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Gingerbread jewels
Take a pictorial tour of 'San Diego County Victorians'
By Roger Showley
STAFF WRITER
August 31, 2008
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“San Diego County Victorians”
Author: Eric C. Pahlke, Our Heritage Press
Length: 75 pages
Cost: $24.99
Information: ourheritagepress.org or (619) 297-9327
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San Diego County boasts a small but rich collection of Victorian houses dating back to the 1870s, and now the Save Our Heritage Organisation has published an all-color paperback celebrating these exuberant artifacts from the past.
Author and photographer Eric C. Pahlke roamed the county looking for modest and little-known examples of this decorative architectural type as well as elaborately designed historic houses open to the public.
Included are the Villa Montezuma, the San Diego Historical Society's house museum in Sherman Heights, built in 1887 for an eccentric artist, Jesse Shepard; and the Britt-Scripps house, also built in 1887 at the height of San Diego's railroad boom, now a bed-and-breakfast inn just west of Balboa Park. As a contrast, Pahlke included farmhouses, a former chapel and examples of stained-glass windows and other Victorian decoration.
“When I began the research and photography for 'San Diego County Victorians,' ” Pahlke wrote in the introduction, “I wanted to display the diversity of construction, both in design and function, as well as the geographical spread of the Victorian influence. I wanted to use full color because, to me, Victorian means color, not just on the exterior, but on the rich woodwork and intricate wallpapers of their interiors.”
Quite a departure from today's look-alike tract homes and unadorned modern masterpieces by the architects who followed the Victorians! They are a pain to maintain, but we love them all.
 Roger M. Showley: (619) 293-1286; roger.showley@uniontrib.com
ERIC C. PAHLKE photos
Lemon grower Victor Hinkle from Kansas built this house in 1892 in Pacific Beach. It was moved to Law Street in 1930.
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The Castle House was built in Lakeside by grape grower G.H. Mansfield in 1887.
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A sunburst design in the gables shines at this 1889 Sherman Heights house.
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Cornelius Gorham built this Queen Anne gem in Logan Heights about 1894.
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Victorian can be simple, as with this 1888 Eastlake house in Little Italy.
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The 1887 Livingston house moved from Sherman Heights to Coronado in 1983.
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