‘Geranium George’ Honored : Enlightened S.D. Leader Gave Parkland to City

A great store is more than a shop; it’s a kind of institution, serving the community not only in business, but in civic affairs. It takes service from its employees, but should serve them also.

--George W. Marston

“Geranium George” ran for mayor of San Diego twice and twice was defeated.

He donated a park to the city and wound up paying to maintain it for the next 11 years.

But in recent years, San Diegans have shown increasing appreciation for George W. Marston--derisively labeled “Geranium George” during San Diego’s mayoral election of 1917, when he argued that the city’s development should be planned with parks and promenades. Marston died in 1946, but Marston Point in Balboa Park has been named after him, as has Marston Junior High School in Clairemont.

Last month, the San Diego Historical Society named and dedicated the main exhibition gallery of its Junipero Serra Museum in Presidio Park for George W. Marston, and an exhibit there now chronicles his contributions to San Diego.

“The exhibit touches on a lot of things, including his business--Marston’s department store--which was the pre-eminent store in San Diego for many years,” said Gregg Hennessey, an independent historian and curator of the exhibit, “but the main focus is on Marston’s civic role as a philanthropist and reformer. He saw the money he made from business as a public trust, and he tried to put it back into the community. Dedicating the gallery to him is a way of celebrating him and his values.”

Among those who attended the dedication ceremony were former employees of Marston’s department store, which was sold to The Broadway chain in 1961. The former employees still have annual luncheons to reminisce and pay tribute to their old boss; nearly 100 people showed up for the luncheon this year in early October, said Rodolfo Aguilar, 81, a former display director who worked at Marston’s for 33 years.

“It just goes to show you that the man was worth loving,” Aguilar said. Marston is one of those seminal figures that every young city needs, and he is one whose influence on the area has become more noticeable with time.

He was 20 years old when his family moved to San Diego from Fort Atkinson, Wis., in 1870. In 1872 he took a job as clerk in a general store in downtown San Diego.

Less than two years later, he and another clerk, Charles Hamilton, bought out the owner and became partners in their own store. Marston and Hamilton subsequently split their partnership (Hamilton took the groceries and Marston the dry goods), but they remained friends throughout their lives. Marston later joked that Hamilton’s only fault was that “he was too honest for me. . . . I thought it was a little too honest to advertise our butter as being ‘as good as you could expect in the summertime after its long transportation from Poway.’ ”

Marston moved his store to several locations, all downtown, until he finally built a store at the corner of C Street and Fifth Avenue in 1912. For the next 49 years, it was one of the city’s largest and grandest. Marston not only managed it, but also, in the early days, wrote most of his own newspaper ads, which gained a citywide reputation for their wit and literary flourishes.

In one ad, he told of a markdown on men’s derby hats, writing that “the hats are still stiff but the prices have collapsed.” In another, he noted: “A little monotonous, isn’t it, to be directed every day to go to Marston’s for hairpins, or to go to Marston’s for this, that, etc. But we are at it again.”

According to Hennessey, Marston was more than a witty entrepreneur, however. “He was a very progressive employer who was pro-labor at a time when the nation and San Diego were not. He supported child labor laws, workman’s compensation, minimum wages and above all, the right for workers to unionize and strike. For an employer at the time, this was heresy.

“He believed in treating people in a decent fashion . . . and thought employers were only successful because of the work their employees did for them.”

Marston’s high ideals eventually led him to become involved in the city’s cultural and political issues. He served two years as a city councilman and a total of nine years as a parks commissioner.

In 1907, during a time when San Diego was growing rapidly, he hired John Nolen, a nationally acclaimed landscape architect and city planner, to study the city and present a plan for its growth. Nolen’s report was the first comprehensive planning document the city had.

Parks and other public facilities figured prominently in Nolen’s plan. According to Hennessey, Marston shared with Nolen the idea that parks “offered relief from congested city living, morally uplifting surroundings, and a safety valve for class tensions.”

But not everyone agreed, as Marston discovered when he ran for mayor in 1913 and was defeated. He ran again in 1917, but his opponent that year, Louis Wilde, portrayed the election as “Smokestacks versus Geraniums” and derided Marston as “Geranium George.” Marston lost by a 2-1 margin.

He took his defeats in stride, and in 1924 helped persuade the city to hire Nolen to do a second planning study. Among Nolen’s recommendations that came to fruition were to build Harbor Drive and to put the county administration building at the foot of Cedar Street; it housed both the city and county offices when it was opened in 1936.

As a parks commissioner, Marston helped scuttle a plan to build a state college on 122 acres in Balboa Park in 1926. In addition, he acquired most of what is now Presidio Park in a series of land deals, had it landscaped, and built and furnished the Junipero Serra Museum. Then he donated it all to the city in 1929--a gift worth more than $400,000, according to Hennessey.

As part of the deal, Marston agreed to pay for the maintenance of Presidio Park for two years. But the city subsequently was sluggish in coming up with the money, and he wound up contributing to the park’s upkeep for 11 years. “The city officials could easily be described as an ungrateful lot,” Hennessey said.

Marston also had a hand in the acquisition of park land for Silver Strand State Beach and for Cuyamaca Rancho and Palomar Mountain state parks. He also bought 2,320 acres in Borrego Palm Canyon and later deeded the land to the state--the first contribution toward Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. “He was involved in establishing virtually every major park in San Diego County,” Hennessey noted.

Three of Marston’s daughters still live in the house he built on Seventh Avenue near Balboa Park in 1905. One of them, Harriet Headly, 97, attended the dedication ceremony, and noted that when her father came to San Diego, “It was a very small little town. There was nothing pretty about it. But my father saw the possibilities of it.”

A grandson, Hamilton Marston, 76, lives on Seventh Avenue a few doors down with his wife, Margaret. Like his grandfather, Hamilton Marston has taken a keen interest in parks and city planning. He fought for many years to prevent the Navy from building a new hospital in Balboa Park’s Florida Canyon unless construction were approved by a two-thirds majority of the city’s voters, as required by the city charter. The Navy eventually condemned and acquired the land.

In 1974, Hamilton Marston and his aunt, Mary Marston, also funded an $10,000 independent urban planning study called Temporary Paradise, which analyzed San Diego’s past growth and suggested ways to preserve and enhance the city’s character. “Ten thousand dollars seemed like an appropriate amount,” Hamilton Marston said. “It was the same amount that John Nolen got in 1907.”

Hamilton Marston recalled that his grandfather was an avid baseball player who once broke his leg while playing for a local club called the San Diego Knickerbockers. “He was very much interested in parks and nature. . . . He climbed Mount Hood when he was 60.”

George Marston enjoyed poking fun at himself, and in his last public speaking engagement--a talk about his education in 1943--he noted dryly that his college classes in Greek and Latin had been of immense value to him in the department store business. He also recalled an essay on alcohol that he wrote at 14 and that began with the arresting sentence, “Alcohol is a great evil; 10 drops placed on the tongue of a cat will produce instant death.” “I failed to give any scientific proof for this statement,” he pointed out, “but the professor marked my composition ‘Very Good.’ ”

Although he became increasingly frail in his final years, George Marston gave an interview to reporters from his bed on his 95th birthday in 1945. Seven months later, he died.

“He was motivated by higher ideals,” Hennessey said. “He believed in the essential equality of everyone.”