San Diego History Center
History museum inside a Balboa Park exposition hall rebuilt after a 1978 arson fire.
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.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.