South Park

The South Park Addition was first registered as a subdivision in 1870 but sat too far from downtown to attract builders. That changed in 1905, when E. Bartlett Webster bought it. His Bartlett Estate Company put in sidewalks, water, sewer and electricity, and began selling lots as a high-class residential district.

Transit did the rest. The South Park and East Side Railway, an electric streetcar line to downtown, opened in 1906 and made South Park the city's first streetcar suburb. In the 1910s the area joined the larger streetcar network built by John D. Spreckels, inspired by the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. Streetcars stayed until 1949, when the number 2 streetcar was replaced by the number 2 bus.

South Park is sometimes considered part of the Golden Hill neighborhood, and the city's planning department places both inside a district it calls Greater Golden Hill Community. Golden Hill itself lies south of Balboa Park, north of Sherman Heights, Grant Hill and Stockton, and east of downtown. It has many homes and apartments built before 1900, and it is one of the most historic and architecturally varied parts of San Diego. It sits within walking distance of downtown, San Diego City College and much of Balboa Park, and the same page calls South Park the wealthier of the two today.

Some of the old names live on around South Park's own streets. Portions of the area now called Golden Hill were once known as Brooklyn Heights, and the school at 30th and Beech Streets, the same corner as the Old House Fair, was originally called Brooklyn School. The Presbyterian church at 30th and Fir was Brooklyn Heights Presbyterian Church. That name went out of use in 1981, when it was invited to merge with Golden Hill Presbyterian, a church established in 1956. Both accepted and became Christ United Presbyterian Church of San Diego.

Golden Hill has a history of firsts. Future city council member Leon Williams bought a house there in 1947 and became the neighborhood's first Black resident, despite a racial covenant in the house's deed. He lived there until his death. The first Gay Center in San Diego, and the second in the nation, opened in the early 1970s at 2250 B Street, in a house built in 1908 that still stands. Artists and musicians have long favored the area. Two free, all-ages outdoor concerts, the Golden Hill Block Party and Kate Sessions Fest, are organized by local musicians. The block party falls on the last Saturday before Halloween, and Kate Sessions Fest started in Golden Hill Park in 2006.

South Park was shaped by streetcars, and the larger system behind them was the San Diego Electric Railway. Sugar heir and land developer John D. Spreckels established it in 1892, after incorporating the company by November 30, 1891. The first horse-drawn streetcar in the city had run up 5th Street in 1886, and the first electric streetcar test ran on Broadway in 1887, making San Diego's the first electric railway on the West Coast.

Growth came in steps. In 1912, 24 Arts and Crafts-style streetcars, known as the Class 1 cars, arrived in San Diego. The 1915 Panama-California Exposition in Balboa Park brought a new line up 12th Street to the park's entrance and 101 new cars. At its peak the system ran over some 165 miles of track across the greater San Diego area. In 1925, roughly its largest extent, line 2 ran east on Broadway through South Park and then along 30th Street to North Park. Line 3 went to Mission Hills by Washington Street and Fort Stockton Avenue, and line 7 ran through Balboa Park and Hillcrest to North Park and City Heights.

Falling ridership, driven mostly by the car, led the company to drop all streetcar service for buses. The last rail service ended on April 24, 1949, when Car No. 446 pulled into the Adams Avenue car barn, which made San Diego the first major southwestern city to switch to an all-bus system. That is the same 1949 date given for the end of the line 2 cars in South Park. Three Class 1 streetcars saved in 1996 were named San Diego Landmark #339. The San Diego Trolley, a new light rail system, made its first run on July 19, 1981, and the city came to be known as the one that started the light rail craze in the United States.

The business district runs along 30th Street, which Men's Journal named the nation's best craft beer boulevard, and Fern Street. It has restaurants, cafes, grocery stores, taverns, wine bars and art galleries. The Albert Einstein Academy Charter School is here, and so is Pathfinders, one of the oldest residential treatment centers for alcoholism in California. The neighborhood is dog-friendly and has one of the few designated dog parks next to a residential area in San Diego.

Two events mark the year. The Old House Fair is a summer event centered on 30th Street and Beech Street, where local businesses sell furnishings and other goods for owners of vintage homes, and bands play on a stage on Beech Street. The shops and restaurants also hold quarterly Walkabouts on Saturday evenings in March, July, October and December, with late hours, live music and a free trolley running from Beech Street to Grape Street to Juniper Street.

Switzer Canyon lies east of Balboa Park and marks the boundary between the neighborhoods of North Park and South Park. It stays an oasis of natural vegetation between some of the city's most urban neighborhoods. It was named after E. D. Switzer, who moved there in 1869 and had a five-acre farm at the downtown end of the canyon. Because it was far from downtown, it served as an isolation camp during the city's smallpox scare of 1887, with a group of small houses set up for patients east of 30th Street.

Developers floated plans for parts of the canyon in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Burlingame Homeowners' Association formed in 1980 mainly to save it, every proposal failed, and in 1987 the City of San Diego bought the canyon as an open space preserve. In 1998 a plan for a sewer maintenance road on the canyon floor led residents of North Park and South Park to join the Sierra Club. Their group, the Friends of Switzer Canyon, became a model for what is now over 40 canyon preservation groups in San Diego County. It installed information kiosks along the trails between 2000 and 2005.

Today the parks department manages the canyon, which has 2 walking trails and 3 trailheads. It is coastal sage scrub habitat and shelters the threatened California gnatcatcher, as well as dusky-footed woodrats, rabbits and coyotes. Yerba santa, black sage and evening primrose grow there.

South Park lies in the part of the city that a travel guide calls Mid-City, the eastern part of San Diego bordered by Interstate 8 and Mission Valley on the north, National City on the south, downtown, Balboa Park and Hillcrest on the west, and La Mesa on the east. The guide describes South Park as a quiet residential neighborhood southeast of Balboa Park, along 30th and Fern Streets north of State Route 94.

Given the size of Mid-City, the guide says traveling by car is the most reliable way around. State Route 94 runs east to west along the southern edge of the area, with quick access to downtown, and State Routes 15 and 805 run north to south. For buses, the frequent route 2 links South Park and downtown with North Park.