Demodeling
In those days, my dad was a businessman in downtown Los Angeles and was always partial to exploring city centers and getting the lay of the land from the inside out. I remember seeing San Diego’s Horton Plaza on one of these urban outings, mostly because the day was hot and the plaza’s fountain was an island of cooling spray.
Digging back through my memories, I’ve realized that this is likely one of the first fountains I’d ever seen up close – and it made a strong impression. It was about 50 years old at that point and wasn’t in prime condition, but it fit in with its surroundings on Broadway and felt comfortable to me.
C. T. Co. Publishers, Chicago, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons” src=”/images/4-17-19Travelogue/1.jpg” width=”360″ height=”274″ alt=”1″ title=”Photo dated 1915 by C. T. Co. Publishers, Chicago | Wikipedia” style=”margin-right: 10px;float: left”>Fast forward more than 50 years to another visit to San Diego and a return to Horton Plaza: In the years since I’d last seen it, the fountain has acquired new surroundings and I have to say the experience wasn’t as charming as my first had been back in 1960 or so.
The original fountain was designed around 1908 by the noteworthy California architect Irving Gill and dedicated in 1910. Gill is remembered as a modernist, but on this occasion he served up a neoclassical structure that fit in beautifully against its backdrop of commercial buildings in a similar style. Part of the commission was a request to Gill to dress up the fountain and create a nighttime attraction by including colored lighting – making this among the first of the so-called “electrical fountains.”
The frieze above the columns offers up the fountain’s original name: “Broadway Fountain for the People.” But the idealism that seemed to inspire the composition was never enough to protect the fountain’s surroundings from revision through the years – or from occasional suggestions that the waterfeature itself should be demolished. The plaza had problems with vagrancy, it seems, and there were serious maintenance issues as well.
Despite all that, the old system survived long enough to see a thorough renovation in 1985, and the plaza around it was completely redone in a four-year project that began in 2012. But the latter undertaking was less a remodel than it was a demodel.
Truth be told, I wish they’d left well enough alone. Yes, the revised plaza has ready access to food and includes a new interactive fountain that doubles as a performance space, but the charm is gone and Gill’s elegant neoclassical structure just seems overwhelmed, lost and out of place.
As you move around the plaza, it’s still possible to catch fountain views that align with my memories of the place – but it’s tough not being distracted (or in my case dismayed) by the heightened energy of the old fountain’s new surroundings. I suppose I should be happy that the historic artifact survives for now (it seems that the adjacent mall is in trouble and the entire area might be redeveloped yet again). But I just can’t help thinking the original fountain has deserved better.