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Casa Del Prado History

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Casa Del Prado History The Committee of One Hundred Panama-California Sculpture Court, Casa del Prado Courtyard History of the Casa del Prado Photo # Completed in 1971, the Casa del Prado is a modified reconstruction of the largest of the temporary exhibition 01 halls built in 1914 for the Panama-California Exposition of 1915-1916. The exposition celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal, which was expected to bring expanded trade and prosperity to the port cities of the Pacific Coast. Like the other Spanish Baroque style buildings of Balboa Park’s Central Mesa, the exterior of this building was designed as a part of a romantic and idealized evocation of a prosperous Spanish Colonial city of the early 18th Century. Although many of the ornamental features of these buildings were inspired by actual historical buildings in Spain and in Spain’s New World colonies, the intense richness of the exposition’s architecture was deliberately exaggerated to enhance the fun and fantasy experienced by the exposition’s visitors. The Panama-California Exposition’s Supervising Architect was Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (1869-1924), of Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson, with offices in New York, Boston and Los Angeles. Goodhue controlled all design decisions for the exposition’s permanent and temporary structures, and employed two main assistants, Carleton Monroe Winslow (1876-1946), Project Architect, and Frank P. Allen, Jr. The Committee of One Hundred Panama-California Sculpture Court, Casa del Prado Courtyard (1881-1943), the project’s Chief Engineer and Director of Works. They are credited with the design of most of the exposition’s “temporary” buildings. The Casa del Prado’s original building was designed by Winslow. That exhibition hall was originally called the Varied Industries & Food Products Building, and was later renamed the Food & Beverage Building. The L-shaped building housed commercial exhibit booths displaying food and beverage products, in its south wing and other consumer goods in its east wing, presented by their manufacturers. Many of these exhibits demonstrated or explained how the products were manufactured and distributed to their markets. Like all of the temporary exhibition halls, the Food & Beverage Building consisted of an ornate stucco and cast plaster exterior that appeared to include two or more floors, but which actually enclosed a plain, warehouse-like interior hall with a single level, bare white-washed board walls, and extensive skylights for daytime lighting. The only second floor spaces were relatively small mezzanines 02 over the main building entrances. Commercial exhibitors installed their booths on the main level in the grid 03 imposed by the heavy timber posts supporting the open truss-beam roof system. The L-shaped building enclosed The Committee of One Hundred Panama-California Sculpture Court, Casa del Prado Courtyard about 80,000 square feet on one level, the largest of the exposition’s halls. Originally, almost all of the exhibition halls were designed and constructed for temporary use, and were meant to be demolished once the exposition closed. Only the Cabrillo Bridge and the cathedral-like California State Building and its quadrangle, at the west end of the Prado (now the Museum of Man), were meant to be permanent. To save money, the temporary buildings therefore were very lightly constructed without permanent foundations. The ornate cast plaster ornamentation on these exhibition halls was made of “staff,” a relatively lightweight and inexpensive material that was ordinarily used for interior decorations only. For this unusual exterior use, the staff was coated with a waterproof concrete paint that would resist the weather for the short time the buildings were expected to last. Originally projected to run for one year, the Panama- California Exposition was extended for a second year, and closed on January 1, 1917. After the exposition closed, San Diegans resisted the planned demolition of the temporary buildings, citing both their beauty and their usefulness 04 for other public purposes. And, with World War I raging in Europe, the City of San Diego was able to lease the The Committee of One Hundred Panama-California Sculpture Court, Casa del Prado Courtyard exposition buildings to the War Department for a temporary U.S. Naval Training Station, active from 1917 through early part of 1919. Although some buildings were replaced or lost to fire, during the 1920s most of the Park’s exhibition halls found seasonal or permanent use for county agricultural fairs, flower shows and other events, and as meeting and office spaces for civic groups, despite the rapid structural deterioration of many of the temporary buildings. Most of the buildings narrowly escaped demolition in 1933, and were further repaired and refurbished for a second exposition in 1935-1936, the California Pacific International Exposition. Although most of the temporary buildings were still in need of further repairs, by 1938 they were generally recognized as having long-term value to the city’s infrastructure. From 1942 through the end of 1947, all of the exposition buildings were leased again to the U.S. Navy as an annex to Balboa Naval Hospital. During the mid-1950s, the Food & Beverage Building served as a temporary home for the San Diego Public Library while the new downtown Central Library building was being constructed at 7th and E Streets. The continued use and disposition of the deteriorating exposition buildings was extensively studied and debated The Committee of One Hundred Panama-California Sculpture Court, Casa del Prado Courtyard throughout the 1950s. A new Balboa Park Master Plan developed in 1959 for the city by Harland Bartholomew of St, Louis, MO, recommended that most of the Central Mesa buildings be demolished and replaced by unrelated modern structures to form a new cultural complex of museums, theaters and other civic and artistic organizations. In 1963 and 1964, the two 1915 buildings flanking the San Diego Museum of Art at the north end of the Plaza de Panama were demolished and replaced by Modernist buildings housing the Timken Museum of Art and a new West Wing of the art museum. Public reaction against these significant changes to the appearance and character of the Central Mesa Park led to the formation of Balboa Park’s Committee of 100, dedicated to the preservation, historical reconstruction, and adaptive reuse of the Spanish Baroque style buildings of the Panama-California Exposition. Chaired by Mrs. Bea Evenson (1900-1981), the Committee 05 of One Hundred played a leading role in the reconstruction of the Food & Beverage Building as the Casa del Prado, sponsoring a successful $3.5 million City bond issue in November 1968. This funded the first historical reconstruction in Balboa Park. While the design for the new building included significant changes, replication of the original building’s ornamental facades along its south and The Committee of One Hundred Panama-California Sculpture Court, Casa del Prado Courtyard east sides was deemed essential to the preservation of the historical character of this part of Balboa Park. Solidly constructed with a steel frame and cast concrete ornamentation, the new building was renamed the Casa del Prado building includes two floors of meeting spaces and offices for the San Diego Botanical Foundation, the Park and Recreation Department’s youth arts and dance programs, and, in the church-like northeast wing, the 640- seat Casa del Prado Theatre, housing the San Diego Junior Theatre. Portions of the 1915 building’s original staff plaster ornamentation and sculptures, retained as models for the reconstruction process, form the collection that you see around you here. The Committee of One Hundred Panama-California Sculpture Court, Casa del Prado Courtyard SUGGESTED PHOTOS 01: 1915 color postcard image of Prado facades 02. Exhibit booth in Varied Industries (East Wing), Savage Tires, 1915, SDHS #84.15263-119 The Committee of One Hundred Panama-California Sculpture Court, Casa del Prado Courtyard 03. Exhibit booth in Food Products (South Wing), Alpine Milk, 1915, SDHS #84.15263-144 04. US Naval Training Station in Balboa Park (use period postcard, or similar image from archive) The Committee of One Hundred Panama-California Sculpture Court, Casa del Prado Courtyard 05. Bea Evenson at Casa del Prado construction site, 1971 .
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