San Diego History Center
History museum inside a Balboa Park exposition hall rebuilt after a 1978 arson fire.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the San Diego History Center follows George Marston, a onetime store clerk who built San Diego's leading department store and, in 1928, used that fortune to found the San Diego Historical Society. It then turns to the building itself, a 1915 exposition hall that later became the Aerospace Museum, housing vintage aircraft and a fragment of Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, before two teenagers set it ablaze on a February night in 1978. You'll hear how Marston's philanthropy and this hall's own fortunes turn out to be tied together in ways he never lived to see. Notice how the building carries the name Casa de Balboa today, a clue to what came after the fire.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Casa de Balboa
Spanish Colonial Revival exposition hall rebuilt after a 1978 arson fire, now home to three museums.
San Diego Air & Space Museum
Aviation museum of historic aircraft and spacecraft, risen from a nineteen seventy-eight arson fire.
Junípero Serra Museum
Mission-revival museum atop a hilltop fort site, its surrounding park largely shaped by Depression-era relief crews.
Marston House
Craftsman mansion of redwood and shingle, built for a department-store magnate on five acres of gardens.
Gaslamp Museum at the Davis-Horton House
Prefabricated saltbox house that survived a failed gold-rush-era town and multiple relocations.
Museum of Us
Anthropology collections spanning two million objects, including painted Egyptian coffins funded by a subscription-driven excavation society.