The Journal of San Diego Volume 61 Spring 2015 Number 2 • The Journal of San Diego History Diego San of Journal 2 • The Number 2015 Spring 61 Volume History Publication of The Journal of San Diego History is underwritten by major grants from the Robert D. L. Gardiner Foundation and the Quest for Truth Foundation, established by the late James G. Scripps. Additional support is provided by “The Journal of San Diego History Fund” of the San Diego Foundation and private donors. Founded in 1928 as the San Diego Historical Society, today’s San Diego History Center is one of the largest and oldest historical organizations on the West Coast. It houses vast regionally significant collections of objects, photographs, documents, films, oral histories, historic clothing, paintings, and other works of art. The San Diego History Center operates two major facilities in national historic landmark districts: The Research Library and History Museum in Balboa Park and the Serra Museum in Presidio Park. The San Diego History Center presents dynamic changing exhibitions that tell the diverse stories of San Diego’s past, present, and future, and it provides educational programs for K-12 schoolchildren as well as adults and families. www.sandiegohistory.org Front Cover: Colorized postcards from the 1915 Panama-California Exhibition. (Clockwise) California Tower, Botanical Building, Cabrillo Bridge, and Commerce and Industries Building. Back Cover: USO Headquarters at Horton Plaza, World War II, supported by the Wax Family of San Diego. Design and Layout: Allen Wynar Printing: Crest Offset Printing Editorial Assistants: Travis Degheri Cynthia van Stralen Joey Seymour Articles appearing in The Journal of San Diego History are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life. The paper in the publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Science-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. The Journal of San Diego History IRIS H. W. ENGSTRAND MOLLY McCLAIN Editors THEODORE STRATHMAN DAVID MILLER Review Editors Published since 1955 by the SAN DIEGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY 1649 El Prado, Balboa Park, San Diego, California 92101 ISSN 0022-4383 The Journal of San Diego History VOLUME 61 SPRING 2015 NUMBER 2 Editorial Consultants Published quarterly by the San Diego History Center at 1649 El Prado, Balboa MATTHEW BOKOVOY Park, San Diego, California 92101. University of Nebraska Press A $60.00 annual membership in the WILLIAM DEVERELL San Diego History Center includes University of Southern California; subscription to The Journal of San Director, Huntington-USC Institute Diego History and the SDHC Times. of California and the West All back issues are accessible at www. VICTOR GERACI sandiegohistory.org. University of California, Berkeley Articles and book reviews for publication consideration, as well as DONALD H. HARRISON editorial correspondence, should be Publisher, San Diego Jewish World addressed to Editors, The Journal of San J. MICHAEL KELLY Diego History, Department of History, Committee of 100 Balboa Park University of San Diego, 5998 Alcalá Park, San Diego, CA 92110 ROGER W. LOTCHIN University of North Carolina Chapel Hill All article submissons should be computer generated, double-spaced JOHN PUTMAN with endnotes, and follow the Chicago San Diego State University Manual of Style. Authors should ANDREW ROLLE submit an electronic copy in Microsoft The Huntington Library Word. Photographs must be submitted separately at 300ppi. ROGER SHOWLEY The San Diego Union-Tribune The San Diego History Center assumes no responsibility for the statements or ABE SHRAGGE opinions of the authors or reviewers. Independent Historian ©2015 by the San Diego History Center RAYMOND STARR ISSN 0022-4383 San Diego State University, emeritus Periodicals postage paid at San Diego, CA Publication No. 331-870 PHOEBE S. K. YOUNG (619) 232-6203 University of Colorado at Boulder www.sandiegohistory.org Note: For a change of address, please call (619) 232-6203 ext. 102 or email [email protected] ii CONTENTS VOLUME 61 SPRING 2015 NUMBER 2 ARTICLES San Diego Invites The World: The 1915 Exposition A Pictorial Essay Iris Engstrand and Matthew Schiff 337 The Wax and Addleson Families: Military Service Abroad and on the Homefront Donald H. Harrison 351 On the Cusp of an American Civil Rights Revolution: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Final Visit and Address to San Diego in 1965 Seth Mallios and Breanna Campbell 375 EXHIBIT REVIEWS Masterworks: Art of the 1915 Exposition Molly McClain San Diego Invites the World Jonathan Bechtol Coast to Cactus in Southern California Adrienne McGraw 411 BOOK REVIEWS 425 iii Speakers for the opening banquet at the Panama-California Exposition held at the Cafe Cristobal, January 1, 1915. San Diego Invites the World: The 1915 Exposition A Pictorial Essay Iris Engstrand and Matthew Schiff The first substantial groups of people traveled to California from the East Coast during the Gold Rush in 1848-49. They soon found that trains were confined to east of the Mississippi and slow-moving ships carried passengers and cargo around Cape Horn. The first railroad to cross overland and connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans was opened in 1855 across the Isthmus of Panama, then a part of Colombia. With the completion of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad in 1869 followed by the Santa Fe railroad in 1885, thousands of people were able to travel to California more easily, leading to a real estate boom in the 1880s. San Diego planned a city park of 1,400 acres on a central mesa. Unfortunately for San Diego, the Panic of 1893 led to a quick decline in population and properties were left vacant. With a gradual economic recovery during the early 1900s, San Diego evolved into a small city with big ambitions. Residents believed their port and city could become an important base for the US Navy, especially after the visit of Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet in 1908. An initial attempt by France to build a sea-level canal across Panama in the 1880s failed, but only after considerable excavation was carried out. This effort was useful to the United States, which completed the present Panama Canal in Iris Engstrand is Professor of History at the University of San Diego and co-editor of The Journal of San Diego History. Matthew Schiff is Marketing Director at the San Diego History Center and a writer of San Diego history. They are co-curators of the current exhibit San Diego Invites the World featuring the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. 337 The Journal of San Diego History 1913 and officially opened it in 1914. Along the way, the Republic of Panama was created through its separation from Colombia in 1903 after a US backed revolt left United States in control of the Canal project area. As early as 1909, San Diego booster D. C. Collier began discussing San Diego as the first port of call for ships passing through the Canal. Promotions talked about the “Kiss of the Oceans” and businessmen supported the idea of dredging San Diego harbor to accommodate larger commercial vessels as well as naval ships. By 1910, other city boosters such as John Spreckels, G. Aubrey Davidson, and George Marston began promoting the idea of a celebration honoring the completion of the Canal with a world’s fair or exposition in 1915. City Park was renamed Balboa Park to honor the first European who, in 1513, reached the Pacific Ocean. There was no lack of controversy over the planning—both on the home front and up and down the state. As it turned out, San Francisco secured federal approval to host the official World’s Fair and called it the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Bay Area planners chose towering Beaux-Arts and neoclassical buildings to grace Golden Gate Park, while San Diegans selected a regional theme showcasing a Spanish fantasy city. Even though Southern California’s past reflected the simple architecture of missions and ranchos, Anglo promoters— mostly bankers, lawyers, real estate developers and merchants—convinced park planners to hire architects who could heighten the romantic aspects of the city’s Spanish beginnings. None of the elegant baroque structures planned for the fair had actually been built in southern California, but, even so, The San Diego Union predicted that the elegance of the exposition would impress all visitors and triple the city’s population. Local architect Irving Gill had some simple ideas for buildings in the park, while easterners Bertram Goodhue and his partner Carleton Winslow from a firm in New York had been impressed by Spanish Portrait of Bertram Goodhue Colonial architecture in Mexico and Spain. Previously, from Romy Wyllie, Bertram Goodhue: His Life and the accepted “fair style” was Beaux-Arts, classical Residential Architecture, Greek, or Roman. These were the styles of Chicago’s frontispiece, Courtesy of Goodhue Family Archives. famed “White City” of 1893 and San Francisco’s competing exposition. Goodhue proposed to design his buildings in baroque Spanish Colonial Revival since a “new city” of Old Spain would not only be in closer harmony with the beauty of Southern California, but would be a distinct step forward in American architecture. The Olmsted Brothers, a nationally famous landscape architectural firm, chose 338 The 1915 Exposition about 100 acres in the southwest corner of the park and preserve the rest of the park as open space. Their father, Frederick Law Olmsted, who had designed New York’s Central Park, believed in a maximum of green space. Fellow landscape architect Samuel Parsons agreed. Collier, appointed Director General of the Fair, disagreed and claimed to need more space and buildings to attract exhibitors and promote business growth. Goodhue and others opposed the open space plan so the Olmsted brothers quit the David C. Collier, Director project.