Botanical Building
Vast wooden lath house filtering sunlight over ferns and tropical plants beneath a soaring redwood lattice roof.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Botanical Building in San Diego's Balboa Park starts with a count of hidden repairs stitched into the steel skeleton that has held up the lath house since 1915, built fast for the Panama-California Exposition and never expected to last a century. You'll hear what engineers found when they finally climbed up to inspect the frame, and why the building closed to the public at the start of 2022. Along the way, the guide notes a 1950s renovation that had quietly stripped away some of the original plaster arches workers later had to rebuild.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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