SOHO documentary

By Ann Jarmusch

SDUN Reporter

Editor’s note: For more than 25 years award-winning journalist Ann Jarmusch has covered architecture, design, historic preservation and landscape for a variety of publications.

Coming to a movie theater near you for one night only: An epic story teeming with true grit, tragedy and triumph! Plus a cast of dozens of San Diegans with hearts of gold!

It’s the preservationists’ dream documentary – except for the evil bulldozer scenes. (Don’t worry, the good guys are on a long winning streak, with the law and enlightenment on their side.)

“Forty Years of Historic Preservation in San Diego County,” commissioned by Save Our Heritage Organisation to commemorate its 40th anniversary in 2009, will premiere at Old Town Theatre at 6 p.m. on March 29. Dan Soderberg, who graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in motion picture and television production, is the documentary’s versatile filmmaker. A tireless preservation activist and native San Diegan, Soderberg spent nearly a year working on the documentary.

A wine and cheese reception will precede the screening, and each viewer will receive a DVD of the film. Then the salute to California’s oldest continuously operating preservation group will continue at an after-party at El Fandango restaurant, also in Old Town. El Fandango will offer free appetizers and one free drink to movie ticket holders who RSVP to SOHO in advance. (Among other things, SOHO has always been known for its parties.)

I can vouch for the stimulating effects of SOHO parties and the film. Full disclosure: I did some preliminary research, which I shared with Soderberg, on the group’s four decades of preservation victories and a few stunning losses, as well as the grass-roots group’s evolution into a preservation powerhouse. I also sat in on a few of his interviews with my fellow SOHO members and staff, an engaging, intelligent group. But I had no say in the documentary’s overall content, look or considerable emotional punch.

“What would San Diego look like today if there had been no SOHO?” Soderberg, the film’s narrator, asks.

Using new footage, archival films and hundreds of seldom seen historic photographs from SOHO members’ collections, SOHO archives and the La Jolla Historical Society, Soderberg moves us through a telling slice of San Diego history. SOHO and the preservation movement expand and mature before our eyes, while downtown San Diego reinvents itself and the quaint village of La Jolla sadly fades.

“History can be very dry and detached from our lives. My goal was to make the film as story-like as possible,” said Soderberg, who is a SOHO board member and Normal Heights resident. Since passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966, the sweep of changing tastes, tactics and priorities in the dueling forces of preservation and redevelopment called for “some degree of emotional response to these things, which is why I chose certain music,” Soderberg said.

And why Soderberg staged a photo of the 1887 Sherman-Gilbert House by hanging an approximation of a 1968 paper sign on it that said, “Save This House” and gave a phone number. With low expectations and dread, Robert Miles Parker, a charismatic San Diego artist and art teacher who has since moved to New York City, hung just such a sign on the ornate Victorian house. In the film, Parker recalls his surprise at the flurry of phone calls he got 40 years earlier and the first salon-style meeting of what was to become SOHO.

I don’t know of a local group with a more heartfelt beginning. And this is just SOHO’s first memorable story among many, thanks to a host of brave, colorful and resourceful members who, depending on the circumstances, dance in period costumes, pack mud to repair historic adobe buildings or carry lawsuits into court.

The fledgling SOHO, which was initially devoted to then-unpopular Victorian architecture (hence the English spelling of “organisation” in its name), not only saved the Sherman-Gilbert House – it immediately set about helping to found Heritage Park, a county-owned repository for historic buildings next to Old Town State Park, and moved the house there. SOHO now condones moving a structure from its original setting only as a last resort, but at the time this was a huge heroic deed.

The stars of the film are impassioned SOHO members and staff – exceptional people who have devoted years to the cause – and, of course, architectural icons. Some of the latter were demolished; others, Soderberg notes, SOHO helped save more than once, such as the Santa Fe Depot and Horton Plaza Park.

“SOHO has made preservation mainstream,” David Marshall, a preservation architect and former SOHO president, says.

Yet, Soderberg observes, SOHO’s work is never done. An alarming number of San Diego County historic and cultural resources are still threatened by the elements, development pressures and stubborn greed. Soderberg highlights them, from the pristine Rancho Guejito (the last remaining intact undeveloped Spanish land grant) near Escondido to the palatial California Theatre downtown to the deteriorating Red Rest and Red Roost cottages, the disgrace of La Jolla. Post-war Modernist buildings, which only recently reached the 45-year-old threshold for historic designation, are now firmly in SOHO’s sights.

Soderberg doesn’t gloss over the losses that still sting: the Melville and Amy Klauber House, designed by Irving J. Gill; the rustic, Arts & Crafts cottages of the Green Dragon Colony perched above La Jolla Cove; and the brick T.M. Cobb warehouses in the Gaslamp Quarter.

Happily, there are significant turning points in SOHO’s and the preservation movement’s favor. While ever reliant on the expertise and manpower of volunteers, SOHO in 2001 hired a committed, highly effective team as full-time staff: Bruce and Alana Coons, executive director and events and education director, respectively.

Bruce Coons, as the film shows, is an articulate, knowledgeable and savvy advocate for preservation. You’ll see him and probably hear him at every public meeting where preservation is being discussed. He’s also a sharp negotiator who helped craft a landmark agreement to save and monitor 11 historic warehouses in San Diego’s East Village, including one that was, to everyone’s delight, incorporated into Petco Park.

Alana Coons supports SOHO’s educational mission through home tours, workshops, lectures and other special events; publications; and management of SOHO’s museum shops; and even supervises the catering of SOHO’s parties. She watches every detail like a hawk to protect SOHO’s integrity and quality of museum operations.

When necessary, SOHO also enlists the aid of Susan Brandt-Hawley, one of the state’s top legal experts on the California Environmental Quality Act, an invaluable preservation tool. The lawyer offers high praise when she says, “SOHO is not afraid to go against the powers that be.”

We understand why when Bruce Coons talks about preservation as an extension of freedom and our common heritage. “Our values,” he says, “are embodied in those [historic] buildings.”

Tickets for the premiere screening of SOHO’s “Forty Years of Preservation in San Diego County” on March 29 at Old Town Theatre, 4040 Twiggs St., must be purchased in advance. ($20, $15 for SOHO members). Running time is 65 minutes. For more information or to buy tickets, visit SOHOsandiego.org or call 297-9327.