’.

At the end of 1896, Honeycutt also purchased the north half of block 239, the south side of Hornblend Street (then California Avenue) between Lamont and Morrell (12th) streets, in a deal that required him to move the hotel and the dance pavilion that the Pacific Beach Company had built near the beach at the foot of Grand Avenue to this new location within six months. The hotel ended up at the western end of the block, the southeast corner of Hornblend and Lamont. The dance pavilion was moved to the east end of the block, the southwest corner of Hornblend and Morrell. In this new location the pavilion was also adjacent to the railway to San Diego, which ran along the north side of Balboa Avenue at the time, and it was converted into a facility for curing, packing and shipping lemons.

In 1900 a nephew of Mrs. Honeycutt became the first member of the Honeycutts’ extended family to join them in Pacific Beach when the west 5 acres of Acre Lot 51, between Diamond and Chalcedony streets east of an extension of Morrell Street, was granted to Mrs. Lizzie Huntington. The Huntingtons soon left, however, granting the property to Sterling Honeycutt. In 1904 Honeycutt also acquired the east 3.3 acres of Acre Lot 51, between Diamond and Chalcedony and west of Noyes Street.

In November 1903 the Braymer Comet of Caldwell County, Missouri, reported that W. P. Parmenter and wife, Frank McCrary, Jr., and wife and Moses Town and wife and daughter were expected to leave for California and that all except Mr. Town and family expected to make their future homes there. The paper explained that Parmenter, a local Justice of the Peace, had sold his fine farm for $65 an acre and was moving with his wife to San Diego, where he had bought a home, on account of Mrs. Parmenter’s health, which had been bad for many years.

Mrs. Parmenter was the former Sallie Honeycutt, Sterling Honeycutt’s younger sister. The Parmenters had purchased Blocks 249 and 272, two adjacent blocks between Grand and Reed avenues and Lamont and Kendall streets, just across Grand Avenue from Sterling Honeycutt’s lemon ranch. Once established in Pacific Beach, Parmenter also bought the north half of Block 213, the property on the south side of Garnet between Morrell and Noyes, and the southwest quarter of Block 214, the northeast corner of Lamont and Hornblend.

Frank McCrary’s wife Wilda was the Parmenters’ daughter and Honeycutt’s niece. The McCrarys also bought property in Pacific Beach, acquiring E. Y. Barnes’ former lemon ranch on the west half of Acre Lot 64, which was located between Emerald, Jewell, Diamond and Lamont streets. This property came with the home that the Barnes had built at the northeast corner of Jewell and Emerald. The Parmenters and McCrarys also jointly purchased Acre Lot 20, the 9.7 acre tract east of Lamont between Beryl Street and the city land that became Kate Sessions Park, and a few months later sold it to John W. Warren, yet another resident of Caldwell County (Warren later sold it to Sterling Honeycutt). And even though the Comet had suggested that the Town family didn’t expect to make their future home in California, Moses Town also purchased property in Pacific Beach, the south half of block 217, the lots on the north side of Hornblend between Ingraham and Jewell, which included a house at the northwest corner of Hornblend and Jewell. Their daughter, Ella, worked as the ‘janitress’ at the Pacific Beach schoolhouse, on Garnet Avenue across the alley from their home.

Frank McCrary’s brother Charles had also married one of the Parmenters’ daughters, and Honeycutt’s niece, Winnie. The Charles McCrarys moved to Pacific Beach from Missouri in 1903 and purchased the south half of block 213, the property on the north side of Hornblend between Morrell and Noyes streets. In 1904 they also bought the northeast corner of block 214, which included a house at the southwest corner of Garnet and Morrell. Another Honeycutt nephew, the Parmenters’ son Frank, his wife Ida and their son Guy also moved from Missouri to Pacific Beach in 1904. Guy Parmenter went on to become one of the original thirteen cadets in the inaugural class of the San Diego Army and Navy Academy in 1910.

Two of Sterling Honeycutt’s own brothers and their families also joined the migration from Missouri to Pacific Beach. Daniel Honeycutt, his daughter Orpha and her husband, Mark McLain, came from Caldwell County while John Honeycutt, his wife Edwina and their son Harry came from Jasper County.

Sterling Honeycutt’s siblings and nieces and nephews had joined a growing concentration of residents in what had become the heart of the Pacific Beach community at the beginning of the twentieth century. This central core, a few blocks on either side of Lamont Street north of Grand Avenue, also included the former college buildings, which became the Hotel Balboa in 1904 and the Army and Navy Academy in 1910. The community’s two churches and the school house were located within a block of the college campus. The railroad between La Jolla and San Diego ran along Grand Avenue and stopped at the Pacific Beach station just west of Lamont Street. Also at Grand and Lamont, on the northwest corner, was the E. Y. Barnes store and post office.

The area south of Grand, however, remained undeveloped until 1904 when the McCrary brothers and Frank Parmenter began building a second store on the southwest corner of Lamont and Grand, the northeast corner of Block 249. A building permit was issued in November 1904 and in January 1905 the new store ‘threw open its doors’. The San Diego Union described the new emporium as the largest in the suburb, and noted that the proprietors were recent arrivals from Missouri. In 1906 the Pacific Beach post office was moved across Grand Avenue to the McCrary & Parmenter store and W. P. Parmenter became postmaster.

While his relatives and their neighbors had been migrating from Missouri and buying property in Pacific Beach, Honeycutt himself had been selling off portions of his lemon ranch as he transitioned from lemon ranching into the real estate business. In 1901 he sold block 216 to Thomas McConnell, William Pike bought block 238 in 1903 and block 237 in 1904, and most of block 215 had been sold by 1905. By 1907 Honeycutt no longer owned any of the property of his former lemon ranch. In exchange, he had purchased property on the east side of Block 206 and the west side of Block 207, both sides of Noyes Street between Garnet and Felspar, and in 1904 he built a house on the southeast corner of Block 206, the northwest corner of Garnet and Noyes. In 1906 the Honeycutts and Charles McCrarys bought the east half of Acre Lot 48, except for the southeastern corner quarter where the ranch house originally built for the Gridleys stood. They later divided this property, the Honeycutts keeping the north half and the McCrarys the south half.

The Honeycutts were founding members of a Methodist congregation in Pacific Beach in 1901. Initially the Methodists had met in the Presbyterian church at the corner of Garnet and Jewell, and later at the school house next door, but the arrival of the Parmenters and McCrarys apparently increased the size of the congregation enough to justify acquiring a church of their own. In February 1904 the Honeycutts purchased the northwest quarter of Block 180, the southeast corner of Lamont and Emerald, and transferred it to the church. An existing structure on this property was converted to a church building. Honeycutt later acquired the remainder of Block 180, between Lamont, Emerald, Morrell and Felspar streets.

Growth of the Methodist congregation continued, however, and in 1906, faced with expanding the existing church building, the Honeycutts donated the former dance pavilion and lemon packing house at Hornblend and Morrell to the church. When Nancy Honeycutt died in May 1909, her obituary in the San Diego Union noted that the Honeycutts had been prominent in the religious, social and commercial development of the community, Methodism at Pacific Beach largely owed its existence to them, and the present edifice, dedicated as a Methodist church two years earlier, was a monument to the family. Nearly the entire population of Pacific Beach turned out to her funeral services there, ‘filling the place as never before’.

Sterling Honeycutt had been a successful lemon rancher but was also one of the first to recognize that property in Pacific Beach held even greater value for residential development. His former lemon ranch was one of the first areas to be developed, with graded streets, concrete curbs and sidewalks, and a number of new homes. He became a real estate operator and continued to invest in Pacific Beach real estate. In 1909 he acquired a five-acre tract in the northeast corner of Pueblo lot 1800 and subdivided it as Sterling Park, between Lamont, Chico and Kendall streets and Pacific Beach Drive.

Property owned by the Honeycutts, their relatives and former neighbors from Caldwell County, Missouri during the first decade of the twentieth century.
Property owned by the Honeycutts, their relatives and other former residents of Caldwell County, Missouri during the first decade of the twentieth century.

By the end of the decade the extended Honeycutt family and their fellow migrants were a sizable presence in Pacific Beach, with seven households counted in the 1910 census. Sterling Honeycutt himself, by then a widower, lived in a house full of relatives, including his niece Pearl and three children of Nancy’s niece Agnes Rogers. His sister Sallie Parmenter, with husband William shared a household with their daughter Wilda McCrary, her husband Frank and their children (Charles McCrary and his family had moved back to Missouri in 1908, but returned and settled in San Diego in 1911). The Parmenters’ son Frank, with wife Ida and their son Guy lived on Lamont Street. Honeycutt’s brothers Daniel, with daughter Orpha McLain and her husband Mark, and John, with wife Edwina and their son Harry, his wife and child were also Pacific Beach residents. Moses and Ella Town, not relatives but neighbors of the Parmenters and McCrarys in Missouri, also still lived on Hornblend.

Sterling Honeycutt died in 1911, followed within a few years by the elder Parmenters and the Towns. Other family members moved away, some to downtown San Diego and some back to Missouri. By 1920 only the families of Daniel Honeycutt and Frank Parmenter remained in Pacific Beach, and Frank and Ida Parmenter still lived at the corner of Lamont and Thomas streets into the 1950s.

When Venice Park was created from Acre Lots 72 and 73 of Pacific Beach in 1906, a new street in the subdivision was named Honeycutt Street, presumably in honor of the then-prominent Pacific Beach residents (although Honeycutt was not a participant in the subdivision). The name of this street, between Morrell and Lamont streets from Pacific Beach Drive to Crown Point Drive, is the only sign of the Honeycutt family remaining in Pacific Beach.

Honeycutt and Fortuna

Places

PB Methodist Churches

The first church in Pacific Beach was organized in September 1888, the year after the community’s creation and opening sale of lots. The founder was Rev. C. S. Sprecher, who was also one of the founders of the San Diego College of Letters which opened the same month on the College Campus, now the site of Pacific Plaza. In 1889 the church acquired property across the street from the college and a year later a building was moved onto the site for church services. The Pacific Beach Presbyterian Church is still there, at the southwest corner of Garnet Avenue and Jewell Street, although the original wooden church gave way to the current mission-style building in 1941.

The college failed in 1891 but Pacific Beach found a new purpose as a center of lemon cultivation. Many of the lemon ranchers, however, were not Presbyterians and in 1901 a Methodist congregation was also established in Pacific Beach. At first the Methodists met at the Presbyterian church but in 1904 they purchased ten lots at the southeast corner of Lamont and Emerald streets and modified the existing building on the site for their own church building (in 1906, the Methodist minister, Henry Roissy, also purchased the former home of E. C. and Rose Hartwick Thorpe on the other side of Emerald Street, the northeast corner of Lamont and Emerald).

In the first years of the twentieth century the lemon industry also declined but real estate speculation, led by Folsom Bros. Co., generated new growth in the population, and in church congregations. The San Diego Union reported in April 1906 that Easter services in both Pacific Beach churches were well attended, especially the Methodist chapel; ‘Mr. Roissy being very much liked and an able speaker, the chapel will soon have to be enlarged’.

Fundraising for a new Methodist church included what the Union called a good, old-fashioned, healthy (for body, soul and pocket-book) box social held in the church parlor. ‘To the uninitiated-and there were many-the excitement of buying at auction, suppers, in dainty boxes; hunting the fair partners who had prepared them; then examining and partaking of the delicious feasts, was wholly enjoyable’ (attendance was good, in spite of inclement weather, and the treasurer was able to add $10 to the steadily growing church fund). If box socials were already old-fashioned in 1906, the custom may require explanation today. Young ladies would bring a dinner for two in an elaborately decorated box to the box social, where the boxes were auctioned off to the young men in attendance. When all the boxes had been claimed, the young men would discover which of the young ladies had prepared their box, then sit down to enjoy the contents with her. The proceeds of the auction would go to the church. The boxes were supposed to be anonymous, but it wasn’t unheard of for the girl who donated one to provide a favored boy with a hint.

Instead of enlarging their existing church building, the Methodists acquired one of the largest buildings in town and remodeled it. This building had originally been built in 1888 as a dance pavilion overlooking the beach near the foot of Grand Avenue and close to the terminus of the railway between San Diego and Pacific Beach. In 1896 lemon rancher Sterling Honeycutt had purchased the north half of Block 239, the south side of Hornblend Street between Lamont and Morrell streets, and moved the dance pavilion (and the hotel which had adjoined it) to this property, which was across Lamont from his lemon ranch. At its new location on the southwest corner of Hornblend and Morrell the former dance pavilion was also on the railway line to San Diego and Honeycutt had converted it into a lemon curing and packing plant. By 1906, however, the lemon business in Pacific Beach had also run its course, and Honeycutt, a founder and trustee of the Methodist Church in Pacific Beach, donated the packing house to the church. $2,500 in repairs was required to transform the building into the ‘beautiful church edifice’ that was dedicated in February 1907.

(SDHC #395-A)
The Pacific Beach Methodist Church (former dance pavilion, left) and Folsom Bros. Co. office, (former hotel, right), on Hornblend Street between Lamont and Morrell, dominate the PB skyline in 1908. Lamont Street is in foreground. (San Diego History Center #395-A)

In 1912 the old church property at Lamont and Emerald was sold to Bessie Davis, wife of San Diego Army and Navy Academy founder Capt. Thomas A. Davis. The Davises built a home on the property, which was just across Lamont Street from the academy, and spent the rest of their lives there. The Roissys sold the former Thorpe home to John L. Davis, Jr., Capt. Davis’ brother, in 1924 and ‘Mother’ Davis, their mother, lived there into the 1950s. That house burned down in 1957.

The Methodists continued to worship in the church at Hornblend and Morrell until 1922 when it was sold and apparently torn down. It had disappeared from the tax rolls by 1924 and for the next 25 years Methodists in Pacific Beach had to attend services elsewhere. As the population surged in the 1940s a new Pacific Beach Methodist Church was established in 1947, led by Rev. Alfred Hughes. This congregation met in a church building built for the Wee Kirk by-the-Sea in 1943 at the southeast corner of Emerald and Haines streets.

Wee Kirk by the Sea

A few months after re-establishment of the Methodist church at Emerald and Haines, the San Diego school district announced an ‘exchange of functions’ between the Pacific Beach Elementary School, then located on the north side of Emerald Street, across from the church, and the Pacific Beach Junior High School, then located where PB Elementary is now, at Fanuel and Tourmaline streets. The junior high school would occupy the site of the elementary school, which would be expanded to accommodate its expected growth. The school superintendent was authorized to acquire the two blocks of property south of the school, which included the Methodist church.

In May 1948 the school board offered the Methodist church $36,000 for the property and Rev. Hughes accepted (he also paid $5050 for a house and garage that the school auctioned off after acquiring another parcel in the expansion area, in what is now right field of the recreation center softball diamond). Rev. Hughes’ and most of the other buildings on the new school property were moved or cleared away before the school reopened in time for the 1950 school year. However, many former students of the junior high school (now PB Middle School) remember the church building still standing in the middle of their school playing fields into the 1960s.

A month after selling the former Wee Kirk by-the-Sea building to the school district, the Methodists dedicated a site at the southwest corner of Ingraham and Thomas streets for a new church. Former barracks buildings from Camp Callan in Torrey Pines were moved to the site and served as church buildings until a new sanctuary was built in 1959. This sanctuary and the former barracks (now known as Hughes Hall) remain the home of the second oldest church congregation in Pacific Beach.

People

Celebrity PB Pioneer

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Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight - Rose Hartwick Thorpe, 1883
Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight – Rose Hartwick Thorpe, 1883

Rose Hartwick Thorpe was famous long before she moved to Pacific Beach. In 1867 Rose Hartwick was a 16-year-old schoolgirl in Litchfield, Michigan who from an early age had shown an aptitude for writing poetry. One night, inspired by the story ‘Love and Loyalty’ in Peterson’s Magazine, she had written the narrative poem ‘Bessie and the Curfew’. In the poem, set in England during the English civil war of 1600s, Bessie risked everything by climbing the slimy ladder to the church tower and clinging to the tongue of the bell as it swung to and fro over the city far below to prevent it from sounding curfew, the time set for the execution of her lover Basil Underwood on suspicion of spying for the royalist Cavaliers:

She had listened while the judges read, without a tear or sigh,
‘At the ringing of the curfew, Basil Underwood must die.’
And her breath came fast and faster, and her eyes grew large and bright;
One low murmur, faintly spoken. “Curfew must not ring tonight!’.

When Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan leader, road into town, Bessie knelt at his feet and told her story, showing him her bruised and torn hands, and touched his heart with sudden pity, saving Basil’s life:

“Go! your lover lives,” said Cromwell. “Curfew shall not ring tonight!”.

Rose Hartwick’s poetry had appeared in local newspapers before but when this poem, renamed ‘Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight’, was printed in 1870 it became a sensation and was reprinted by newspapers all over the country and even in published collections. It became one of the most popular poems of the nineteenth century, familiar to almost everyone.

In 1871 Rose Hartwick married Edward Carson (E. C.) Thorpe, a carriage maker, and they soon had a daughter, Lulo. In the early 1880s the Thorpes moved from Michigan to San Antonio, Texas, where they hoped the warmer climate would improve Mr. Thorpe’s health.

Meanwhile, in San Diego, a transcontinental rail line had arrived in 1885 and the city experienced a huge influx of settlers known as the ‘great boom’. The boom also attracted visionaries who saw the potential for San Diego to become a great city and hoped to participate in shaping its future. Harr Wagner was publisher of the Golden Era, a literary journal based in San Francisco. In 1887 Wagner moved the paper to San Diego, where he began a campaign for civic improvements which included the establishment of an institution of higher learning. He founded a college and arranged with the Pacific Beach Company to integrate it into the community they were planning to develop.

Wagner also reached out to Mrs. Thorpe, an occasional contributor to the Golden Era: ‘He wrote me that they wanted me here, that they were starting the college of letters at Pacific Beach’. So the Thorpes moved to San Diego; in September San Diego Union reported that ‘E. C. Thorpe and Rose Hartwick Thorpe, the author of the “Curfew Must Not Ring”, arrived yesterday and will relocate in this city’. Mr. Thorpe joined Wagner as a director and shareholder of the Golden Era Company and Mrs. Thorpe edited a children’s section called ‘Our Homes’ and contributed poetry to the publication.

The Pacific Beach Company began selling lots in December 1887 with the college as one of the subdivision’s primary attractions. A four-block parcel in the center of the community was set aside and in January 1888 the cornerstone of the San Diego College of Letters was laid. When the college opened in September Mrs. Thorpe recalled that both she and her daughter Lulo attended classes. Both also appeared at other college activities; a reception for the college president in October featured a new poem, ‘Margaret’, by Rose Hartwick Thorpe, author of ‘Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight’, read by that gifted lady. At the college’s first commencement the following summer, Miss Lulo Thorpe, daughter of Rose Hartwick Thorpe, the gifted authoress of ‘Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight’, read an able and interesting history of the school year.

E. C. Thorpe joined the real estate boom by becoming a dealer in ‘portable houses’, small wooden structures held together by pins rather than nails or screws. Apparently the Thorpes lived in one themselves; reliving the ‘old days’ for PB’s fiftieth anniversary celebration in 1937 Mrs. Thorpe recalled that ‘We moved our portable cottage to Pacific Beach, and we thus became the very first settlers there’.

However, the great boom came to an end in early 1888. E. C. Thorpe later wrote that the depression that followed in the wake of the boom necessitated the closing of the college in 1890 and many moved away so that by the following year only three or four families remained in the college settlement. One of those that remained was the Barnes family, whose sons Edward and Theodore had also been students at the college. The Thorpes and the Barnes were soon to discover a new source of prosperity in Pacific Beach, lemon cultivation. They also became neighbors, their lemon ranches on opposite sides of Lamont Street, between Diamond and Emerald, the Barnes to the west and the Thorpes to the east. In 1895 Edward Barnes and Lulo Thorpe were married and the couple moved to their own lemon ranch next to his father’s, on Jewell Street.

Rose Hartwick Thorpe was a world-renowned celebrity and always in demand at cultural and artistic events but her husband also became popular as a performer, adopting the character of ‘Hans’ and performing recitations in the broken English of a Dutchman. A favorite was ‘Dot Bacific Peach Flea’ (‘Vot schumps und viggles und bites . . . Und keepen me avake effry nights’). The Thorpes frequently combined their talents for public recitations. In 1890 the ‘popular gifted litterateurs Edward Carson Thorpe and Rose Hartwick Thorpe charmed the hearts of their hearers from first to last. ‘Hans’, as usual, convulsed his audience with laughter. The famed authoress of ‘Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight’ won her audience, as she always does, by rendering her own compositions’.

Rose Hartwick Thorpe also did her part to improve the cultural environment of the community. In 1895 the ladies of Pacific Beach met at her home and formed a reading club, with Mrs. Thorpe as president. For years the club met at members homes (the members were all women) but in 1911 they built their own clubhouse, now the Pacific Beach Womans Club, at 1721 Hornblend Street.

Lemon ranching dominated Pacific Beach for more than a decade after the college collapsed but when residential growth resumed E. C. Thorpe also became a building contractor. Much of his business was in La Jolla and in 1901 the Thorpes moved into a cottage he had built there, selling the orchard and home in Pacific Beach to their daughter and son-in-law. In 1906 both families moved downtown, the Thorpes to 3rd Avenue in Hillcrest and then to locations in Mission Hills overlooking San Diego Bay and the Barnes to 4th Avenue, across Upas Street from his parents, who had also sold their Pacific Beach ranch and moved to the city. After E. C. Thorpe died in 1916 Mrs. Thorpe moved back to Hillcrest and later joined the Barnes colony at 4th and Upas. Rose Hartwick Thorpe died in 1939 at the age of 89.

After the Thorpes and the Barnes left Pacific Beach their former home at Lamont and Emerald became the parsonage for the Methodist Church and later the home of ‘Mother’ Davis, whose son, Capt. Thomas A. Davis, was the founder and long-time president of San Diego Army and Navy Academy. In 1957 the old house burned to the ground in a spectacular blaze witnessed by many in Pacific Beach (myself included).

Few people today have heard of Rose Hartwick Thorpe or ‘Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight’ but one of her poems may actually have changed the map of San Diego. The shallow lagoon south of Pacific Beach had originally been called False Bay to distinguish it from San Diego Bay, the ‘true’ natural harbor further to the south. Mrs. Thorpe is said to have suggested that ‘Mission Bay’ would be a more fitting name and her poem ‘Mission Bay’ (‘now blue, now gray’) in the August 1888 Golden Era initiated the campaign to rename it. Although the bay was known by both names for years her choice became increasingly popular and False Bay was officially renamed Mission Bay in 1915.

RHT - Autograph

Places

The House Next Door

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Gridley Ranch House, Diamond Street, 1968
Gridley/McConnell Ranch House, 1790 Diamond Street, 1968

An old 2-story frame house with white siding, green trim, a shingle roof and a brick chimney stood next door to our home on Diamond Street during the 1950s and 60s. Widening and paving the street had cut into the front yard leaving a badly eroded bank down to the sidewalk. An unpaved driveway cut through this bank on the east side and led to a garage at the back of the lot. There was a patio with a large brick outdoor fireplace or incinerator in the yard and a fish pond with large goldfish by the side of the house.

Our lot and the lot that this old house sat on were separated by a cement-block wall with bricks on top. The unpaved alley that ran behind both of our lots all the way between Jewell and Lamont Street was also blocked by a wooden fence along this same line, and by another fence further west, so this portion of the alley was blocked off from either end. We always wondered why.

It turns out that the cement-block wall and the fence in the alley marked the boundary between two historical Pacific Beach ‘acre lots’, and the blocked section of alley was a consequence of the different ways these two acre lots had been developed. When the Pacific Beach Company first sold lots to the public in December 1887 their map of Pacific Beach was a grid of north-south streets and east-west avenues which divided the entire area into residential blocks of 40 lots each. However, the Pacific Beach Company found that most people preferred to buy lots in a central corridor centered around Grand Avenue, which was also the route of the railroad to San Diego. To encourage sales in the outlying areas to potential farmers and ranchers, the company filed an amended subdivision map in 1892 in which most of the area south of Reed Avenue and north of Diamond Street (then Alabama Avenue) was consolidated into ‘acre lots’ of about 10 acres each, eliminating many of the original streets and avenues. In our area, Missouri Avenue and Jewell and Kendall Streets (then Ninth and Tenth Streets) were removed and Acre Lot 48 formed from the land between Diamond and Chalcedony (then Idaho) and what had been Jewell and the east side of Kendall on the original map. Acre Lot 49 was the land east of Kendall between Chalcedony, Diamond and Lamont (Eleventh) Street.

The acre lots went on sale in 1892 for $100 an acre and both of these lots were quickly sold. Mary E. Rowe purchased Acre Lot 49 and developed a lemon ranch on the property. Her 2-story ranch house stood near the center of the lot, where the apartments at 1828-1840½ Missouri Street are now (the large palm tree in front of these apartments once stood in front of the Rowe ranch house). Mrs. Rowe had moved to Pacific Beach in 1889 and her daughters Evangeline and Mabel had been students at the San Diego College of Letters. Her lemon ranching venture began successfully and by 1897 the San Diego Union singled her out  in reporting that ‘the ladies of Pacific Beach were justly proud of their ranches’; hers was then valued at $9000.

Mrs. Rowe moved to Los Angeles in 1900 and left the lemon ranch in the hands of her son Percy. However, by then the lemon business had seen its day and the new century brought another ‘boom’ in residential development. In 1903 Acre Lot 49 was sold to John and Julia Hauser and the Hausers re-subdivided the property into residential lots. The map for Hauser’s Subdivision reinstated Missouri Street and re-established the original two blocks of 40 25 X 125 foot lots which had preceded the acre lot. Like the originals, and most other blocks in Pacific Beach, these blocks included a 20-foot wide alley. Julia Hauser died in 1937, John Hauser remarried in 1939, and in 1950 my parents bought lots 39 and 40 of Block 2, Hauser’s Subdivision, from Martha Hauser, his widow. Block 2 was between Diamond and Missouri Streets and lots 39 and 40 were at the southwest corner, on Diamond Street adjoining Acre Lot 48.

By contrast, Acre Lot 48 has never been re-subdivided and was broken up piecemeal over the years into the irregularly-sized lots that exist today. In 1892 Hannah Cogswell had acquired the western half and Milton Trumbauer the eastern half; Trumbauer’s deed specified that his property had a frontage of 290 feet on ‘Alhambra’ (Alabama) Avenue, a depth of 680 feet and contained 4.65 acres. Today this would be from the cement-block wall half way down the block toward Jewell Street, and from Diamond Street to Chalcedony. Trumbauer did not hold on to his half of the lot for long; by 1894 county records show that the E 1/2 of Acre Lot 48 was owned by Fannie B. Gridley.

The old house on the property was built for Mrs. Gridley in 1896 by E. C. Thorpe, the contractor (and lemon rancher) who was also the husband of the famous poet Rose Hartwick Thorpe. Mrs. Thorpe’s 1896 diary mentions that he secured the contract to build the house on January 6, commenced work on January 13 and that it was finished by March 11, 1896, despite occasional delays due to rain. The status of the Gridleys’ house was also reported in the Pacific Beach Notes column of the San Diego Union and Evening Tribune; on February 24, 1896 the note was that Mrs. Gridley’s house was nearing completion and would soon be ready for occupancy and on March 15 Mrs. Gridley was said to be moving into her new home. These reports are confirmed by county records; beginning in 1897 the ‘value of improvements’ on the E 1/2 of Acre Lot 48 ($250) corresponded to about what other houses in Pacific Beach were assessed at in those days.

The Gridleys remained in the house for six years and were noted in other Pacific Beach Notes; in 1899 Mr. Gridley was thrown from his carriage and badly injured in a runaway accident and in 1900 Miss Kate Gridley left for Stanford University on Sunday’s steamer. In 1902 they sold their half of the acre lot to Francis Kinney and in 1903 Kinney sold to J. W. Stump. The Stumps were prominent in organizing the Pacific Beach Methodist Church, which was then located at the corner of Lamont and Emerald, just a block away. When Mrs. Stump’s health compelled them to move in 1906  a procession of about forty people from the church marched over for a surprise party bearing food and gifts.

The Stumps also initiated the haphazard re-subdivision of Acre Lot 48 by splitting off the southeast quarter of their eastern half, where their house stood, and selling the remainder to Sterling Honeycutt. Honeycutt was a prominent real estate developer in Pacific Beach at the time and he proceeded to carve up his portion of the property into residential lots, while also setting aside land for the westward extension of Missouri Street and the alleys laid out in Hausers Addition to the east.

The southeastern corner of Acre Lot 48 was put on the market by real estate agents Asher & Littlefield who placed the following ad in the February 11, 1907, Union:

Here’s a Money Maker

At Pacific Beach, a beautiful southeast corner, 125X270, with a nice 8-room house, bath, hot and cold water, fireplace, etc.: barn, chicken house, 30 lemon trees in full bearing, 5 peach trees, 11 guava bushes, 2 fig trees, flowers, shrubs, etc. This is on Diamond avenue, and only one block from Hotel Balboa. Would be a good buy at $5000. Our price is only $4000.

(Hotel Balboa was the most recent occupant of the defunct San Diego College of Letters buildings; they were taken over by the San Diego Army and Navy Academy in 1910 and demolished to make room for Pacific Plaza in 1958.)

This 125 X 270 parcel, a strip 125 feet wide on the east line of the lot between Diamond Street and Missouri, including the house, barn, chicken house and fruit trees, was sold in 1906 to Ralph Houck. In 1912 it was sold again, to Kate McConnell. The McConnell family, Thomas and Elizabeth and their 9 children, had immigrated from Ireland to Iowa in 1881. In 1897, one of the sons, also named Thomas, had moved to Pacific Beach and began buying agricultural properties. In 1900 he had been joined by his father, sister Kate and brother John, and the McConnell family became well-established in Pacific Beach.

Although Miss McConnell granted easements to Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company and San Diego Consolidated Gas & Electric Company for a telephone line and natural gas pipeline above and under her property in what would later become the alley, the parcel between Diamond and Missouri remained intact for decades until she sold to Arthur and Marion Hansen in 1946. Within a year the Hansens had divided the property into three parcels and sold them off. The east 65 feet of the south 125 feet, between Diamond Street and the future alley, including the old house, was sold to Roy and Catherine Pridemore in 1947. The west 60 feet of the south 125 feet was also sold in 1947, to Florence Dreher. The Pridemores acquired Ms. Dreher’s  lot in 1948 and in 1950 sold off the west 50 feet of their combined property while retaining the east 75 feet. These two properties thus came to resemble normal Pacific Beach residential parcels made up of 25 X 125-foot lots.

The remaining parcel, the north 145 feet of the east 125 feet, between these properties and Missouri Street, was much larger and was initially advertised as suitable for a motel. While other lots carved out of larger tracts in Acre Lot 48 had set aside land for public alleys and even for Missouri Street, there was no such exception for this parcel. The south 20 feet stood in the way of the 20-foot-wide alleys on either side and fences were built to block access from the alleys. Raymond and Clara Butchart purchased it from the Hansens in 1947 and in 1965 they finally granted the city an easement over that 20-foot strip. The fences were then removed and the alley opened and paved from Jewell to Lamont Streets.

The house itself, one of the last remaining ranch houses from Pacific Beach’s acre lots, stood for a few years after that. In 1968 the property was sold and the old buildings demolished and replaced by a 12-unit apartment complex, the Tiffany, which now practically fills the 75 X 125 foot lot. Our former home, remodeled with the addition of a second story, has also been sold. The two properties are still divided by a cement-block wall.

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Gridley/McConnell House