The Journal of San Diego History
SAN DIEGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY QUARTERLY
Spring 1992, Volume 38, Number 2
Richard W. Crawford, Editor
Page 92. Forgotten fountain at the Park Egyptian Apartments, 3783-89 Park Boulevard, depicts an Egyptian maiden holding a shell-shaped bowl in her outstretched hands. Water poured from the shell into the surrounding pond when the fountain was new in the late 1920s.
Page 94. Egyptian revival designs have long been associated with tombs and eternity, such as the Egyptian style obelisk (at far left) in Greenwood Cemetery.
Page 96. Dramatic Egyptian gate frames the Theosophical Society buildings in Point Loma (ca. 1905), in the background.
Page 97. A symbolic sun disk, with wings of the vulture, spreads above the stage inside the Theosophical Temple. Lotus blossoms and buds adorn the bottom of the curtain.
Page 98. Matching obelisks frame the entrance to DeVallet’s exhibit of his “Master Painting” Cleopatra. Called “the Supreme Art Feature of the 1916 Exposition,” the painting was exhibited in the Isthmus amusement area in Balboa Park.
Page 100. Scowling sphinx guard the gateway to Cawston’s Ostrich Farm, a popular exhibit at the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in Balboa Park.
Page 101. A stucco Egyptian palace glows in the sun on Park Blvd. Built in 1926, the Egyptian Court Apartments originally had a garage on either end, until they were converted to shops.
Page 102. Grand columns, representing bundled papyrus, flank the entrance to the courtyard of the Egyptian Court apartments. Symmetrical designs, architectural elements and garden plantings are typical of Egyptian revival.
Page 105. The Bush Egyptian Theatre in 1930. Opening day entertainment on June 30, 1926, included an “Egyptian Ballet” by the Ratliff Dancers.
Page 106. Sloping, battered walls, imposing pilasters, and Pharaoh heads are typical architectural elements of Egyptian revival. Here they adorn a trolley substation built in 1923 in Ocean Beach, part of the San Diego Electric Railway System.
Page 108. What might have been…an architect’s rendering of the proposed “Egyptian Ruin, ” one of several “Villages of the World” planned for the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition in Balboa Park, but never constructed.
