PC-000-821

Picture postcard showing Brewster Hotel in San Diego, California

 

1910s

 

Panama-California Exposition of 1915

This apparently hand-tinted postcard of the Hotel Brewster shows a California Car-type streetcar on the far left at bottom. These cars began to be phased out and replaced by the Class 1 cars in 1912 as streetcar-line owner John Spreckels (1853-1926) began to prepare for the Panama-California Expositon of 1915, of which a seal appears on the back of this card. The hotel was built in 1888 on the southeast corner of 4th Avenue and C Street, across from the U. S. Grant Hotel, by Horace I. Brewster, and had San Diego's first passenger elevator. This card is shown and dated 1915 in David Marshall's April 2009 article in "By Design," a publication of the San Diego Architectual Foundation, which points out that this view is missing the cupola that was a feature of earlier illustrations of the hotel. This feature disappeared in 1910 (as two photos in 1910, #2 and 3, in possession of the San Diego History Center show). Another postcard in this collection, PC-000-828, shows the hotel before 1907, with the cupola. A photograph in the collection of the San Diego History Center shows an interior of the hotel in 1913 (#5768). The hotel was demolished in 1934.

Hotel Brewster; Brewster Hotel; Hotels; San Diego; California cars; Streetcars

401 C Street

California - San Diego

 

 

MS-0008

English

Hotel Brewster, San Diego, California, US

Postcard

3.5 inches x 5.5 inches

No

San Diego History Ctr Doc. Coll. MS 15 Guide Hotel Brewster Register; Journal SD History Apr 1956, v2,#2, Driese, Land Boom Palace; By Design, v4, iss1 Apr 2009, David Marshall, "The Brewster Hotel"; Sep 1889 Golden Era; San Diego Photo Coll MS-0222, SDSU

[on left, superimposed on photograph]
Hotel Brewster, San Diego, Cal.

[signs on buildings, appearing to have been enhanced to make them readable]
the banner at the top of the hotel reading "Brewster"
the "Hotel Brewster" sign on the left at the entrance
the "Brook-Hill Brewster Buffet Whiskey" sign on the right,
"Savoy Cafe" further to the right.

 

Image

TIFF

20.06 MB