Much Sounded the Same in 1935 : Turning the Clock Back 50 Years in Balboa Park

The world’s major powers are negotiating an arms reduction. The President is battling Congress over his controversial economic policies. The San Diego City Council is looking for a new city manager. The date is May 29, 1935.

But on that day 50 years ago, local headlines were dominated by the opening of “America’s Biggest Event,” the spectacle that would raise San Diego to national and international prominence--the California Pacific International Exposition.

The exposition, like many such events held in the 1930s, was intended to boost business, employment and public spirits during the depths of the Depression. However, the legacy it left in Balboa Park has continued to prosper through decades of economic fluctuations.

“Had it not been for the ’35 exposition, most of the buildings in the Palisades area (in the southern end of Balboa Park) wouldn’t be standing today,” said Bruce Kamerling, registrar of the San Diego Historical Society.

The exposition gave San Diego the Aerospace Museum, the Ford Building, the California Building, the Houses of Pacific Relations and the Old Globe Theatre.

Today at 10 a.m., Old Globe officials will commemorate the theater’s 50th anniversary with the opening of the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, a replacement for the Festival Stage, which was destroyed by arson last October. Actress Lily Tomlin will host the ceremonies honoring Davies, the president of the theater’s board of directors for 31 years, as well as cast members from the theater’s first production in 1935. The theater also will stage a “birthday bash” Friday at 5 p.m. at the park’s Organ Pavilion.

But at the time of the exposition, the Old Globe Theatre was just one of many attractions that drew national attention and millions of tourist dollars to the sleepy Navy town of 175,000.

“It was a shot in the arm for San Diego, both emotionally and economically,” Kamerling said. “San Diego was on the outskirts of the world at that time . . . the exposition put San Diego on the map.”

More than 100 new buildings were constructed or renovated in Balboa Park to house the thousands of exhibits from around the world. Many of the refurbished park buildings had been intended as temporary structures for the 1915 Panama-California exposition, and were in a severe state of disrepair when construction for the new exposition began in 1934, Kamerling said.

While most of the new structures were designed in the Aztec-Mayan revival style, Kamerling said a few, such as the Ford Building, broke new ground in the moderne school of architecture, enhancing San Diego’s nascent reputation as a cultural center.

“That building sort of brought to the attention of a lot of people the whole concept of modern architecture,” he said. “The whole idea of a big building in the modern style in San Diego was new at the time.”

Built at a cost of $20 million, the exposition offered visitors a rare glimpse of the marvels of 20th-Century technology. Among the futuristic exhibits were “a chrome steel robot” with “Frankensteinian features” and a large, ungainly prototype of a television set costing $50,000. For those less interested in modern gadgetry, there was Zoro Gardens nudist resort, which featured 50 “nature lovers” from around the country.

Speaking to a crowd of 60,000 at the exposition’s opening ceremonies, California Gov. Frank Merriam proclaimed that the exhibits represented “the most advanced technological, industrial, scientific and cultural developments in this modern age.

“Indeed, this is an exposition of the future and its possibilities,” Merriam said.

The governor’s address was followed by a speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, transmitted via telephone from the White House.