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Understanding 9/11tv San Diegos Balboa Park CSPAN January 8, 2017 2:39pm-2:52pm EST
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we are concluding on the beach. not a driving tour of san diego. what else would you like to see for san diego? natural resource of fun and the good weather, making decisions to take advantage of that clean industry for everybody, finding how we accommodate the increase in population, how do we build enough housing, affordable hereng, for people to live and to come here and to come here, and keep the quality of life the way it is, you know, with more people wanting to come. we are now a population of 1.3 million in the city. that makes us the eighth largest city and more people are going to be coming. what san diego is and know that people want to take advantage of what it is. that is challenge.
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c-span is in san diego learning more about the city's rich history. balboa park was created as heart of the pan-american exhibition to celebrate the opening of the panama canal. of next, we learn more about the park's history. >> welcome to balboa park. this is one of the highlights of our city. it was setup in 1968. it was set aside to be a respite from the downtown, from the chaos, from the havoc that goes on in the city. although balboa park is the cultural mecca of our region. it is the impetus for all of these really dynamic things happening in the united states and the world. "san diego invites the world." this is the exposition here in san diego.
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one of the reasons why the exposition was created and how balboa park came to be is a result of the panama canal, which opened in 1915. san diego had the reputation of being a wild west town. it had a small population. there were 30,000 people who lived here. and there was an awful lot of vice here. san diego wanted to change its reputation. it wanted to recognize the fact it was an up-and-coming city, and that was the dream of some of the founding fathers and mothers here. that it could become a metropolis it staged appropriately and it had industry brought to it. one of the people responsible for our exposition here in san diego is aubrey davidson. aubrey davidson was the president of the chamber of commerce in 1908.
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it was announced that the united states was taking over the panama canal project and it would be completed in 1915. he saw that as an opportunity for san diego to come forward and introduce itself to the world. and so, there was the exposition and they announce that to the folks in town. for a few years, they did the financing to build the exposition and it opened on december 31, 1914 at midnight. there was a telegraph sent by woodrow wilson in washington, d.c. to turn on all of the lights, and that happened at midnight. all of the people were coming through and about 40,000 people came to the opening night ceremonies. and it's been a highlight of balboa park ever since.
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this used to be the commerce and industry building and we had in it, adding machines and that kind of production for business. one of the highest production pieces that we have here in our exhibit is the registry book of all of the different people who came here. it was so successful, it continued into 1916. and when you came across the bridge into the california building, there was this book waiting for you to sign in. the collected signatures. three .8 million people came to the exposition in 1915 and 16. and the majority of those folks names are listed in the book. people also went across the street from us to the county building where it there were different examples of agriculture dropped the county. and one other very important elements. we tried to teach people about
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different cultures as much as possible. it was a time when the world was opening up. we wanted to make sure that people had a chance to learn about the culture existing here and the united states was not that far out of the union wars.the indian wars. it was an opportunity to showcase people in the united states. we invited the hopi, the navajo, others to come to our exhibit ground. we built a place for them to build up structures to become home places and they lived on the site for the duration of the exposition. people could walk and amongst them and learn from them directly what their cultural experiences were like. to give you a sense of what it was like to be here in 1915, fortunately we do have the layout -- some parts of the park are as they were in 1915.
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there were four main structures supposed to stay here in 1915. we will take a look at those. we will wander around the park. we are standing on the cabrillo bridge. this is the main entrance to the california exposition. this was a grand entrance. you are coming over a very deep ravine and you are going to enter into this fantasy world. that is what expositions were trying to create, and atmosphere you had never seen before. it was housed in something quite foreign to most people. so, people came across the bridge after going through their missions on the other side. and they wander up this grand esplanade, you might say, and approach the first building.
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the first building that we have, that you see here in the exposition grounds is the former park, ground building. here you see it as it was first built. irving gill was one of the leading architects in san diego at the time. he brought this modernism to san diego. however, he then worked on other projects. and bertrand goodhue was chosen as the chief architect of the exposition grounds. his architectural style is very different. and as you take a look at the dome, they are going to be using structures found in other parts of the world as inspiration for the buildings here. he is adopting a spanish revival or spanish colonial style, which was very different from what people had seen in other parts of the world. and for the california building,
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it was designed to house the -- it shows different -- how's the state of california. it showcases different cultures run the world. it was greeted by bertrand hughes. does she was designed by bertrand goodhue. he wanted to create that mystical city. and the largest building in those ancient walled cities is usually a church. the tower or the dome building -- modeled after a real structure in toledo,
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was created was to celebrate the fact that san diego was the first city you would come to in the united states after going through the panama canal. so the imagery used on the outside, the entrance into the park was this image of two people, one representing pacifica, the other representing atlantica, and they are the ocean. and in the center, you see them italian there. -- and in the center, you see they have a ship.
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moved here to live permanently in san diego. he saw that the park needed to have a main entertainment venue and the organ he and his brother had purchased for a different park that they owned a little further ease stop us here they , had decided to give it to the exposition instead. we're fortunate we have it. it is an outdoor pipe organ. at the time it was built, it was the largest outdoor pipe organ in the world. for a while we lost that title ii of place in the czech republic, but just recently we have again put in more pipe, so it is once again the largest pipe organ in the world. this is the main street that works are the park in one of the most popular places that people like to come and visit is the botanical building behind me right now. the structure was the largest glass structure of its kind in the world at the time it was
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built and it was built to house primarily plants from all over the world. if you look at the exposition grounds, you will see a lot of grass. many of the landscape planners believed, as we do today, the environment does not support having a lot of grass grown here. the architect of our exposition, bertrand goodhue, he comes from back east and he was going to change his architectural style to make people feel comfortable coming from the east. he thought that they needed to have something more familiar to them. he had all of the areas between buildings planted in grass and the foliage that you see was adding in as well. it was familiar to people coming from the east, but new and the -- fantastical for people coming from other parts of the world.
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>> all weekend long, american history tv is joining our charter spectrum and cox communications partners to showcase the history of san diego, california. two learn more about the cities on our current tour, visit c-span.org/citiestour. we continue now with our look at the history of san diego. >> today, we are in these special collections and archives department of the uc san diego library. we are in the guys all library geisel library building. these come from different collections and our department. some of the themes you can see the pic did in our collections today would be like the mission -- depicted in our collections today would be like thss
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