John Nolen (1869-1937)
When in 1907 Philadelphia native and city planner John Nolen was hired by merchant George W. Marston on the recommendation of landscape architect Samuel Parsons, Jr. to prepare a comprehensive development plan for San Diego, he was comparatively unknown in city planning or landscape architecture circles. He had opened his office in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1903. two years before he received his A.M. from the Harvard School of Landscape Architecture in 1905 at the age of thirty-six, the same year he became a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Also, in 1907, he had obtained a commission to survey potential park sites for the state of Wisconsin; in 1915 and 1923 respectively he was given commissions to design towns in Kingsport, Tennessee and Mariemont, Ohio; and in 1917 he was appointed to survey Charlotte, North Carolina. By 1919, Nolen had written two books, edited two others, and published scores of articles and plans. His standing had so increased that in 1927 he was elected president of the National Conference on City Planning.
As most of these achievements were in the future, his plan for the City of San Diego, completed in 1908, was a "make or break" effort. In commenting on the problems of a growing metropolis, he was far removed from making plans for the small "garden cities" of Kingsport and Mariemont. He had entered the domain of such distinguished city planners as Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. and Clarence Stein. He recommended that San Diego build a civic center plaza on D Street (Broadway since 1912) between Front and First Sreets and develop its bayfront with a "paseo" joining the bay to City Park (Balboa Park since 1910). Marston, Women’s Clubs, and Chamber of Commerce officials supported these proposals, but they never got beyond the argument stage. Passage in 1911 of a bond issue to build two long piers at the foot of Broadway did away with Nolen’s terminus for D Street; public resources were diverted to the 1915-1916 Panama-California Exposition in Balboa Park; and George W. Marston, Nolen’s champion, was defeated in mayoralty contests in 1913 and 1917, in which Marston’s opponents, Charles F. O’Neall and Louis J, Wilde, ridiculed Nolen’s vision of a palatial Mediterranean-like city instead of a city of factories and docks.
As a by-product of the Panama-California Exposition, the U.S. Navy and U. S. Marine Corps settled in San Diego. While factory and commercial promoters thought of the military as its natural ally, this proved to be a delusion. As San Diego was not-equipped to deal with the intra-structural problems of expanding military installations, a need for centralized city planning became imperative. Accordingly, in 1924 the City Council invited John Nolen back to San Diego to update his 1908 plan. To further Nolen’s plans, the Council in 1925 appointed Kenneth Gardner, from Nolen’s Cambridge office, as "planning engineer."
Nolen’s second San Diego city plan in 1926 broadened the goals of the 1908 plan. The emphasis was still on the waterfront, where civic buildings would be located and a "recreation island" would be created, an airport would be placed on tidelands, and a "paseo" would link to Balboa Park. Seeing more than San Diego’s downtown, Nolen proposed traffic connections to outlying regions. This new focus may have reflected changing standards in City Planning, which at the time were dividing into specialized and overlapping departments in colleges and cities throughout the country. On the other hand, the necessity of providing industrial and commercial traffic arteries to the rest of the nation and to Mexico was too pressing to ignore.
Proposals of the 1926 plans were again supported and opposed. Unlike the 1908 recommendations, many were implemented in slow stages, rather than all-at-once. City residents, whose property lay in its wake, opposed the iconic paseo reminiscent of paseos in European cities. The same residents were not so lucky in 1959, when the Crosstown Freeway (State Highway 5) plowed through their neighborhood devouring residences and providing an express connection to Mexico. Nolen’s Harbor Drive, which was to provide the same service, had proven inadequate.
Desiring to get the most of Nolen while he was in the City, Marston in 1927 commissioned him to prepare a landscape plan for Presidio Park, which at that time was in his possession. (It did not become City property until 1937.) Nolen refined a plan for the Presidio he had prepared for Marston in 1916. At that time he suggested a museum be built on a knoll overlooking the park. This became the Junípero Serra Museum which was dedicated on July 16, 1929.
Nolen also prepared a 1927 plan for Balboa Park, the first such effort since Samuel Parsons, Jr’s. plan was completed and largely forgotten before the opening of the Panama-California Exposition. While Nolen appreciated the 1915-1916 buildings, he warned against encroachments in Balboa Park. He was responsible for the development of Morley Field in the northeast quadrant of the park for physical sports. However, the implementation of his proposals were delayed until work-relief funds from the federal government during the depression following the stock market crash of 1929 made them feasible and, indeed, necessary.
The passage of a new city charter in 1931 and the appointment of Glenn Rick as planning engineer carried forward the utopian plans of John Nolen. Rick championed long-range city planning. He helped develop Mission Bay as a recreation and tourist attraction, which was in keeping with Nolen’s hopes for a flourishing and integrated city park system.
Nolen died in 1937 at the age of sixty-eight.
-- biographical sketch written by Richard Amero, 2004
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