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History of the California Building in Balboa Park

by Richard Amero

Architecture

Very few people appear to have looked carefully at the south facade of the California Building in San Diego's Balboa Park. H. K. Raymenton described it as Plateresque in style. Trent Sanford thought it better than anything in Mexico or Spain. William Templeton Johnson called it the finest Spanish-Renaissance facade in existence, and Thomas E. Tallmadge hailed it as the best example of Churrigueresque architecture in the world.

An article in the San Diego Union, January 1, 1915, asserted the California Building was "copied in many essential details from the magnificent cathedral at Oaxaca, Mexico." Christian Brinton repeated this suggestion in June of the same year. After checking with Bertram Goodhue, who designed the California Building, C. Matlack Price referred to the comparison as "palpably absurd." The Late- Renaissance Cathedral of Oaxaca, rebuilt in the early eighteenth century, has a compartmentalized facade with three horizontal tiers and five vertical bays which hold one principal and two lateral doorways, and is flanked by two squat, single-stage towers. None of its details resemble those on the California Building.

Carol Mendel declared the California Building facade was taken from the seventeenth to nineteenth-century late- Renaissance, Baroque, Neo-Classical facade of the Cathedral of Mexico in Mexico City. If she had selected the mid- eighteenth century Sagrario Metropolitano, which adjoins the cathedral, she would have been closer to the truth, for this building's facade is an outstanding example of Mexican Ultra-Baroque, or, as it is generally known, Churrigueresque. To George H. Edgell, the California Building recalled the late eighteenth-century Churrigueresque-Rococo Balvanera Chapel of San Francisco in Mexico City; however John Burchard and Albert Bush-Brown described the California Building's entrance and tower as "torrid," and claimed inaccurately that the Commerce and Industries Building (today the Casa de Balboa) was more closely related to the exuberant exterior of the Balvanera Chapel.

Samuel Wood Hamill considered the west facade of the former Jesuit Church of San Francisco Javier in Tepotzotlan, Mexico, to be "the great, and many times great grandfather of the California Building." This claim ran counter to Marcus Whiffen's description of the California Building as "an ecclesiastical-looking edifice whose facades and tower offer connoisseurs a test of their dexterity in disentangling Churrigueresque motifs from Morelia, Mexico City, Tepotzotlan, and San Luis Potosi.

The Church of San Francisco Javier and the California Building share the same scheme of a three-level gabled frontispiece with accompanying side tower; however, no one detail on the Tepotzotlan facade is duplicated on Bertram Goodhue's Balboa Park building. What one finds on Goodhue's facade are a variety of details resembling details on the facades of many Mexican and Spanish churches and palaces.

Seen from a distance, in full sunlight, the white limestone facade of San Francisco Javier sparkles and shimmers like a finely faceted jewel. In San Diego, high confining walls restrict the observer to close-up views, depriving him of the sense of discovery that comes from approaching over a long forecourt or atrium. Long dark shadows, produced by sun or moonlight and projecting concrete surfaces on the San Diego facade, dramatize and enrich the design, but individual details do not shimmer.

The area surrounding the protruding San Diego portal is plain; whereas in Tepotzotlan, adjoining wall surfaces are rusticated and further highlighted by embossing around window openings at the base of the tower. The broad, deeply-cut surfaces, deliberate symmetry, and bland portraiture on the Balboa Park building differ from the fine textures, ascending movement, and jubilant statues on the Tepotzotlan facade.

Many of the California Building's details arose from Goodhue's firsthand study of Spanish-Colonial architecture during his travels in Mexico with Sylvester Baxter in 1899.

Columns on the first level resemble columns encased by vertical straps of carving on the facade of the Church of El Carmen at San Luis Potosi. Vines and birds on the jambs parallel those on the portal of the Chapel of the Virgin in San Luis Potosi. An arch above the door recalls multi- scalloped arches above the door of the Church of San Diego in Guanajuato. Volutes suggest the curves and countercurves of the Church of San Cayetano de la Valenciana in Guanajuato. A large rectangular window looks like windows on secular buildings, such as the house of the archbishop at San Luis Potosi or the entrance to the archbishop's palace in Seville, Spain. A curved wrought-iron balcony echoes balconies on civic buildings, such as the Casa del Alfenique in Puebla or the State Palace in Guadalajara.

Goodhue's design amounts to a twentieth-century recapitulation of Plateresque, Baroque, Churrigueresque, and Rococo details. It is impure historically and odd in its imposition of a secular window and balustrade on an ecclesiastical frontispiece. Unusual features are, on the first level, cast-concrete faces, bird heads, sprays and shells covering jambs, columns with spiral incisions and ribbon garniture, beatific statues of monks between the columns, marine-like foliage above the door, and elaborate aprons or lambrequins at the base of columns and statues; on the second level, tapered estipite pilasters divided into elaborately carved segments with elegantly attired knights between, and crowded floral garlands hanging down next to the splayed reveal; and, on the third or shaped- gable level, candelabra-like pilasters and wall reliefs.

Much of the flat, finely delineated ornament, such as masks, cupids, candelabra, garlands, and fruits, derives from Spanish Plateresque motifs. Baroque twisted columns, broken and curved moldings, pushed-up cornices, and urns, held together by an underlying Classic symmetry, provide contrasts of light and shadow and focus attention upon points of interest. Finally, gay Rococo scrolls, sprays and drapes relieve the heavy Baroque and Churrigueresque rhythms and textures.

In 1916, Eugen Neuhaus and William Templeton Johnson selected the Philippine mahogany doors for special mention. These have a radial pattern at top and geometric Spanish- Moorish paneling below. They contain carvings of foliation, rosettes, cherub heads, and shields. Over the door, two cast-concrete cherubs, rising from a bed of seaweed, hold aloft the Arms of the State of California. The rinceau motif suggests a Rococo origin, though the foliation is similar to Goodhue's youthful title-cover and page designs.

The facade lacks a dynamic center as the large blank window diffuses rather than concentrates incident. Access to the outdoor balcony is from a stairway concealed in a wall. Entrance is too far above the floor to be of practical use.

Modified Corinthian columns on the facade's first level are engaged; fractured estipites on the second level are free standing. Estipites, columns, pilasters, arches, pediments, frames, cornices and wall surfaces are saturated with ornament and separated by broken or curved moldings. Vertical elements, such as estipites, columns and pilasters, dominate horizontal elements, such as architraves, friezes and cornices. Side pediments, whose sharp angles contrast with the soft curves of the reveal atop the center window, bridge recessed spaces between first-level columns and second-level estipites. In Mexico, estipite capitals usually accentuate the line of a broken cornice and are left unbridged, as on the Church of San Francisco Javier in Tepotzotlan, or they are joined by a horizontal entablature, as on the Church of San Diego in Guanajuato.

Statues of Father Luis Jayme, Franciscan missionary killed by Indians in 1774, and Father Antonio de la Ascencion, Carmelite historian who accompanied Sebastian Viscaino's expedition in 1602, occupy niches between columns on the east and west sides of the first level. Above the statues are busts of Gaspar de Portola, first Spanish governor of California, and George Vancouver, first English navigator to visit San Diego. Between estipites on east and west sides of the second level are statues of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, who discovered San Miguel Harbor in 1542, and Sebastian Viscaino, who rediscovered the harbor and renamed it San Diego in 1602. Coats of arms of Mexico and Spain take the place of busts above the statues on the second level.

Rising above zigzagging side pediments, busts of Charles V and Philip III of Spain delimit the upward lateral movement. This shifting of accents provides balance for the statue of Junipero Serra, Father-President of the California missions, in the top central niche. Presented with face turned sideways and one leg forward, a youthful-looking Father Serra appears in stride, which fits in with his mythic image as an energetic walker. In fact, Father Serra was fifty-six years old when he entered Alta California, was disabled by a chronic leg infection, and rode from place to place on mule back.

Above Serra, a shield of the United States brings the historical and geographical themes to a conclusion. The small shield is kept subdued to avoid interfering with the impact of the Serra statue. Free-standing urns, grouped in a pyramidal arrangement above the crest, echo the triangular relationship between busts and statues below. The wavelike upward movement is enhanced, in a manner reminiscent of the Sagrario Metropolitano, by a variety of curves on sloping side walls.

There is a subsidiary Gothic influence on the California Building facade, which is not surprising as Bertram Goodhue was one of this country's foremost designers of Gothic churches. The attenuated line of the facade, the efforts to avoid compartmentalization by tying segments together, the placement and pose of figures, the too-ample window space, and the triangular silhouette of the crest suggest Gothic features.

Detail on estipites, columns and flat spaces is chunky and globular. There is nothing here of the wealth of invention, subtle rhythms and crisp carving on the facades of the Church of San Francisco Javier in Tepotzotlan and the Church of La Cata in Guanajuato. Sun-reflecting plain walls and sun-absorbing sculptured portal contrast with one another. Lights and shadows change within the multi-planed ornamental field. But the detail does not display the craftsmanship and diversity on Mexican Vice-Regal church facades.

Artisans employed by the Tracy Brick and Art Stone Company of Chula Vista made the detail by setting concrete in molds prepared from plaster models executed by the Piccirilli brothers (Attilio, Furio, Thomas and Horatio) of New York City. Goodhue designed the decorative frame, but gave the Piccirillis a free hand in creating the figure sculpture. Elegant and epicene, the statues and busts look like handsome dolls rather than like people animated by strong emotions and convictions. After they removed the sections from the molds, the Chula Vista workers smoothed the surfaces.

Except for the green woodwork of the frames, the deeper green of the ironwork, the bright brown of the door, and the colored tiles on domes and tower, color was used sparingly on the California Building. Its gray surface differs from the varied colored surfaces of churches made from red volcanic stone in Mexico.

Exposure to elements over the years caused bonding and dowels, holding facade to wall, to loosen and concrete to crack. Soot and acids from the air and salts in the original sands, pervaded the cast-concrete surface, blanching and speckling the design. In 1964, the Art A. Gussa Construction Company of El Cajon replaced the plaster base of the tower with gunite concrete and braced the upper stages in an $80,000 project. In 1975, general contractors Claude F. Williams, Incorporated of Torrance, with Lew Anderson as project superintendent, undertook another tower, facade and west entrance archway renovation for $550,000. When built in 1913-14, the California Building cost the State of California $250,000.

An epoxy-resin impregnation process, patented by Universal Restorations, Incorporated, of Washington, D.C., used in the 1975 renovation was supposed to make the facade sculpture stronger than when originally built. Technicians from Universal Restorations dried the concrete with steam, bringing out the salts. Then they sprayed or painted layers of a combustible epoxy-resin mixture on the surface. Mike Casey of Universal Restorations replaced damaged or missing lanterns, moldings, noses, ears, and other protuberances with plastic or fiberglass replicas, weighing about 25 percent less than the originals. To avoid too sharp a contrast between old and new parts, Casey added coloring agents and sand from Sweetwater Canyon to the final epoxy- resin coating. Sand from Sweetwater Canyon had been used in the original figures.

Since Goodhue used cast concrete as a substitute for stone and the Piccirilli brothers used clay modeling and plaster casts instead of direct carving, the use of plastic, epoxy-resin, and fiberglass is in keeping with past practice. As a hallmark of baroque art is the use of one medium or material to simulate another, the substitutions do not contradict baroque techniques. Also, because columns and estipites have no support functions, but are decorative veneer only, there is a certain logic in reducing their weight as much as possible.

Purists will find these material changes difficult to accept. Visually, the fiberglass replacements are obvious. A fiberglass surface is too smooth and the lines drawn on it too exact to look like the granular and blurred surfaces of concrete or the more durable and varied surfaces of stone. Still Goodhue's facade is not in the same class with the west front of Chartres, or the southeast front of the Parthenon. Techniques that would not be permissible there are allowable in San Diego.

It is the three-stage tower of the California Building, rather than the facade, that has endeared itself to San Diegans. Less square and massive than the cathedral towers of Morelia and Cuernavaca or the church towers of Santa Prisca at Taxco and San Francisco Javier at Tepotzotlan in Mexico, the California Tower has the decreasing stages, changing volumes, open spaces, and color of such church towers as the Torre del Reloj at Compostela, the tower of Santo Domingo de la Calzada near Logrono, and the towers of Ecija in Spain. While the outline is Spanish, details and color are Mexican. Double estipites at the corners of the first stage follow the example of La Santisima in Mexico City. Octagonal second and third stages resemble those on the tower of La Encarnacion in Mexico City. Transitions from quadrangle to octagon to circle correspond to changes in the three-stage tower of the Cathedral of Morelia.

The sparkling tiles, glistening glass beads, and graceful proportions of the California Tower act as a coda for the tiled central dome and minor domes at the back of the building, regrettably hidden today by an ill-placed annex of the Old Globe Theater.

In his comments on the architecture of the 1915 Exposition, Carleton Winslow, Senior, assistant to Bertram Goodhue, stated the arrangement of the tower within an angle formed by the south and west transepts recalled "somewhat" that of the church at Montepulciano in Italy. Winslow referred to Antonio da San Gallo the Elder's sixteenth- century Madonna di San Biagio; however, in this latter case, the towering mass of the church dwarfs its single bell tower.

Goodhue may have evolved his Greek-cross plan from Madonna di San Biagio; even so, Greek-cross plans were not commonly used in Spanish and Mexican churches. (The Sagrario Metropolitano in Mexico City is an exception.)

The starburst tile design on the California Building's center dome copies the design on the dome of Santa Prisca in Taxco. An inscription at the base of the dome of Santa Prisca reads, "GLORIA A DIOS EN LAS ALTURAS" ("Glory to God in the Heights"), whereas the inscription on the base of the California Building's dome reads, "TERRA FRUMENTI HORDEI, AC VINARUM IN QUA FICUS ET MALOGRANATA ET OLIVETA NASCUNTUR, TERRAM OLEI AC MELLIS." Goodhue took this last quotation from the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome. It means: "A land of wheat and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey," a motto in keeping with the agricultural aspirations of the Panama- California Exposition.

Unlike Santa Prisca, but like many Mexican examples, such as the domes of the Royal Chapel in Cholula or the dome of Santa Catarina in Mexico City, the California Building's dome rises from the roof without intervening drum and is pierced on four sides by windows.

Inside, pendentives adapt the dome to the rotunda or, more accurately, octagon. Four arches spring from flat pilasters set at right angles from one another, and separated by a canted middle section. A plain entablature and jutting cornice extend around the walls.

The domes, pendentives and arches derive from Hagia Sophia in Istanbul by way of Italian Renaissance churches. Unlike Hagia Sophia's low circular dome, the California Building's high dome is octagonal in form. Transverse barrel vaults open additional spaces and help counteract the dome's thrust. A low-recessed niche, topped by a half-dome in the middle of the north apse, echoes the curve of the north arch, the only open arch in the rotunda, and dramatizes the building's north-south axis. Three minor corner domes, hidden between the transepts, have greater impact on the outside than on the inside of the building.

The roofline of the transepts follows the curve of the barrel vaults. Except for the main entrance, transepts are not hidden by decorative gables. To achieve this functional effect, Goodhue took advantage of a technique for reinforcing concrete with a light--layered, laminated tile core developed by Rafael Guastavino.

Seen from the north, the corner domes, half domes, barrel vaults, major dome and lantern of the California Building supply a pleasing configuration, further enlivened by colored tile inlays in geometric patterns. The rhythmic sequence of domes goes back to the mosques of Istanbul, while the tile takes its inspiration from the houses and churches of Puebla, Mexico and the mosques of Isfahan, Persia.

The California Building has probably been mentioned more often than any other building in San Diego in studies of American architecture. The building is included in the National Register of Historic Places, as part of the California Quadrangle. In addition, the California Building tower is recorded in the Historic Buildings Survey in the Library of Congress.

In 1915, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue almost singlehandedly introduced the Spanish-Revival style into the United States. Ironically, the buildings which Goodhue later designed in this style were simpler than those in Balboa Park and contained fewer borrowings. The mining town of Tyrone, New Mexico, the Henry Dater House in Montecito, and the United States Marine Corps Base in San Diego have an authority and impressiveness that does not depend on historical associations. David Gebhard thinks the plain and structurally honest buildings Goodhue designed after 1915 reflect the influence of Irving Gill, whom Goodhue superseded as consulting architect of the Panama-California Exposition.

Today, after almost one-hundred years of experimentation with Spanish-Renaissance and Baroque scrolls, grills, columns, estipites, cornices, gables, moldings, niches, shields, saints, shells, cupids, garlands and fruits, the facade of the California Building still surprises. It may be academic and constrained, compared to its predecessors in Mexico and Spain, but it is better than anything ever attempted since in the "decorative toothpaste" or Churrigueresque version of the Spanish-Revival style in Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California, including at least two attempts at direct imitation (St. Vincent's Church, Los Angeles, 1923, Albert C. Martin, architect, and the Garfield Park Administration Building, Chicago, Illinois, 1928, architects Michaelsen and Rognstad.)

Panama-California Exposition exhibits, 1915-1916

Though built for the State of California as its contribution to the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego, the California Building did not house state exhibits. Twenty-eight counties of California exhibited in buildings about the Exposition grounds but the Departments of the State of California confined their exhibits to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 in San Francisco.

Acting on a suggestion from Colonel Charlie Collier, Director-General of the Panama-California Exposition, archaeologist Dr. Edgar L. Hewett, of the School of American Archaeology, and anthropologist Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, of the U.S. National Museum, chose exhibits to illustrate The Story of Man through the Ages, with emphasis on the Indian populations of North and South America. Hrdlicka persuaded the National Museum in Washington, D.C., an adjunct of the Smithsonian Institution, to send exhibits for the Science and Education Building. He also helped to procure skeletal remains of early man in Europe and Siberia, photographs and casts of materials from museums in Europe, busts of native peoples in Siberia, Mongolia, Africa, the Philippines, and other places, and figures executed by the Belgian sculptor M. Mascre representing primitive man for exhibits in the Science and Education Building. Hewett obtained exhibits of Indian life in the Southwest from the School of American Archaeology at Santa Fe for the Indian Arts Building.

Subscribing to the tenets of Social Darwinism widely-accepted at the time, Hrdlicka arranged the busts of ancient and living people and a collection of skulls in the Science and Education Building to prove that the white race was superior in physiology and intelligence to other peoples. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company showed how the lives of policy holders of the company could be prolonged by improved sanitary conditions and by visiting nurses and playgrounds sponsored by the company.

Hewett did not reshape the interior spaces of the California Building to accommodate exhibits. However, he appointed Jean Beman Smith to make bas-reliefs portraying scenes from Maya life, Sally James Farnham to make copies of a historical frieze she had done for the Pan-American Union Building in Washington, D.C. showing incidents in the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru, and Carlos Vierra to produce murals showing the ruins of Copan, Uxmal, Quirigua, Palenque, Chichen Itza, and Tikal. These he added to the vestibule and rotunda to amplify Maya displays from Yucatan, Chiapas, Guatemala, and Honduras, including eight replicas of monoliths from Quirigua that had been excavated in 1910 -1911 by the School of American Archaeology. Ironically, the replicas in the California Building have retained details that are now obscured by weathering on the originals.

Alice Klauber, a San Diego artist, helped to secure paintings by eleven American artists representing the Ash Can and Impressionist schools for mounting in the Fine Arts Building, on the opposite side of the quadrangle from the California Building.

Grant Wallace estimated the costs of the collections in the California, Fine Arts, Science of Man and Indian Arts Buildings at $103,421.54.

In 1916, Exposition officials added French tapestries, carpets, perfumes, fashion designs and art to the upper levels of the California Building and to the Fine Arts Building. The French government sent these exhibits to San Diego from San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition as it was impractical to return them to France because of the war in Europe. Despite their nonconformity with Maya exhibits in the rotunda, Exposition directors put them in the California Building because space was available.

Dr. Hewett continued on as Director of the San Diego Museum after the Panama-California Exposition in 1916. He was at the same time Director of the Museum of New Mexico, president of the School of American Archaeology (later School of American Research), a teacher at San Diego State College and at institutions in Santa Fe, and an archaeologist in charge of excavations at Quirigua in Guatemala and in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. In 1929 Hewett resigned as Director of the San Diego Museum.

After the Exposition

Hewett added partitions to the California Building to organize exhibits, but he did not change interior spaces. Trustees designated the California Building the San Diego Museum on January 11, 1916, the date they officially created the museum. In 1917, Hewett moved exhibits in the Science and Education Building to the 1915 Indian Arts Building (1916 Russia and Brazil Building) and Indian exhibits formerly in the Indian Arts Building to the Science and Education Building. He changed the names of the buildings to reflect the change in exhibits.

Along with the relocation of exhibits, Hewett placed the newly-aquired Joseph Jessop Archery collection of primitive weapons in the 1916 U.S. Government Building at the north end of the Plaza de Panama and rented spaces in the same building to artists.

The San Diego Museum was not affected by the occupation of Balboa Park by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army during World War I.

Illustrating the tendency of government commissions to stay in existence after they had accomplished their mission, the State of California gave the California Building Commission illegal appropriations to maintain the California Building for thirteen years after the Exposition. Other museum expenses were paid from $6,500 given to the Museum by Exposition stockholders who relinquished their claims in 1917, and by membership and admission fees.

Following a hiatus caused by the relocation of priceless exhibits from adjacent buildings to the fireproof California Building, the San Diego Museum reopened on February 19, 1921. Since then, the California Building has been the headquarters of the San Diego Museum.

At the request of the Park Commission, Museum trustees vacated the Science of Man (1915 Indian Arts Building and 1916 Russia and Brazil Building) on March 1, 1922.

In July 1923, a scientific reference library, the gift of W. W. Whitney, was added to the Museum. The building of a new art gallery in Balboa Park in 1925, on the site of the 1916 U.S. Government Building, opened up space in the old Fine Arts Building for Science of Man collections that had been ejected from the Science of Man Building.

The State of California cut off funds for the San Diego Museum in February 1929, whereupon the San Diego City Council appropriated $2,100 to pay the salaries of a curator, custodian and janitor for the Museum. In recognition of City support, the Museum allowed people to see exhibits free.

Fine Arts Gallery construction in 1925 made the removal of the Joseph Jessop archery collection from the U.S. Government Building imperative. Space was found in the east wing of the second floor of the California Building. An Egyptian collection from excavations at Tell-El-Amarna, donated by Ellen Browning Scripps, was placed on a balcony on the east side of the rotunda in the same building.

In November 1931, the San Diego Museum relinquished use of the Indian Arts Building (the 1915 Science and Education Building) as the Museum could not afford the expense of repairing the decaying building. Placing their interests ahead of the San Diego Museum, in May 1932, representatives from the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars asked the City Council to turn the California Building over to them as the structure was not being used to capacity or in a manner commensurate with its cost. Supposedly these conditions would not exist under veteran tenancy.

Experiencing a shortage of funds due to a reduced valuation of taxable city property by the county, the City Council temporarily withdrew its support of institutions in Balboa Park in August 1932.

The California Pacific Exposition, 1935-1936

The Museum continued to function as a museum during the 1935-1936 California-Pacific International Exposition, though its title was changed to Palace of Science to correspond with changes in titles of exhibit buildings along El Prado and in the Palisades.

Special exhibits, some on a loan from the 1933-1934 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, required the removal of the W. W. Whitney scientific reference library to the San Diego Natural History Museum.

The government of Mexico sent crystal cups, gold objects, and jewelry discovered by Alfonso Caso in Grave 7 at Monte Alban in 1932. Though ignored by the newspapers, the exhibit was the most aesthetically intriguing of all the exhibits at the Exposition. The Monte Alban exhibit and Alpha the Robot were placed in the Science Hall (west wing of the 1915 Science and Education Building). In 1936, Mexico replaced the Monte Alban treasures with facsimiles of idols, masks and symbolic figures in the National Museum of Mexico. After the Exposition, these became the property of the Museum. Officials moved Alpha the Robot to the Fun Zone in 1936 where it more appropriately belonged.

After the second Exposition

Recognizing that the departure of Fine Arts and Pioneer Society collections had narrowed the museum's scope, the trustees of the San Diego Museum changed its name to the San Diego Museum of Man in 1942. Holding out the possibility that at some future time the trustees would control other museum enterprises, they continued to call themselves the San Diego Museum Association. When, in 1979 the trustees notified the State of California of a change in the bylaws of the Museum, they dispensed with the San Diego Museum Association title. Whatever the goals of the trustees may be in the future, they are now legally the Museum of Man despite protests of feminists who have requested that the name be changed to the Museum of Men and Women or to the Museum of Humanity.

Following the United States entry into World War II, Museum directors halted a five-year plan of modernization and, in March 1943, they vacated the facility. The U.S. Navy added a second floor to the rotunda and put hospital beds for servicemen in the building and tents for staff in the Plaza de California outside. Casts of Maya stelae, which were too big to move, were sealed within a wall. The task of moving casts from Quirigua called The Turtle and The Dragon was too much for the Navy. To the consternation of Museum staff, sailors sawed each of the monoliths into three pieces.

To undo U.S. Navy alterations and damages, staff renovated the headquarters building after the war. Repair costs were paid from whatever the City could obtain from the sale of 35 temporary structures and from $790,000 that the Navy gave the City to restore buildings it had occupied in Balboa Park. Staff returning from military duty added boomerangs from Australia and models of canoes from Samoa to the museum's collection.

Museum activities were relatively quiet between 1946 and 1965. Dr. Frank Lowe paid for the installation on Christmas Day, December 25, 1946, of a 30-chime carillon in the California Tower in honor of his mother, Ona May Lowe, for the carillon's reconditioning in 1949, and for its replacement, on April 6, 1967, with a 100-chime carillon. The carillon can be played by plastic rolls, as in a player piano, and by a carilloneur at a keyboard. An exhibit asserting that the Soviet Union had wiped out race prejudice lasted approximately a week in July 1950, at which time patriots forced its removal.

As City funds were needed to repair and improve San Diego's infrastructure that had been neglected during the war there was little money left to restore Balboa Park buildings. To solve its financial problems, to carry on research projects, to deter vandalism and burglary, and to pay guards the Museum began charging a 50-cent adult admission fee in July 1965.

After the architecturally non-conforming Timken Gallery and the west wing of the Fine Arts Gallery were built in 1965 and 1966, it became evident that the Spanish-Colonial Revival Style buildings in Balboa Park were nearing the end of their lifetimes and would soon be destroyed.

Because of the zeal of Bea Evenson, the Committee of 100's founder and president, and of Samuel Wood Hamill, the Committee's architectural consultant, the deterioration or demise of surviving Exposition buildings, including the California Building (built in 1915 as a permanent structure) was not allowed to happen.

Museum directors had reservations about the adequacy of the California Building to house exhibits, some of which were originally housed in five separate buildings. Complaints and suggestions went back to 1925. In 1960 the Harland Bartholomew planners recommended that the Museum relocate to the Federal Building. The California Building would then become the nucleus of a theater arts center. Inertia or indifference defeated this plan. In May 1966, architect Hamill showed the Park and Recreation Board drawings of additions to the Museum of Man in an area south of the former Fine Arts Building and the Alcazar Garden. The Board referred the plan to a committee where it was buried. Voters turned down an attempt in 1972 to place the Museum in a refurbished Electric Building. Having failed in prior attempts at expansion, the Museum has suspended attempts to acquire additional buildings. It remains to be seen whether the revamping of present facilities will be a realistic solution to the Museum's space problems.

Beginning in 1976 technicians undertook major renovations to the Museum of Man. They took down a false 15-foot wall hiding the Quirigua stelae at the north end of the rotunda, opening up the exhibit area. The Museum began changing its exhibits with greater frequency. As a result, the Museum's scholastic standing and its popularity increased and, in March 1973, the American Association of Museums formally accredited the San Diego Museum of Man.

John Alessio and his family in 1966 gave quartz-iodine lamps with 48,000,000 candlepower to turn the California Tower into a nighttime landmark. After the rusting of light fixtures in 1980 plunged the Tower into darkness, the San Diego Park and Recreation Department voted to spend $6,500 a year to keep the Tower shining.

In 1990, the Museum of Man moved into the former Administration Building at the west entrance to the California Quadrangle. Douglas Sharon, Museum director, attributed the Administration Building's design to nationally-acclaimed San Diego architect Irving Gill though no empirical evidence existed to substantiate the claim. (It is doubtful that Gill would have been responsible for the contagion of windows that perforate the sides and rear of the building.) Using public and private funds raised by the Museum, the building had been restored on the outside to its 1915 appearance (minus the Churrigueresque ornament) and readapted in the inside to accommodate offices and an auditorium.

In the year 2015 the California Building will observe its 100th anniversary. Barring unforseen changes, the Museum of Man will continue to occupy the ecclesiastical-looking main building and east and west wings that attach to the 1915 Fine Arts Building and the St. Francis Chapel. The former Fine Arts Building, refurbished at a cost of $44,000 in 1984 to reflect its 1915 appearance, is currently used for exhibits and for Christmas on the Prado festivities. The St. Francis Chapel, also restored in 1984 at a cost of $48,000, is available for weddings, but is not open to the public. Other improvements include the addition of steel framing and shelving to basements, doubling storage capacity for more than 55,000 artifacts, or about 89 percent of the Museum's collection, the remodeling of the lobby and first floor, the installation of an elevator on the west side of the first floor, and the paving of the Plaza de California with red brick.

The Museum of Man is not the museum of anthropology designed to collect and preserve the material culture, language, folklore and physical remains of the aboriginal Western American peoples that Dr. Hewett hoped it would be. Other Native American museums, such as the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum, the Charles W. Bower Museum in Santa Ana, the Amerind Foundation near Willcox, Arizona, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, and the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, rival it in importance. Nevertheless, despite its cramped appearance, scattered exhibits, and poor security, the Museum is an asset other cities would like to have.

Since 1915 the scholastic emphasis of the Museum has focused on the culture of the aboriginal peoples of Southern California, of the American Southwest, and of Mesoamerica. Other exhibits acquired over the years --- the Egyptian, Archery and Breath of Life exhibits --- do not comply with the aboriginal theme. Traveling exhibits, such as exhibits of saddles, bridles, wagons, carriages and horse-drawn farm implements, of culinary delights from around the world, and of contemporary Native American art call attention to diverse interests. Art exhibits show unwittingly how native artists have been affected by cosmopolitan trends. The far-reaching nature of the exhibits is not necessarily bad for some (but not all) of them allow professionals and laymen to see how aboriginal peoples wherever they may be manifest similar preoccupations... thus microcosm blends into macrocosm.

The 1992-1994 Biennial Report of the Museum of Man stated the Museum exists to disseminate knowledge and understanding of human biology, ecology and cultural development. This elastic definition allows room for just about anything directors and staff choose to exhibit.

Since Director Douglas Sharon is aware that the Museum of Man occupies a historic and architecturally significant building, he has taken steps to safeguard the integrity of the building while placing exhibits so that they are not obtrusive nor incongruously related. Unfortunately the rotunda is still a labyrinth of interconnecting paths, the Sally Farnham frieze has disappeared, the Jane Beman Smith's reliefs are awkwardly displayed, the Carlos Vierra murals have dwindled to two that overlook Navajo, Hopi and Pueblo Indian crafts on the second floor, and Egyptian and Peruvian mummies in an upper-level west wing clash with adjacent arts and crafts exhibits. The rotunda and the Saint Francis Chapel are closer to their Panama-California Exposition appearance in 1997 than they have been at any time since 1921, the year the California Building became a catch-all for smorgasbord exhibits. The interior of the Fine Arts Building has, however, been cut up into partitions to house staff functions and visiting exhibits. The partitions hide the Piccirilli bronze wall fountain at the east end of the gallery. Overhead trusses mock the quadripartite vaulting, block sightlines from upper balconies, and dispel the 1915 illusion of a monastic refectory.

(Note: James Steinberg of the San Diego Union-Tribune reported, August 3, 2001: "The museum . . . has six paintings by Carlos Vierra (1876-1937) . . . The Vierra canvases document the archeology of important Mayan ruins. Four of them are visible, and two remain hidden." Steinberg also mentioned that 15 murals of scenes from the American Southwest by Gerald Cassidy (1879-1934), created for the Panama-California Exposition exhibit of the San Diego Museum, were later concealed by "temporary" walls. Eleven of these have been "discovered" and three are lost or have disappeared. The Museum of Man plans to restore the murals and relocate them to more hospitable locations . . . not necessarily within the Museum.)

Situated in a Spanish-Colonial Revival church with sculptures of explorers and pioneers on its facade, the Museum of Man provides San Diegans with a facility where they can see how they relate to ALL the peoples of the world... past, present and to come.